Customer Reviews

The American Church in Crisis: Groundbreaking Research Based on a National Database of over 200,000 Churches

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This book does an excellent job of bridging a well-researched assessment of the Church in America, with practical responses that the Church must make in order to fulfill the mission of the Kingdom of God.

Olson approaches the reality of an American Church in decline with love and respect for the Body of Christ; while he gives church leaders a loud wake up call, he also offers hope by prescribing that the Church focus on the message and mission of Jesus. As a church-planting leader and pastor, he is committed to growing churches and transforming lives. He holds true to that goal while shaking up the comfortable status quo that much of the American church has settled into.

Pastors & denominational leaders of both mainline and Evangelical churches, particularly those in urban and 1st and 2nd ring suburban churches, should read this book. It will also be helpful for any established church that wishes to remain alive and healthy for at least one more generation.

It was refeshing reading research beyond Barna. Though Olson said the same stuff Barna would have...the American institutional church is in serious trouble. Olson seemed to be a little more broad and deep. Instead of relying solely on his own data, as Barna would, he brought in other sources and gave a comprehensive look at the church.

I loved the pro church planting perspective. American churches need to plant 2,900 churches a year just to keep pace with the growth in population (p 181).

The American Church is in crisis. This may not be evident. Some polls report that 40 percent of the population attends church each Sunday. In fact, only 20 percent of the population attends church each Sunday. In addition, church attendance is not keeping up with a growing population.

The American Church in Crisis offers a comprehensive overview of the situation. Author David T. Olson presents a statistical picture of American religious life. He describes how church attendance is stagnant. In 1990 52 million people attended church on any given Sunday. In 2006 this number remains unchanged. Yet during the last 16 years the population of the United States has increased by 52 million people.

Olson wonders if we will experience another Millennium Effect. The years 1000 to 1033 were remarkable for their spiritual fervor. People expected many miracles to occur 1,000 years after Christ's death. As the second millennium begins Catholic churches face a shortage of priests and mainline churches are not starting enough new churches.

The American Church in Crisis offers a look at where churches are growing. The American church is growing fastest in zip codes that are more affluent and also more educated. Younger churches grow fastest. After 40 years most churches start to decline in membership. Churches with younger members also grow faster because more members are in the child bearing years. Surprisingly churches in urban locations showed the most growth, even more than those churches in suburban locations.

Olson asks the question will the church become extinct like the dodo bird or will it rebound from the brink of extinction like the eagle. Olson suggests a key to rebounding is starting 2,900 more new churches each year on top of the 4,000 normally started each year. Each year 6,900 new churches need to be started.

The author does not leave the reader with these troubling statistics. He also offers a way forward.

He notes for example that each new church needs to be given the best chance to achieve expectations. That means spending enough money, employing the parent church model, assessing and selecting gifted pastors, launching with a solid number and supporting the new church with coaching.

He closes with the reminder that Jesus must be at the center of what is preached and proclaimed. Relevance and strategizing are secondary to putting Jesus at the center of the potter's wheel. An encounter with Jesus is what will transform lives and reenergize the church.

There is a troubling lack of clarity on methodological issues in Olson's book. Olson's conclusion that the church in the United States is in crisis and that this can be shown with quantitative data differs from what other sociologists of religion are saying (See below). Olson writes, "In reality the church in America is not booming. It is in crisis. On any given Sunday, the vast majority of Americans are absent from church. Even more troublesome, as the American population continues to grow, the church falls further and further behind. If trends continue, by 2050 the percentage of Americans attending church will be half the 1990 figure" (page 16).

Olson's data seems rather to lead to a more modest claim: Based on the data that Olson has assembled from various denominational offices, there are some worrisome trends while there are also some encouraging trends about church attendance in the US; the limitations of Olson's data precludes sweeping generalizations about Christianity in the US. He is correct though that some churches and denominations are facing declines in attendance. His ideas for stemming that decline are welcome.

