Ministry Insights from the Q3 2024 Unstuck Church Report
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Every quarter, The Unstuck Group compiles all the data we’ve collected to monitor trends in churches in the United States. For this quarter’s report, we’re focusing on key differences in behavior between churches that are experiencing growth and churches that are experiencing decline.
We received survey responses from 387 churches ranging from less than 100 to more than 10,000 in physical attendance for worship gatherings. For this quarter’s report, we only included churches that provided data during the four weeks between July 1 and July 26, 2024. This provides a very current snapshot of ministries of all shapes and sizes.
Q3 2024 DATA & MINISTRY INSIGHTS
This report reflects the trends of some of the healthiest churches that are making a significant impact on people’s lives. In fact, the report showed that in these churches combined, there were close to 40,000 people who indicated a decision to follow Jesus in the last 12 months. That’s worth celebrating!
However, this is only part of the story. Many churches that participated also plateaued in attendance or even faced decline.
In this episode, Amy and I discuss findings from the Q3 2024 Unstuck Church Report and take a targeted look at key differences between growing churches and churches that are plateauing or declining.
- Key trends in our data
- Growing churches vs. declining churches
- Next steps to take
This report includes special financial and staffing insights from Horizons Stewardship, such as:
“How churches manage debt is more important than the amount of debt. Horizons’ experience is that when debt is being serviced through the church ministry budget, it negatively impacts ministry funding when it exceeds 50% of annual giving. The problem is solved by asking for gifts above a household’s current ministry budget support. When done well, asking for over and above debt elimination has almost no effect on your current ministry funding, so why not ask?”
Subscribe to the Quarterly Unstuck Church Report:
This Episode is Sponsored by Horizons Stewardship:
Horizons Stewardship utilizes a collaborative and integrated ministry framework designed to fit each organization’s unique culture and support church and faith-based nonprofit leaders in their mission to grow disciples and fund ministry through coaching, planning, technology, and analytics.
Horizons has over three decades of experience and has developed a spiritually focused approach that consistently yields more funding for ministry and more effective disciple-making strategies. With the support of seasoned ministry strategists, proven generosity guides, and ICF-trained coaches, ministries that partner with Horizons experience, on average, a double-digit increase in giving within the first year.
Interested in learning more? Click here.
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Transcript
Sean:
Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast, where each week we are exploring what it means to be an unstuck church. Every quarter the Unstuck Group releases fresh data on churches, as well as some key learnings in the Unstuck Church Report. On this week’s podcast, Tony and Amy shared their thoughts on what we’re learning from the data about the most recent church trends. If you’re a new listener to the Unstuck Church Podcast, don’t miss out on downloading our weekly episode show notes. Each week we share important information to support that week’s episode, offer some bonus resources, and give you access to our full archive of resources from past episodes. To learn more, just go to theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. Now, before this week’s conversation, here’s Tony with our podcast sponsor.
Tony:
You need a generosity playbook to help you take the guesswork out of growing disciples and funding ministry. Horizon Stewardship can teach you how to elevate your impact and achieve your mission with creativity, clarity and confidence. Horizon Stewardship is a team of generosity specialists, coaching professionals, and ministry strategists who’ve helped thousands of churches and faith-based nonprofits raise billions for impact for over 30 years. If you’re ready to unlock the power of generosity and elevate your impact, visit nextlevelgenerosity.com today to discover your generosity advantage.
Amy:
Well, Tony, it’s hot off the presses. Today we’re gonna be talking about the freshly released edition of the Unstuck Church Report. I really love these reports and these podcasts. And Tony, when we focus on the data in these quarterly reports, I just see that glimmer in your eyes in our zoom room here, that you’re really looking forward to today’s conversation.
Tony:
I am. Amy, this is so much fun. Who doesn’t like talking about numbers and trends? I mean, this is the best.
Amy:
That’s right.
Tony:
And I can tell that at least some folks do enjoy this as well, because now we have over 15,000 people who subscribe to the Unstuck Church Reports. And if you haven’t yet, you can do that at theunstuckgroup.com/trends. This quarter’s report’s pretty fun, Amy, because, gosh, I think it was 387, so close to 400 churches participated in the survey that created the data that we used to write about in this quarter’s report. But this is what’s cool about those 400 churches. On average, those churches have more than a thousand people attending their services every week. So not only is this a look at 400 churches across primarily North America, that we have some churches participating from the UK and Australia as well. It’s, these are 400 relatively large churches.
