“If they were a group, they would be the second largest group [of churches] next to the Catholics.” So reported Dr. Scott Thumma when he spoke to me in TheMeetingHouse recently.
“There are about 350,000 congregations in the country,” he explained, including Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal, and Catholic parishes in that number. “About 10% of the people who go to church are going to be in a non-denominational church.”
These statistics comes from two sources: the U. S. Religion Census, conducted every ten years (2010, 2020, etc.) by teams of scholars like Thumma, and careful maintenance of lists of congregations.
Thumma is an associate professor of the sociology of religion at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Connecticut. He works with a team of seven professional scholars and scores of aids, interns, and administrators scattered all over the country.
“We try to map all the congregations in the country and approximate how large each one of those congregations is,” he explained in response to my question. I asked explicitly about independent Christian churches, and he said they “are the most difficult to try to count.”
Here’s why. Many churches want to assert their independence from denominational affiliation and influence. They do so to protect their church from any negative impact of carrying the brand of a larger organization and also to demonstrate they are in control of their operations, including clergy selection and finances.
This trend toward unaffiliated congregations may be the most consequential religious trend. We hear more about the NONES (those who claim no religious affiliation, but it is the NONS (those who attend unaffiliated congregations) that are shaking things up.
Just ask the United Methodists. They are in the midst of the biggest shakedown of denominational affiliation in decades. Hundreds of their congregations are dis-affiliating. Yes, many are merely jumping to a new (and more conservative) network, called the Global Methodist Church. But not all—many will give independence a try.
Another example in the news these days is the home church of the Vineyard movement. It was started by John Wimber in Anaheim, California, decades ago. Wimber was a leader in the quasi-pentecostal “Signs and Wonders” movement that traces its roots all the way back to the Jesus Movement of Southern California during the 1960s and 1970s.
But earlier this year, the two much younger pastors of that congregation announced they were pulling that historic church out of the Vineyard network and taking it independent. Al and Kathryn Scott of Ireland were elected as pastoral leaders there in 2018 when attendance averaged 300.
“We’re simply doing what we’ve been taught to do, which is listen to the Lord and respond when he speaks,” they explained. That was shortly after they changed the name of the congregation to Dwelling Place.
Some in the church formerly called Vineyard Anaheim disagree and accuse them of wanting the financial assets of the church, estimated in value at $62 million!
Regardless of what happens in the courtroom, this effort to decouple this one congregation from its traditional connections is part of a wider, deeper trend in American church life. Dwelling Place will, of course, reconnect with other organizations … for mission work, ministry work, benevolence work, even leadership searches.
Paul Basden is one of the founders and pastors of a nondenominational congregation in the Dallas metroplex. He wrote in response to my inquiry, “Our church is connected to multiple networks. As you know, leaving the SBC meant that I left all the agencies that provided support: Sunday School literature, camps, local, national, and global missions, theological training, etc. All those resources have had to be replaced by non-denominational organizations.”
He then named Compassion International (benevolence), Stadia (church planting), Orange (family ministry), and Global Leadership Network as examples of their ministry connections.
I was familiar only with the first but learned that the latter hosts an annual event they describe as “an encouraging community setting, featuring a faculty of leading experts from diverse backgrounds delivering fresh, actionable, and inspiring leadership insights.” Elsewhere on the website is a doctrinal statement offering a generic version of a typical American Evangelical denomination confession of faith.
Maybe non-denominational congregations are not as disconnected and independent as we think, or as they want us to think. Maybe the church business is, in this regard, pretty much like any other enterprise—dependent upon connections, associations, networks, trade groups, and delivery systems to make our gospel enterprises thrive, whether large or small, whether mega-church or micro-church.
Maybe what is happening is not so much a movement toward independence but simply a realignment of venders and partners in this still emerging world of gospel globalization.
“If they were a group, they would be the second largest group [of churches] next to the Catholics.” So reported Dr. Scott Thumma when he spoke to me in TheMeetingHouse recently.
“There are about 350,000 congregations in the country,” he explained, including Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal, and Catholic parishes in that number. “About 10% of the people who go to church are going to be in a non-denominational church.”
These statistics comes from two sources: the U. S. Religion Census, conducted every ten years (2010, 2020, etc.) by teams of scholars like Thumma, and careful maintenance of lists of congregations.
Thumma is an associate professor of the sociology of religion at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Connecticut. He works with a team of seven professional scholars and scores of aids, interns, and administrators scattered all over the country.
“We try to map all the congregations in the country and approximate how large each one of those congregations is,” he explained in response to my question. I asked explicitly about independent Christian churches, and he said they “are the most difficult to try to count.”
Here’s why. Many churches want to assert their independence from denominational affiliation and influence. They do so to protect their church from any negative impact of carrying the brand of a larger organization and also to demonstrate they are in control of their operations, including clergy selection and finances.
This trend toward unaffiliated congregations may be the most consequential religious trend. We hear more about the NONES (those who claim no religious affiliation, but it is the NONS (those who attend unaffiliated congregations) that are shaking things up.
Just ask the United Methodists. They are in the midst of the biggest shakedown of denominational affiliation in decades. Hundreds of their congregations are dis-affiliating. Yes, many are merely jumping to a new (and more conservative) network, called the Global Methodist Church. But not all—many will give independence a try.
Another example in the news these days is the home church of the Vineyard movement. It was started by John Wimber in Anaheim, California, decades ago. Wimber was a leader in the quasi-pentecostal “Signs and Wonders” movement that traces its roots all the way back to the Jesus Movement of Southern California during the 1960s and 1970s.
But earlier this year, the two much younger pastors of that congregation announced they were pulling that historic church out of the Vineyard network and taking it independent. Al and Kathryn Scott of Ireland were elected as pastoral leaders there in 2018 when attendance averaged 300.
“We’re simply doing what we’ve been taught to do, which is listen to the Lord and respond when he speaks,” they explained. That was shortly after they changed the name of the congregation to Dwelling Place.
Some in the church formerly called Vineyard Anaheim disagree and accuse them of wanting the financial assets of the church, estimated in value at $62 million!
Regardless of what happens in the courtroom, this effort to decouple this one congregation from its traditional connections is part of a wider, deeper trend in American church life. Dwelling Place will, of course, reconnect with other organizations … for mission work, ministry work, benevolence work, even leadership searches.
Paul Basden is one of the founders and pastors of a nondenominational congregation in the Dallas metroplex. He wrote in response to my inquiry, “Our church is connected to multiple networks. As you know, leaving the SBC meant that I left all the agencies that provided support: Sunday School literature, camps, local, national, and global missions, theological training, etc. All those resources have had to be replaced by non-denominational organizations.”
He then named Compassion International (benevolence), Stadia (church planting), Orange (family ministry), and Global Leadership Network as examples of their ministry connections.
I was familiar only with the first but learned that the latter hosts an annual event they describe as “an encouraging community setting, featuring a faculty of leading experts from diverse backgrounds delivering fresh, actionable, and inspiring leadership insights.” Elsewhere on the website is a doctrinal statement offering a generic version of a typical American Evangelical denomination confession of faith.
Maybe non-denominational congregations are not as disconnected and independent as we think, or as they want us to think. Maybe the church business is, in this regard, pretty much like any other enterprise—dependent upon connections, associations, networks, trade groups, and delivery systems to make our gospel enterprises thrive, whether large or small, whether mega-church or micro-church.
Maybe what is happening is not so much a movement toward independence but simply a realignment of venders and partners in this still emerging world of gospel globalization.
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