New Research on Reaching Non-Christians in the US

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Last year, the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College sponsored a study with Lifeway Research on reaching non-Christians and young adults. The results of a phone survey of 1,003, self-reporting, Protestant US pastors were published today. You may find the research methodology and tables and charts HERE.

The findings shed light on a variety of matters such as worship attendance, commitments to Christ, baptisms, membership assimilation, pastoral examples of evangelism, and membership’s involvement in evangelism.

The report is chock-full of matters to discuss. Today, I will limit myself to some positive numbers without offering commentary.

When worship attendances are compared between the fall of 2023 and 2025, over half (54%) of pastors report their gatherings are growing in a post-Covid world; on average 17% of worship attendees are between the ages of 18-30 years.

When asked about the new commitments to Jesus Christ as Savior in the past year, 44% of pastors indicated ten or more such decisions had been made for salvation. Of this number, a quarter (24%) noted their churches had observed twenty or more new commitments.

It takes 100 attendees, in the average church, to reach eleven people. Nine of those eleven will be assimilated into active membership of those churches.

In the past two years, 20% of new attendees were individuals who did not previously attend any church’s worship gatherings.

Among Protestant pastors, 88% are intentional about building relationships to share the gospel with non-Christians. Pastors (80%) also reported they frequently hear of church members engaging in evangelistic conversations. Churches with 100 or more in attendance are more likely to be growing than churches under 100.

While the press releases are HERE and HERE, take some time to look over the report.

I plan to share more in my next post. Stay tuned.