In April of 2011, our Association did an exhaustive study of our region which covers from Holden to Slidell, along Interstate 12 in Southeast Louisiana. You can see the full reports here, and my comments here and here. This month, I compared our 2010 church health numbers with the 2012 stats for churches. Here’s a few big takeaways:

• Stats taken from each zip code where there is a Northshore Baptist church showed only a slight uptick of .4% in population growth (from 343,794 to 345,225).
• Baptisms continued to slide in Northshore churches, down 11% to 812. Down 25% from 1990’s all time high of 1,077. Ten Northshore Baptist churches reported zero baptisms. Seventeen more reported five or less.
• Sunday School/Bible Study attendance increased 2%. 6,786 attended a Bible Study on any given weekend which is equal to 2% of the population.
• Worship attendance increased 1% to 11,312 individuals attending a worship service in a Northshore Baptist Church on any given weekend. That still equals to only 3.3% of the population.
• Receipts increased by 10% while missions giving decreased 15%. Possibly caused by belt tightening going on due to the poor economy over the last few years. Also, the “Institutional Internalization” noted as a national trend by Dr. Randy Stone in 2011, as churches “preserve their institution rather than pursue the mission.”

Download the Statistical Summaries of the Northshore PROBE Two Years Later for yourself:

• Entire Northshore – NSBA Probe – 2012
• Tangi-Livingston Area – NSBA Probe:Tangi-Livingston – 2012
• West St. Tammany – NSBA Probe:WST – 2012
• East St. Tammany – NSBA Probe:EST – 2012

How do we move forward? In 2011, we outlined four keys and they are still true and still our focus.

Breakout Churches

A breakout church is defined by Thom Rainer in his book by that title as a church that reaches at least one person for Christ every two weeks or 26 persons per year, has a conversion ratio of 20:1 or 1 conversion for every 20 members per year, has tenured and consistent leadership, and the church makes a clear and positive impact on its community.[1] The momentum of growing churches breaking out will help us catch up with population growth and move past a season of decline.

Healthier and Riskier Church Planting

Healthier church planting means church planting that is led by churches with a heart to multiply and reproduce themselves for the sake of kingdom expansion. So, what’s needed for healthier church planting is healthy mother churches with a heart to reproduce. As Bob Roberts says in his great book The Multiplying Church, “The future of faith in America (and anywhere in the world, for that matter) is not tied to planting more churches, but in raising up of mother congregations of every tribe, tongue, denomination, and network that are reproducing… The hope is in pregnant mother churches.”[2]

Riskier church planting would be multiplication that targets hard to reach areas and unchurched pockets of our population. Missiologist Alan Hirsch suggests that current church models are reaching out to smaller and smaller segment of the population, with possibly as much as 60% of America untargeted by our evangelistic and outreach efforts.[3] Our probe identified multi-housing residents as one potential segment that is underserved. Others may be those in their early 20’s with very little understanding of religion in any form. We need some church plants that go beyond planting a worship service that looks similar to others in the community, but will ask the question “Where is the church not?” and go there with the gospel. We need some church plants that have different scorecards and different expectations, but will faithfully deliver the message of Christ to unchurched people.

Partners in Revitalization

Church revitalization is needed to turn momentum around for congregations that are not effectively reaching their communities. Churches are needed who are willing to adopt or sponsor or merge with existing congregations for the glory of God. And churches are needed who are willing to admit there in need of coming under the wing of a benevolent parent church or work with a church wanting to help then in a revitalization effort.

A Discipleship Revolution

Call it revival, lay renewal, or awakening, what we need is a revolution of discipleship that will lead Northshore Christians to multiply themselves spreading the Gospel like a sneeze to their neighbors, classmates, coworkers, and beyond. In his book Church 3.0, Neil Cole observes, “we have lowered the bar of what it means to be a Christian, such that simply showing up to the weekly one-hour event with some regularity and a checkbook is all it takes.”[4] We must refocus on making disciples who will reproduce themselves by telling others, inviting others, and discipling others.