Stanley Presser and Mark Chaves sum up in the following quote what a number of sociologists of religion have concluded about the American church. "Yet, existing evidence does not definitively establish whether attendance at religious services declined in American society from the 1950s to the present. We examine the trend in religious service attendance between 1990 and 2006. Evidence from several sources converges on the same answer: weekly attendance at religious services has been stable since 1990. However one reads the evidence about trends between World War II and 1990, the recent past has been a time of stability."

Stanley Presser and Mark Chaves, "Is Religious Service Attendance Declining?" Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46 (2007): 417.

See also the following books by academic sociologists who essentially agree with the conclusion of Presser and Chaves.
What Americans Really Believe Pages 12-17.
Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and Their Partners Page 1.
Beyond Megachurch Myths: What We Can Learn from America's Largest Churches (J-B Leadership Network Series) Page 4.
God's Potters: Pastoral Leadership and the Shaping of Congregations (Pulpit & Pew) Page 38.
After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion Page 51.

I ordered The American Church in Crisis expecting a stale rendering of statistical information. To my surprise it was not only extraordinarily informative but presented in a very engaging style.

This work by David Olson is the best overview of the current state of the 21st century church that I have read. He has done a great job of setting forth his thoughts logically and supporting them well with statistics. Yet, despite the dry nature of statistical analysis, Olson's pastors heart shines through in his practical ability to transform hard statistical science into the soft science of cultural anthropology. Olson also forms his conclusions by citing examples of Old Testament, Messianic and Pauline theology and actions that are consistent with his research. All in all, this is a great read that every staff and lay leader should have on their shelf.

The thesis of the book is that denominations need to focus on starting new churches or their decline is inevitable. The book is filled with statistics, maps, and other information. For example in the US:

17.5% of the population attends church weekly
An additional 5.5% normally attend (at least 3 out of eight weeks)
An additional 14% attend occasionally (attend at least once a month and contribute financially)
An additional 15% claim membership though they do not attend.

In summary 52% of Americans identify with a church though only a fraction of that number actually participate in a church on any given week.

Evangelical churches in the US are growing though mainline and catholic churches are declining. However, population growth in the US is even higher than the growth of evangelicals.

Declining denominations are older, made up of older members, have stopped planting new churches, and have been slow to adapt to changing ethnic realities in America. Growing denominations are better at maintaining churches and starting new ones and attract people into them from declining denominations.

Factors that affect church growth include the growth rate of the community, age of the church (churches over forty years old tend to decline), size of the church (churches over 50 and under 500 tend to decline). Other factors include an imbalance of women to men and urban vs. rural. Historically rural churches have had higher attendance rates though this has been recently reversing.

Like the analogy from the animal world, churches need to be healthy and reproduce or they will become extinct. To insure long-term survival, denominations should be planting new churches at the rate of at least 2% of the total number of churches in the denomination. Denominations that focus on a solid support system for new churches and not focusing on rapidly reproducing churches tend to have a higher survival and growth rate. Quality over quantity.

The book was an interesting combination of detailed statistics and informed speculation. However, sometimes the book did not clearly distinguish the two. For example, on page 150 we learn that new churches that do not reach an attendance of 70 in their first year tend to have a higher closure rate than churches that surpass 70 people in their first year. On the next page we learn about five building blocks of a church planting systems, but this appears to be the author's conclusions based on anecdotal observations and not research.

The audience that would benefit most from this book includes denominational leaders who would profit from the data on denominational growth and decline as well as local church leaders who are considering a church-planting ministry.

This book is a must read for every church leader and every person committed to seeing the Kingdom of God expand.
David Olson has spent years collecting data about the trending in the American church. His research indicates that the American population is growing faster than the church. With these distressing facts, it is important for us to take notice and respond with thoughtful innovation. This book is part of my ""Dantotsu (Best of the Best) Collection.

Danita Bye
Sales Growth Specialists

This book is great! It details the information every church needs to recognize the problems of todays church. If you work in the church then you need this book.

This book is filled with much needed data. However, he does move beyond data to reflection and what should be done. I highly recommend this book. You can draw your own conclusions from the data. He does move from fact to opinion - in terms of how to apply the information. I don't know I'd agree with all his conclusions, but you can't argue with the graphs!