And we captured all of the data from surveys that were collected for about four weeks in July. So this is fresh too. We’re looking at fresh and current trends happening in churches, and among other things in today’s conversation, because it’s reflected in this quarter’s report, we’re going to be talking about some of the differences between growing churches and churches that are facing plateau or decline. Now, if you have subscribed to the Unstuck Church Report, you’re gonna receive a reminder every quarter to refresh your data. And of course, the more churches that participate, the more detailed we can get in the analysis going forward. And if you want more data from churches that are similar to yours, you need to participate and you need to encourage your friends at similar churches to do that as well.
Amy:
It’s an all play. Well, Tony, you mentioned differences between growing and declining churches, but before we get there, give us a snapshot of some of the key trends that you’re seeing in the data this quarter.
Tony:
Yeah, Amy. First of all, I mean, just lots of encouraging trends in the churches that responded. And we’ve talked about this recently. I get it. The vast majority of normal churches that are out there are not experiencing the health, the momentum that the churches that connect with our content at the Unstuck Group are experiencing. And the churches that were surveyed reflected that because the average weekly attendance in these churches increased by 17% year over year, and that’s pretty remarkable. I would’ve expected that type of increase a couple years ago coming out of the pandemic. But for us to see that level of increase right now, it’s just, it’s pretty amazing. On top of that, and this is interesting, online service views went up 32% year over year in these churches. And Amy, that’s the first time we’ve seen an increase in online engagement since the pandemic. I mean, of course, unless we’re trying to forget it, it’s, you know, four years ago now. But believe it or not, Amy, four years ago, church used to meet online. Did you know that?
Amy:
Really? I don’t remember that very well.
Tony:
And then coming out of the pandemic, of course, we encouraged people to come back to physical gatherings in our churches. And that happened. And as that was happening for a couple of years, we were seeing online service views decline. This is the first quarter in looking at the data that we have seen an increase again. And that’s encouraging to me because online is certainly a key front door to people that are considering the claims of Christ and connection with specific churches. So the fact that we’re seeing more online engagement, again, is very encouraging.
But Amy, this is what’s most fun. The percentage of people making decisions to follow Jesus over the last 12 months increased by nearly 20%. In fact, there was a higher percentage of growth in people saying yes to following Jesus than attendance growth. And that’s always a good sign. And Amy, this is always gonna be my favorite metric in the Unstuck Church Report, because every percentage point reflects another person living in God’s grace, mercy, and love. It represents the potential for healed marriages, freedom from addictions, finding purpose so much more. So I love celebrating the impact that churches are making as they help people meet and follow Jesus and Amy get this, and the churches that responded to this quarter survey, close to 40,000 people, indicated a decision to follow Jesus in the last 12 months. Isn’t that fun?
Amy:
That is so fun. It’s amazing. But you know what, I believe it, last Sunday at our church, we had a huge baptism service. I could be, I could really explain it by saying, it’s the biggest baptism I’ve ever gone to at my church, but I’ve only been there eight months. So that would be conflated, right?
Tony:
Yeah, yeah.
Amy:
But I, it might be the largest baptism our church has ever had. So many people went public with the decision to follow Jesus. And you’re right. For me, being a ministry and, you know, especially the local church for 20 years, I always feel like that’s my payday. That’s what brings me the biggest smile when we do that. So that’s great news. What about the data related to the next steps people are taking beyond engaging weekend services?
Tony:
Yeah. So I know church leaders are always interested in this. Of course, they’re curious about attendance and giving trends at other churches, but most of the pastors that I connect with on a regular basis are also very interested in the next steps people are taking at churches. And you may be interested in knowing that just over half, 52% of adults and students have connected into small groups. And that’s an encouraging sign. It’s getting people connecting relationally, you know, smaller groups rather than the large worship services on Sunday morning. That’s always positive, not just for relationships, but more importantly for ongoing discipleship. And then the percentage of adults and students that are serving on a regular basis is at 38%.
Amy:
That’s up a little.
