For this discussion, assume you live in a county or a city with a population of 100,000. Someone asks the question, "What proportion of our residents are unchurched?" How do you answer that question?

The easiest answer is to turn to the national telephone surveys of Americans age 18 and over, conducted by John C. Green of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. These surveys were conducted in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. The methodology suggests this is a credible description of the adult population in America.

The 2004 survey reported 3.2 percent of the respondents identified themselves as "Atheists or Agnostics," 7.5 percent as "Secular" and 5.3 percent as "Unaffiliated Believers." That adds up to 16 percent unchurched. If 25 percent of your residents are under age 18 (the national proportion in 2004), that would suggest 16 percent of the 75,000 adults, or approximately 12,500, are unchurched. Several other national surveys report that 20 percent of the adult population are unchurched. That would raise the estimated total in a community of 100,000 to one-fifth of the 75,000 adults or 15,000.

What Is the Definition?
That raises a crucial question. Who defines “unchurched?” The methodology cited above calls for all respondents to describe their religious identity. Prof. Green’s methodology offers each respondent 18 choices including the three mentioned earlier plus "Other Christian" (2.7%), "Other faith" (2.7%) and "Jewish" (1.9%).

At the other end of this spectrum of methodologies is one designed to produce a large number of unchurched residents. This asks each religious congregation to report its average worship attendance for one weekend in a typical month such as October. Typically that combined grand total will be somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the total population. Thus, a 40 percent total worship attendance would suggest that in a community with 100,000 residents, the population includes 60,000 unchurched persons of all ages. That number should motivate the members of the evangelism committee in every church in town!

A more sophisticated methodology begins with the assumption that a fair number of adult Christians do not worship every weekend with the congregation of which they are members.

This system calls for recording the name of each person attending each worship service for four consecutive weekends in a typical month such as May or October. The final tabulation in a congregation averaging a combined total of 300 at two weekend worship services may report that 150 were present on all four weekends, 100 attended on three out of four, while another 100 missed two out of four, and another 100 came only once. Thus, it required 450 persons to create that average worship attendance of 300. That 3-to-2 ratio of persons-to-average attendance is a common outcome of this methodology.

This methodology in that mythical city of 100,000 residents described earlier in which the combined worship attendance for one weekend was 40,000 raises the total of "the churched population" to approximately 60,000. If another 25 percent of that 60,000 is added to account for the children in the nursery or in Sunday school during worship plus the adults required to staff those ministries, the total of "churched" comes to approximately 75,000, meaning only 25,000, including both adults and children, of those 100,000 residents are "unchurched."

Perhaps the simplest methodology begins by counting the worship attendance at every religious congregation on the typical weekend. The next step is to agree on the typical ratio of worship attendance-to-baptized membership. In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for example, which approves the practice of infant baptism, that ratio is approximately 1 to 3. In the United Methodist Church, which also affirms the baptism of infants, that ratio is 1 to 2.8. Thus, if all of the Christian congregations in the community of 100,000 residents report a combined average worship attendance of only 30,000, that would suggest the population includes 85,000 to 90,000 baptized believers. If, however, that definition is changed to resident baptized members, the typical Christian church ratio is closer to 1 to 2.5. Thus, if the combined average worship attendance in that community with 100,000 residents is 30,000, that suggests the population includes 75,000 resident baptized believers. The estimated 25,000 unchurched is in the same ballpark with the surveys by John C. Green. That number also is consistent with the fact that in many Protestant congregations, the reported resident membership is a larger number than worship attendance and/or the leaders do not expect babies and young children to be in worship.

Another Big Variable
For nearly four centuries, Christians in America have been discussing the question of how old a person has to be before they are able to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. One response was the "birthright Christian." Anyone born into a Christian family was assumed to be a Christ follower by right of birth for 18 years. At age 18, that person would or would not declare his or her Christian commitment. Another system declared a person had to be baptized to be described as a Christian, but no one was old enough to make that commitment until a certain age. Definition of that age varies from age six to 18. That takes us back to the earlier question of identifying the number of unchurched. Should all children under age five (6.7 percent of the American population) be counted as "unchurched"?

