By Associate Editor Joe May
HENDERSON, Tenn. (BNc)- For the past several years, those in churches of Christ throughout the United States have despaired of hope since dropping from being the fastest-growing religious group in the nation.
But now a recent study by Harding professor Dr. Flavil Yeakley indicates that churches of Christ in America have better numbers than many may have realized.
According to an article by Steve Higginbotham, posted on PreachingHelp.org, Yeakley surveyed where the church stands in relation to other religious groups:
- Churches of Christ constitute the twelfth largest religious group in the U.S.
- They are the sixth fastest-growing group in the U.S.
- They rank fourth in the total number of congregations.
- The church is fifth in the U.S. in number of counties in which there is a congregation.
- It ranks first in the nation in distribution of congregations.
- Churches of Christ are first in the nation in weekly attendance among membership.
Higginbotham notes that Yeakley’s study revealed that the greatest retention rate of high school graduates comes frm those congregations who are described as “middle of the road.”
The worst retention rate come from those bodies who are described as liberal.
Yeakley shared these results recently on the campus of Freed-Hardeman University.
He has studied church growth among the congregations in the U.S. for many years.
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Pingback on Feb 1st, 2008 at 8:44 pm
[...] go H-E-R-E and be encouraged by a recent [...]
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Pingback on Feb 13th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
[...] are considered “middle of the road” as opposed to ultra-conservative or liberal. See the BrotherhoodNews.com article or Steve Higginbotham’s blog for more on this [...]
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5 February 2008 at 9:02 pm
Wonderful news! May we never grow weary in well-doing. We still need to proclaim the Gospel of Christ and may we never lose sight of our mission to take the good news of salvation that is “in Christ”.
8 February 2008 at 3:27 am
Ditto Charles E Moore. Well stated, sounds like brother Yeakley’s presentation would have been one to have seen.
8 February 2008 at 3:40 am
Further, cut off / locked up before done earlier, this material needs to be in the hands / pulpits of our brethren-I smell a sermon title “What Is Right With The Church”-Can I hear an amen church?
21 February 2008 at 11:04 pm
If you all will remember last year in the series “Are we growing?” the Chronicle and Flavil Yeakly cleared up the misunderstanding that the cofC was once the fastest growing religous group in the USA. It was based on myths from Batsell Barret Baxter and others since there was significant increase during this time. And while Flavil’s numbers are as correct as they come they are based on two presupposed ideas and lack perspective. Most of the data compares the cofC to other religious bodies in the USA. For example while we may be the 6th fastest growing group in USA a 1.6% growth rate since 1980 (According to Flavil and Mac Lynn) is nothing to have excitment or false security about. Flavil himslef will tell that on a standard tirade of stats 1.6 in a data range of alomst 2 million could be easily explained a margin of error. The Baptists just published a statement saying that they were loosing 88% of their kids. Doing better then them at a 40-60% loss is nothing to get excited about or have false security about either. Finally one day we will realize that few of these statistics shows very much about making disciples of all people. We may be having more attendance or baptisms but does that include all people living around us; Black, White, Hispanic,Asian, poor, rich etc? Not just white middle class.