Tony:
A little bit, but relatively unchanged from the previous year. And I know I shared this in the report, but given the isolation that many people are experiencing and the loneliness epidemic in our world, I hope churches continue to encourage people to connect with others through small groups and serving teams. I mean, it appears from this quarter’s data that more churches are leaning into the small groups model. But it’s certainly a key strategy for churches that are experiencing growth. And so, yes, I celebrate when people are showing up on Sunday mornings for worship services. That’s an important part of someone’s discipleship in spiritual formation. But we have to connect people so that they can have relationships with others as well. In fact, a number of months ago, one of our partners in ministry, the Journey Church in Newark, Delaware, did a little bit of research, and they took a look at the attendance frequency of people that are serving in their church and found that when people serve, they show up to church three times more often than people that don’t serve. And so, connecting people into groups and serving opportunities, it’s a key aspect of what allows our church to be sticky, our ministry to be sticky, and to encourage people to take their next steps towards Jesus.
Amy:
And I really appreciated how Chris Hodges talked about that on our podcast last month, where when he’s talking about these next steps, he’s positioning it as so that, so that your joy can be complete so that you can be fulfilled. And that really stuck with me because I know in my own journey, when I started serving, that’s where I found community. Really, it was just the starting point to so many things in my walk.
Sean:
Recently, Tony had the opportunity to sit down with Joe Park, CEO and principal at Horizon Stewardship for a conversation on what they’re learning when it comes to some of the financial metrics in churches.
Tony:
Joe, in this quarter’s report, we observe per capita giving is 20% higher in declining churches. I think intuitively we would expect the opposite. So what if you, what do you make of that, and are you seeing something similar at the churches that Horizon serves?
Joe:
Yeah, Tony. I think this is not a new trend. It’s really a longstanding pattern that I think you all have been validating for a long time, and we’ve seen it in thousands of churches that we work with. And it makes sense when you think about it that as you’re shrinking to, in turning more and more inward, you’ve got a core of folks who are continue to give, but you’ve lost folks that are new to the faith and just joining and learning to assimilate. So you’re just kind of down to that committed core. That’s why we think it happens. Unfortunately, and you probably see this a lot too, is that too many of these churches misinterpret this as a sign of health. Look, our average giving is going up per capita. And they wait too long to take action to try to turn the tide.
Tony:
Joe, it’s also interesting that we saw in the data that churches really have low amounts of debt right now. So can you share a little bit about why the way churches manage debt is actually more important than the amount of debt that they have?
Joe:
Yeah. It’s really because of the impact on ministry. So how the debt is being funded or where the cash flow is coming from is probably more important than the amount of debt. So, for instance, for a church that is funding their debt through the ministry budget, we start to see negative impacts on that when debt is about 50% of annual giving. But if a church is using an outside source, like a capital campaign, where that giving is coming from somewhere other than ministry budget, they can carry a much larger debt load without impacting ministry.
Tony:
Any other insights you could give us as it relates to churches and how they manage debt, Joe?
Joe:
Yeah. So we were just talking about it. It matters how they fund that debt. One of the reasons that churches tend to go to the ministry budget and wanna fund it from that is it’s easier. And their idea is that if they ask for giving over and above somebody’s annual giving, that it’ll actually reduce their annual giving. And we don’t find that to be the case so rarely, almost never that we see does capital giving impact the annual giving. People are doing it for two different reasons. And but a capital campaign really is bigger than most churches will need if their debt is not at least one times their annual budget, there’s a lot more effective ways to deal with that. Like a year-round generosity strategy like targeted communications to your committed core of donors talking about the debt and why that needs to be funded outside the giving of the outside the ministry budget of the church.
So when churches think that we have to take it from the ministry budget, they’re I think they’re making a mistake because they’ve got so many tools that they can lean upon to fund it outside with a little bit of effort that actually draws donors closer to the mission of the church. So I really encourage any church that is funding more than half their that their debt is less than half their annual giving to look at other sources, not necessarily a capital campaign, but other ways to fund that debt so that it is not stealing from the ministry budget of the church, because it just doesn’t have to be that way.
Tony:
Yeah. Good insights there, Joe, any other thoughts you wanna share with us today?
Joe:
Yeah, I noticed in your report, the increase in online views per a hundred worshipers. This is something that I find fascinating in the work that we do. We do an annual survey as well and have been seeing this trend growing. And in churches that lean into online giving, we’re seeing that when we look at their financial leaders that and we ask what their preference is, whether it’s which service and we list online as an opportunity to express a preference that we’ll see that somewhere between 15 and 25% of their financial leaders are preferring that method. And in churches that don’t invest much in their digital online experience, that it’s more like 5% coming from there. So Tony, I think a lot of churches look at the cause and effect of that, and they say well, we’re driving people to in-person worship, and look, we only have 5% that are doing online worship and digital engagement.