Why Count?
Two reasons can be offered to justify the effort to estimate the number of unchurched residents in your community. One is to secure a reasonably well-informed estimate of the potential future converts to Christianity. The second is to inform the design of the ministry plan for your congregation for the next few years.

One example is the congregation that makes fulfillment of the Great Commission the central theme of their ministry. If they turn to John C. Green’s data and assume approximately 5 percent of the adults in their community are unaffiliated believers, 7.5 percent are secularists, while about 3 percent are self-identified atheists and agnostics, what would they do? One option would be to add a worship service to the schedule designed to persuade non-believers of the truth and relevance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Or they might place the top priority on adding a new worship experience to the schedule designed to address the agendas of that one in 20 adults in the local population who are "unaffiliated believers." One or both could be in addition to the two current Sunday morning worship services, one of which is designed to encourage believers to move to the next stage of their faith journey as eager learners, while the other is focused on transforming knowledgeable believers into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. Another option would be to design an avowedly Christian weekday pre-kindergarten ministry to reach the unchurched parents of young children. Rather than disrupt the Sunday morning routine at the "home church," another alternative could be to invite unchurched adults to help pioneer the creation of a new worshiping community at an off-campus site. Many Americans prefer to "help create the new" rather than "join the old."

In other words, a pragmatic reason for seeking a more sophisticated definition of the "unchurched" population in your community is in the value of customized ministry plan for your congregation.

This can be illustrated by a brief look at a dozen adults who did not attend worship in any religious congregation on that weekend in May when the survey was conducted to determine the number of unchurched residents. Four were longtime members at Faith Church who stopped attending when they became disenchanted with the sermons delivered by the interim minister who is filling a vacancy. All four of these men play golf every Sunday morning while they await the arrival of the next pastor on the first Sunday in June. Their wives understand and forgive their discontent and gracefully tolerate the ministry of this interim pastor.

Two unchurched residents consist of a couple in their mid-twenties. Both were reared in Christian homes. Both were baptized as children. Both were confirmed at age 14, one in an Episcopal parish and one in a Lutheran church. While attending the same state university, peer pressures and the culture made it easy for both to "drop out of church." They met the year he was a senior and she was a sophomore. They fell in love. After graduation, he took a job in that city and continued to court his future wife. They were married back home in her church a week after she graduated. A month later, they moved to a city 600 miles west because of his job transfer. She found a rewarding job there. Three years later, during the sixth month of her first pregnancy, they moved here to accommodate his promotion at work. They arrived in their new home three weeks before that count was made to determine the number of unchurched residents. They have promised each other, "As soon as the baby comes, we must start looking for a church home." They had agreed it would be an open search except it will not be either an Episcopal parish or a Lutheran church. They want to find a religious tradition that will be new to both of them.

The seventh of our 12 examples of the unchurched on that May weekend is a nonbeliever who is comfortable with the label "atheist." The eighth is a well-educated self-identified "agnostic." The ninth and tenth consist of a husband-wife couple now only two years from retirement. Three years ago, they welcomed a job transfer that brought them here where they now live only two hours from their retirement home on a lake. Every weekend is spent at "our place on the lake." The eleventh is a self-identified "cradle Catholic" mother who was divorced two years ago and has dropped out of church completely because of the pedophilia scandal. The twelfth is her boy friend who describes himself as "an unaffiliated Christian believer."

Is it reasonable to expect any one congregation can and will adopt and implement a ministry plan that will enable it to reach, attract, serve, assimilate, nurture, disciple, challenge and equip for ministry all 12 of these unchurched residents? How does that number of unchurched people in your community shape your congregation’s ministry plan?

For more than four decades, Lyle E. Schaller has served as a parish consultant to hundreds of congregations and scores of denominational agencies. His recent books include From Geography to Affinity, The Ice Cube Is Melting, and A Mainline Turnaround.

Copyright © 2006 Lyle Schaller