What Happens to Churches When Population Falls

How megachurches are like Tokyo

What happens when the population falls?

This isn’t just a hypothetical scenario. Many countries around the world are losing population. Others are projected to. Even in the United States, which will likely keep growing, in two thirds of counties more people are dying than being born. Over 1,200 counties are already losing population. Our falling birth rates mean that at a minimum we will be seeing demographic weakness going forward.

How will this affect the country and churches?

One general rule is: decline produces concentration.

By that, I mean that as population, or the economy or something else, goes into decline, people and activity pool into a limited number of successful places.

For example, during the dotcom era, lots of cities boasted of having tech startup scenes. Chicago was going to be the “Silicon Prairie” for example. But when dotcom crash happened, virtually all of these got wiped out, and the industry reconcentrated in Silicon Valley and its traditional hubs. A true tech crash today would likely have the same effect on many startup communities around America.

If you look at the American Rust Belt, which lost enormous amounts of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s and 80s, you see states where growth and success have pooled into a handful of successful places like Columbus in Ohio or Indianapolis in Indiana, with much of the rest of it continuing in decline and malaise.

The same thing happens with population loss. When a country starts losing population, it doesn’t lose it evenly. Instead, peripheral or other areas with some sort of challenge are affected first and worst. As their populations age and opportunity declines, young people actively leave and move to places that are still vibrant, typically a big city and often the capital.

Hence in Japan many towns have already disappeared while Tokyo continued growing for many years after Japan started losing population (though even Tokyo is now shrinking). This is a pattern we should expect to see repeated in many other places.

Paradoxically, decline can actually be good for the metropole. Indianapolis never really took off as a growth city until the rest of Indiana went into decline in the 1970s. The city likes to attribute its success to great leadership and good decisions. There was some of that. But I don’t think it’s any accident that Indy’s trajectory took a turn for the better just as the Rust Belt era was hitting the rest of the state hard.

The same phenomenon is going to hit churches as demographics weaken and adherence to Christianity continues to decline. As churches shrink, get older in average age, and struggle to reinvent themselves, some congregants will stay until the end but many others, especially younger people, will leave for more vibrant congregations.

This decline of Christianity will tend to reward well-resourced congregations with very compelling pastors. Many of these will be megachurches. Indeed, we see that the suburban megachurch phenomenon is still thriving today. Indianapolis has several of these, with thousands of members each.

This phenomenon makes it difficult to recognize the challenges facing the church as a whole. Think about Japan. American visitors to Japan primarily visit Tokyo, and perhaps Kyoto. They see a thriving metropolis and assume all is well. They never see the reality of the hinterland.

Similarly, when a newcomer arrives in a community and asks for church references, they are likely to be steered to the town’s thriving churches. I see this in my community.

And who are the most visible and influential leaders in evangelicalism? Typically the people who run the largest and most successful churches. While the occasional theologian or seminary president becomes a major figure, it’s overwhelmingly successful pastors who come to the fore.

This has multiple effects. First, the image one typically sees is a leader of a large and growing congregation. So we see that rather than the decline affecting so many churches. Secondly, the leadership class is almost entirely made up of leaders of very large and thriving churches. So evangelical leaders will tend to see the world through the lens of their success, not the bigger picture that would reveal a more challenged landscape. When you’ve personally knocked it out of the park as a pastor, have been reaching lots of people successfully, etc., it’s hard to relate to what the average pastor has been experiencing. This leads to a leadership class with an unbalanced perspective.

That’s why it’s also important for leaders and others to look at broader, objective data, such as that from researcher Ryan Burge.

One lesson from this is that in a declining market, it’s important to try to avoid running into trouble, because it’s harder to recover. Once a church starts skewing older, losing young families, etc., this can become a self-reinforcing spiral. The incredible focus on starting new churches rather than reviving old ones shows that evangelical leaders themselves see revival as an almost hopeless task.

This risk doesn’t just affect stodgy old mainline churches. It is even now affecting megachurches too, particularly the ones that were founded a generation ago. I’ve visited multiple megachurches in Indy that show signs of “mainline disease.” You can tell they are a lot smaller than they used to be. With shinier, newer, growing churches all around, demographic growth shifting to the fringes of the region that were cornfields a generation ago, and tastes in church having changed, some of these places are facing real challenges in the coming years.

Another implication is that talent is now avoiding the shrinking ministerial field. The number of people getting M.Div. degrees, the typical qualification for being a pastor, has declined by over 20% since 2006. I am already hearing stories about churches finding it difficult to call a new pastor. A declining market with a more limited number of very successful churches rewards “superstar” talent, just like the rest of the economy. This puts even greater pressure on the pastors that are coming into the market and the churches looking to hire them.

And, of course, a declining market creates increased incentives to pursue success rather than faithfulness and truth. When there is fierce competition over a dwindling and changing “customer base,” that competition produces its own logic. This will be a big temptation for some people.

In this environment, we need to be sure to honor people for faithful service in a pastorate, not just success in drawing thousands of attendees. When I see someone like Ryan Burge, who served for 20 years as the bi-vocational pastor of a challenged church in probably deeply challenged small town in a certainly deeply challenged state, staying until its final closure, I see a model of faithful service that needs to be honored. Obviously theology is important, and I don’t know Burge’s. But in what I do know I can see a model that deserves honor.

How can we honor that kind of faithful service? How can voices of smaller church pastors be elevated at conferences? How can Christian media highlight these people and their stories?

We have to be faithful and walk in truth regardless of whether we are honored for it. But honoring what is honorable, praising what is praiseworthy certainly produces more of it in a society.

Evangelical leaders would be well served to study the dynamics of decline. There has to be a lot of academic literature on the subject. There certainly is on shrinking cities. While the examples of falling population or job losses may not be directly applicable to evangelicalism, there are lessons to be learned about how places and institutions evolve under the conditions of decline.

Cover image: Tokyo by Morio/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0.