And what we see happening is they just don’t have that segment of church members. They move on to another to another church that is offering the experience they’re looking for. So it is in our view, very expensive not to curate a good digital worship experience for your members. And when you do, that we will see as much as 25% of the financial leaders are choosing that as their primary worship experience. And if you don’t, you’re not driving them back into worship. They’re simply finding another church.
Amy:
Well, thank you Tony, for sharing those highlights from the current trends in churches. Now, let’s turn our focus to the differences you mentioned between churches that are currently experiencing growth and those that are plateaued or in decline. And it sounds like there’s some clear distinctions in this report.
Tony:
There are. But before we go there, I feel like I always need to preface this by explaining this doesn’t have anything to do with the size of the church. In other words, this is not a big church versus small church conversation. Many churches, churches with fewer than a couple hundred in attendance are experiencing growth. And on the other hand, several very large churches, we classify them as mega churches. Those churches, there are some of them that are in decline. So this is not a comparison of size, it’s more of a comparison of trends over time.
And secondly, these distinctions that I’m about ready to highlight, they are correlations that offer some differences between growing and declining churches. I’m not suggesting that any of these attributes actually cause growth or cause decline. For example, I’m not trying to make the case that churches are growing their attendance at services and church buildings because more people are watching online than in declining churches. It just so happens that churches with attendance growth also have many more people watching online than declining churches do. And that should suggest that streaming or services online doesn’t cause attendance decline.
Amy:
Right.
Tony:
If anything, it does have the opposite effect. And we need to leverage online strategies to encourage people to join us for weekend services with other people in physical gatherings. And with that preface, here are some key distinctions between growing churches and those are that are in decline. First of all, growing churches were about 50% more likely to offer only contemporary or modern worship and no traditional worship services. And the key word there is only. Declining churches are also more likely we have found to have multiple styles of worship. So they have, they might have a contemporary style, they might have a blended style, they might have a traditional service. When you offer more options, unfortunately of styles of service, that also tends to be correlated with a church that’s in the decline. So the key is to have one great worship experience that you offer multiple times, by the way. So that people have multiple options to engage with those services.
Amy:
And Tony, am I remembering right? We’re gonna be doing a series here in October on improving weekend service experiences. Right?
Tony:
That’s absolutely right. You know, it’s, the funny thing is several of us on the team have lots of experience from our past on weekend services, but it feels like we’ve kind of deemphasized that in our content through the years.
Amy:
I know.
Tony:
So I think pastors actually wanna hear what are other churches doing right now to improve their work weekend service experience, especially as it relates to both reaching people that aren’t currently connected to church and faith, but then also helping believers take their next steps towards Christ. So I’m looking forward to that upcoming series in October. Here’s a second difference between growing and declining churches. Declining churches have far fewer first time connections to the church, which indicates I think that they’ve become more insider focused over time. So get this Amy. Growing churches had more than four times as many new people who have connected with their church for the very first time in the last 12 months.
Amy:
Makes sense.
Tony:
And a good example of this is Stone Creek Church in Milton, Georgia, pastor Steven Gibbs, I was just with him and the team in recent days. They have a very clear reach strategy, and included in that reach strategy is leveraging some online solutions to engage with new people and encourage next steps. And what’s interesting about that is they don’t even track online service views. It’s not like they don’t mind when people view their service. But they’re really more focused on using online solutions to help new people who are connecting both in physical gatherings and in online environments to take next steps toward Christ. And they’re very intentional about that, and it’s probably one of the reasons why Stone Creek has experienced more than a 40% attendance increase in the last 12 months. So being very intentional about first timers, identifying them and encouraging those first timers to take their next steps.
And then a third, think of it as an opportunity for churches that may be experiencing plateau right now, growing churches are seeing a much higher percentage of people indicate decisions to follow Jesus within the last 12 months, meaning they’re growing and helping more people say yes to Jesus and Amy that just kind of, we talked about this I think several months ago, just remaining Jesus centric and how we approach our ministry is key not only to helping more people cross line of faith, which is ultimately the mission that we’re on, but it’s also helping churches experience growth. And so, just keeping that focus and making sure that that is always the main thing that we’re trying to accomplish as a church.
