by the Hartford Institute for Church Research, retrieved from http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/fastfacts/fast_facts.html#sizecong, 11/9/16.
What’s the size of U.S. churches?
A: The median church in the U.S. has 75 regular participants in worship on Sunday mornings, according to the National Congregations Study (NCS) http://www.soc.duke.edu/natcong/ . Notice that researchers measured the median church size — the point at which half the churches are smaller and half the churches are larger — rather than the average (186 attenders reported by the USCLS survey http://www.uscongregations.org/charact-cong.htm ), which is larger due to the influence of very large churches. But while the United States has a large number of very small churches, most people attend larger churches. The National Congregations Study estimated that the smaller churches draw only 11 percent of those who attend worship. Meanwhile, 50 percent of churchgoers attended the largest 10% of congregations (350 regular participants and up).
Want to know more? Check the websites for the National Congregations Study (NCS) at http://www.soc.duke.edu/natcong/ The US Congregational Life Survey (USCLS) website has statistics about congregations by religious traditions at http://www.uscongregations.org/ The Faith Communities Today national study of churches www.faithcommunitiestoday.org 2010 study also contains size and other congregational findings.
Read more at … http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/fastfacts/fast_facts.html#sizecong
Approximate Distribution of U.S. Protestant and Other Christian Churches by size *based on NCS study
(excluding Catholic/Orthodox)
| ATTENDANCE | # OF CHURCHES | WEEKLY WORSHIPERS | PERCENT |
|
7-99 |
177,000 |
9 million | 59% |
|
100-499 |
105,000 |
25 million | 35% |
|
500-999 |
12,000 |
9 million | 4% |
|
1,000-1,999 |
6,000 |
8 million | 2% |
|
2,000-9,999 |
1,170 |
4 million | .4% |
|
10,000-plus |
40 |
.7 million | .01% |
|
TOTALS |
approx. 300,000 |
approx. 56 million | 100% |
