We Be Goin’ To Church Part 2: Church-Goer Demographics

Ready for a upside-down data set? Over 90% of the churches in the United States are small, but most American Protestants go to the larger churches.

Of the +/- 314,000 US Protestant Churches in America in 2015, 1,667 of them are identified as ‘mega-churches’ (the currently accepted definition is a church with >2000 attendees). That represents 0.53% of the total number of churches in the USA.

It also stands out that +/- 18,840 churches in America have >500 attendees, representing 6% of the total number of American Protestant churches.

However, the entire data set explodes when you see where most PEOPLE are attending church, and the size of those churches. For instance, 10% of Protestants are attending ‘mega-churches’, which only represent 0.53% of the churches in America…

Demographics of Protestant Church-Goers in America:

Number of Protestants in America (2014, reported/ projection methods):

77,602,750 persons >18 yrs of age

Percentage/number of Americans who identify themselves as Protestant (2014):

46.5% (down from 51.3% in 2007)

Percentage/number of Protestants who attend the largest 10% of churches:

49%/ 38,025,348 people

Average estimated number of Protestant ‘worshippers’ every Sunday:

56 million people

Average estimated number of ‘worshippers’ in churches >500 persons every Sunday:

21.7 million people

Percentage of church-attending people who attend a ‘mega-church’ with >2,000 every Sunday:

10% people

Percentage of American Protestants who identify themselves as Non-Denominational:

30%

Percentage of Mega-Church-goers who identify themselves as Non-Denominational (2015):

56%

Percentage of Protestant churches that incorporate guitar in ‘worship’, by size (2012)

# Church Attendees (church size/persons)	% Churches incorporate guitar
< 50	15.8%
50-100	29.7%
101-250	42.9%
251-1000	50.7%
>1000	63.3%

TAKE-AWAYs:

[1] Most of the church-goers in the United States are attending 6% of the existing churches…

[2] Church-Goers are choosing to attend bigger churches, from >350 attendees up into the ‘mega-church’ >2,000 peeps size…

[3] The larger the church, the more inclined to use Mod Worship music (inflected by guitar use)… important to note that Gallop found music as the least important reason to attend church among American Protestants… (http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/gallup-asked-americans-why-they-go-church-its-not-music)