Amy:
Yeah. I love that it reflects our mission here at the Unstuck Group to help churches get unstuck and experience health. But Tony, once we help churches get healthy, we want ’em to grow as well. So what are some other differences between growing and declining churches?
Tony:
Yeah. We’ve talked about some of these differences in the past. Declining churches have larger church boards and four times as many committees. One church that responded to the survey in this cycle. They have 23 different committees. And it’s a large church, but it’s not that large. And so that church too has unfortunately experienced a year over year decline in attendance of about 10%. So getting more people engaged in committees and meetings that does not fuel church growth. There’s no doubt about it. Declining churches also have 30% more paid staff than growing churches. Yeah. You heard that, right. Declining churches have more staff than growing churches have, and they are also spending more than 60% of their budget on staffing expenses. Does that surprise you, Amy?
Amy:
Yeah. I was just gonna jump in. I am definitely seeing this with the churches I’m working with. In fact, I’m getting ready to head to a church in the Atlanta area, and they grew 39% year over year. But their staff team is lean, actually, maybe too lean.
Tony:
Yeah, yeah.
Amy:
We’ll figure that out. But I do see that the more staff churches have, the less growth they’re experiencing. It’s a definite correlation.
Tony:
It’s yeah. It’s not, like I said, it’s not causal, but there’s definitely a correlation there. Growing churches are also more likely to have small groups and more people connected in those small groups, whereas declining churches are much more likely to have Sunday school. So, Sunday school can work. But more commonly, unfortunately, we see that attached to churches that are experiencing plateau or decline. And then let me camp on this one. This is an interesting. Growing churches have 20% more volunteer leaders than declining churches. And that’s interesting because I think that commitment to identifying and equipping leaders is key. The win isn’t getting those leaders sitting in committee meetings though, right? As we see in the data. The win is actually empowering them to lead ministry teams and to lead small groups. So what it looks like Amy is in growing churches, they get leaders leading rather than meeting. Did you see what I did there?
Amy:
That’s a good quote there. “Get leaders leading rather than meeting.” I like it. Well, Tony, as you considered all of those differences between growing and declining churches, were there any surprises for you in this quarter’s report?
Tony:
Well, to be completely honest, no, not really. I mean, I’ve been studying these differences between growing and declining churches for close to 20 years now, and the data confirms kind of these same differences almost every time we look at them. But Amy, I’m not discouraged by that. I know there are churches that are out there that are kind of content to continue doing the church the way they’ve always done it, even if it means they have stopped engaging the great commission and eventually they’re gonna experience decline and they’re gonna have to close the doors of their church.
However, I believe that most pastors and most congregations are just not gonna settle for that. And that may be why so many churches continue to reach out to us at the Unstuck Group. This is hard to believe, but we’re currently in active conversations with 50 churches about engaging with one of our ministry consultants to visit their church and to meet with their ministry leaders. And these are churches of all different shapes and sizes, but the one common trait is this. They all wanna make changes where needed so that they can continue to move forward in their mission to help people meet and follow Jesus. And I love that. And those churches. I mean, even if we don’t get the opportunity to eventually engage with them, I hope we do. I pray we do. I know that their heart is to do whatever it’s gonna take to accomplish the mission that God’s given their church.
Amy:
Yeah. That’s the heart of our tribe, as we call it. Those churches connected with unstuck. They are humble, they’re learners, and their commitment to the mission of the church is always front and center. Tony, any final thoughts before we wrap up today’s conversation?
Tony:
Well, again, if you wanna see the data and learn more about what other churches are experiencing, and there’s a lot of information that we didn’t cover in today’s conversation, you can go download this report at theunstuckgroup.com/trends to access to current report and subscribe to future releases. And more importantly, come back next week. We’re launching a brand new series called What It Really Takes to Reach Young Families. And that’s gonna feature four fun conversations about becoming a multi-generational church that’s focused on reaching the next generation. And you’re not going to wanna miss it. So we’ll see you back here next week.
Sean:
Well, thanks for joining us on this week’s podcast. At The Unstuck Group, our goal is to help pastors grow healthy churches by guiding them to align vision, strategy, team, and action. In everything we do, our priority is to help churches, help people meet and follow Jesus. If there’s any way we can serve you and your church today, reach out to us at theunstuckgroup.com. Next week we’re back with a brand new episode. So until then, have a great week.
