30% of U.S. churches face “the brink of extinction”

Eric Sentell Feb 12, 2025

In 2010, the United Methodist church where my family worships boasted some 250 members. That may not sound like much, but the church was a behemoth in our rural community. We had by far the largest congregation, the biggest and best facilities around, and the resources to pull off many things other local churches could only dream of.

Post-Covid, the church has halved despite its best efforts to grow. The church has tried offering a “traditional” and a “contemporary” service, going all-in on children’s ministry, hosting huge community events, and meeting financial needs in the community as much as possible. Yet here the congregation is — half of its former size.

Our church is not alone. The National Council of Churches estimates that:

100,000 U.S. churches will be closed over the next several years — an estimated one-quarter of those in operation.

Ryan Burge, a political scientist who writes the “Graphs About Religion” Substack, estimates:

About a third of the country’s 350,000 Christian congregations are “on the brink of extinction.”

In 2019, the most recent year for which Lifeway Research collected data, some 4500 Protestant churches closed compared to only 3000 new church openings, for a net loss of 1500 congregations.

I’m not worried about Christianity, but I am worried about the communities where churches close. One doesn’t need to belong to a congregation to find God. Indeed, leaving church can help you find God!

However, church closings disrupt communities: both the communities of people who used to gather regularly and share life together and the larger communities that used to benefit from church ministries.

How did U.S. churches get here? And what, if anything, can be done to reverse the trend?

A Perfect Storm

The National Council of Churches describes the drivers of church closures as “a perfect storm.”

Younger generations don’t attend church. A 2021 Gallup Poll showed that “church membership in the U.S. plummeted from 70 percent to 47 percent over one generation.”

According to Burge, about 20% of “Boomers” identify as religiously unaffiliated, compared to 45% of Gen Z.

Operating costs have increased. While offering plates have become lighter, the costs of pastors, staff, utilities, and insurance have grown.

The Internet increased competition. Churches used to compete against other churches within driving distance. Now they compete against celebrity pastors live-streaming from their megachurches.

The Covid-19 pandemic hit churches like a sledgehammer. Pastors say post-Covid attendance is only 85% of pre-Covid attendance. Many church-goers got out of the habit and never got back into it.

Smaller, older congregations + higher costs = church closure.

Why are younger people attending church less? There are many answers to that question, but one answer, I believe, looms larger than the rest.

Decisions Over Discipleship

The New Testament scholar and popular author Scot McKnight argues:

For the last 40 years, the U.S. church has focused on decisions over making disciples.

In other words, Christian thought-leaders over-emphasized persuading people to “decide” to give their hearts to Jesus Christ. They — and the pastors, youth leaders, and bible study teachers who listened to them — lost sight of nurturing people into disciples for Christ.

Being “seeker-friendly” became the goal for most U.S. churches: attract and retain non-Christians with entertaining services, rocking worship music, and fun-filled activities for the kids. Discipling people into Christ-likeness became an after-thought, as though it happens by osmosis.

Because Millennials and Gen Z lacked discipleship in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, they became adults in the 2010s and 2020s who were more likely than previous generations to leave church. Many simply lacked deep conviction in their faith and connection to their church communities.

Harm and Hypocrisy

Besides neglecting discipleship, American churches harmed younger generations through toxic theology and hypocritical behavior.

What little discipling youth received in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s fixated on instilling “purity culture,” anti-abortion politics, and anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Most of those positions fell out of favor among younger people as they grew up and reckoned with their profound harms. They wanted nothing to do with a religion that enforced patriarchal authority, blamed victims of sexual abuse, removed all nuance from the issue of abortion, and dehumanized their friends or themselves.

To be fair, many churches talked plenty about Jesus and the unconditional love of God. They emphasized the importance of morality, ethics, and character. Then the kids grew up and watched their parents and grandparents line up to vote for Trump. Shocked by the hypocrisy, many of them voted with their feet and left the churches where they grew up.

Short-Term Solution: Seek a Population Boom

Ryan Burge wrote about fast-growing churches in his Substack post, “What Predicts Church Growth or Decline?”

What do fast-growing churches have in common? They happen to be located in counties with strong economies that attract people to move there.

Burge uses Stephen Furtnick’s Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, as a representative example. Elevation began in 2006 with 121 people in attendance. By 2013, Elevation was a 15,000-person megachurch. The population of Charlotte swelled by almost half a million during the same time.

In a way, Burge’s data is even more depressing than the statistics on church closings. Most churches that close resist change, but what if change doesn’t fix the problem? Changing the worship style, ministering to people’s needs, serving the community, etc., cannot attract congregants if they just don’t exist to be attracted.

Christians can’t do much to reverse the trend of church closures besides hoping for economic revitalization drawing more people to their areas.

Long-Term Solution: Refocus on Discipleship

But that’s short-term thinking. In the long-term, churches may avoid closure if they refocus on discipleship and rethink their theologies.

The generation born after Gen Z could be more likely to transition from attending fun church events to belonging to a church or to stick in their congregations if they are discipled into a deep faith and establish roots within a healthy faith community.

That means, among other things, not assuming that people become more Christ-like through osmosis. Food and fun may get kids to church on Wednesday night, but they won’t mature into church-going adults unless some part of the youth service aims at maturing their faith.

I don’t claim to be an expert in discipleship, but I think it requires mentoring relationships characterized by openness to questions and a willingness to explore serious answers. No apologetics, please. I mean wrestling with doubt, contradictory scripture, and biblical scholarship.

Rethinking toxic theology won’t hurt either. Churches can’t continue telling their youth that God loves everyone unconditionally and also condemns LGBTQ people and aligns with anti-immigrant politics, if they want to retain most of them as adults. Churches must model aligning politics with faith, not faith with politics.

The Future

The landscape of American churches will look different in the decades to come. Many will close. Some will survive.

My bet is on the churches both willing to change and changing to refocus on discipleship and community.

100,000 U.S. Churches May Close by 2050. What Can Be Done?