usa - 43 million involved in home church every month
Here in the UK following the report I presented at Mission 21 I was publicly ridiculed by a well known leader for the estimate of the number of people involved in organic, simple, home church stuff which I suggested was around 40,000 (knowing infact that this was probably a very conservative guestimate). In North America similarly some leaders have been saying 'House church? What House church? We don't see any house churches! Ha, ha ha!' (Refering to home, simple, organic churches).

Well now George Barna's research organisation has done some proper research in North America, and lo and behold they discover that an estimated 70 million adults have at least experimented with house church participation and in a typical week roughly 20 million adults attend a house church gathering. Over the course of a typical month, that number doubles to about 43 million adults. In the last decade house church attendance has grown from 1% to 9% of the adult population in the US.

Now we all know there are major cultural and religious differences between us and them but I think this is another good illustration of how much of this stuff, because of its nature and shape, passes totally under most 'existing church' leaders noses. Because it falls outside of what many of them recognise as 'church' they discount it.

But believe me, here in W Europe, we are hard on the heels of the US in this trend and what many would hardly call church now will become increasingly significant in the next decade.
Check out Barna's research here.

posted by alexander @ 8:20 AM    2 comments

2 Comments:

Alexander,

Fascinating information! Thanks for the Barna link as well. As this wave continues to grow, there will undoubtedly be more and more "red flags" raised in concern about this growing trend. It is interesting to me as a missionary that it is OK for these kinds of things to be happening in Asia, Africa, etc. but when they start happening on our own home ground, it becomes a concern!

By  GuyMuse, at 4:19 PM  

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I feel like we shared some similar views, on things.

I'm a musician, and I'd be honored if you'd listen to some of my music. All my music is available for free download on my site. Anyway, just thought that I'd share.

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-Sean
________________
www.SeanDietrich.com
"All my music is free for download."

By  Anonymous, at 2:19 AM  

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