ST LOUIS, Mo., Oct. 12 - Attendance at American churches is less than half of what we have believed in the past, according to Dave Olson, director of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church, and director of the American Church Research Project.

Olson addressed the Mission America Coalition annual conference on its closing day with groundbreaking new research about the state of the American church. Instead of relying on limited survey data which is then extrapolated to the entire population, Olson has worked for years to build a database of actual recorded attendance in over 300,000 churches across America. His vision was to present a much more accurate picture of what is really happening to the American church at both the national and local levels, and with information refined down to individual zip codes. "I'm not relying on what people say, I'm measuring their actual behavior," he told nearly 170 national church, ministry, and lay leaders gathered.

According to Olson's research, overall church attendance is virtually unchanged from 15 years ago, even though the United States population has grown by 52 million people - mostly unchurched. The northeast U.S. is the only region where the church is growing faster than the population, and no state has seen a net increase in the percentage of church attendance in the last five years. Even in the southern states, the traditional Bible Belt, the population is growing faster than the church.

“Having information about actual attendance at churches in individual communities is a significant leap forward by itself,” said Jim Overholt, executive director of the Coalition, “but even more important is that we can now overlay the church data with census and other demographic information to tell us more about the dynamics of change within income, education, and other key sociological indicators that are also available by zip code.”

Olson's research revealed a number of surprising and often counter-intuitive statistics.  For example: the evangelical church is growing fastest among the higher income, college-educated, suburban population, and declining fastest among the least educated, and in areas with the highest poverty rates. "The evangelical church is becoming suburban, affluent, and educated," Olson said.

"We live in a world today that is post-Christian, post-modern and multi-ethnic, whether we realize it or not," he said. To reach this "new world" with the gospel, the church needs to change, he told the leaders gathered, echoing one of the key elements in the Coalition’s new initiative, Calling God’s People Together to Love Our Communities to Christ.

"The church needs to have an attitude of brokenness, humility, and repentance," he said, admonishing that as evangelical Christians we tend to have an attitude of triumph - that we are right and the world should live like us. That attitude will keep us from reaching the lost for Christ, he said. He emphasized that the world simply acts the way it is supposed to - as unbelievers. "This is the way it's always been, this is the way it's described in the Bible. The problem is that the church has not been acting like the church."

"The Christian community needs a restoration of its understanding of the message and mission of Jesus. It needs to be less self-righteous, individualistic, and materialistic.  It needs to be more biblical, Christo-centric, and holistic." He said that when the Church talks about Jesus, it often does so in a second-hand way. "In a Christian world we can get away with that," he says. But not in the emerging 21st century culture.

Olson's data and presentation to the Mission American Coalition annual meeting will be available to access online as of Oct. 17 at: http://www.theamericanchurch.org/MA.htm

The Mission America Coalition is a network of national church leaders, representing denominations, ministries, and other key Christian leaders with a shared vision to collaborate in prayer, evangelism, and revival. Since its inception, leaders from 81 denominations, over 400 ministries and dozens of ministry networks have been involved in the Coalition. Mrs. Vonette Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ), Dr. Billy Graham (Billy Graham Evangelistic Association), and Dr. John Perkins (Christian Community Development Association) serve as honorary co-chairs.

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ST LOUIS, Mo., Oct. 11 - Evangelism is a futile endeavor without prayer, Paul Cedar exhorted a packed-out conference of nearly 170 church, ministry, and lay leaders gathered in St. Louis for the second day of the Mission America Coalition annual meeting today. The topic for the day was the "prayer, care, share" strategy for evangelism - involving first praying for, by name, those who do not know Christ, then caring for them with tangible acts of kindness and love, and finally looking for opportunities to share the gospel. This approach is the basis of the "Loving Our Communities to Christ" evangelism model started in nine Mission America Coalition pilot cities across the country.

Cedar encouraged the leaders present not only to teach the prayer-care-share strategy in their churches and ministries, but to personally live it out. "If we are to lead this evangelism movement, then God must begin with us," he said.

He credited his wife Jeannie for her faithful and persistent prayer for their neighbors. "I am a learner like all of you," he acknowledged, "and all I can tell you is that in the last few years a number of our neighbors have come to Christ."

God must transform church and ministry leaders first, Cedar says, then churches will be transformed. Only then does the community have the possibility of being transformed, he said.

"Loving Our Communities to Christ indeed begins with us," he encouraged the gathering, which represented about 107 churches and ministries across the country.

An Empty Stomach Has No Ears

John Nichols, executive director of the Lazarus Foundation, addressed the Mission America gathering on the second facet of the prayer-care-share strategy: benevolence.

"Moses spent 40 years of life learning he was something, 40 years learning he was nothing, and then 40 years finding out what God could do with nothing," Nichols said. He related that to his own life, saying "My DNA kicked in when I was 65, and the good works that He had before-ordained were ready for me to do."

At that time, Nichols' personal calling to evangelism took on a new direction. "I found out God's heart about the defenseless," he said. "Love for people really changed my life."

He also realized that God's desire was not for him to "convert" people to benevolence with guilt, but to "awaken" what God had already planted within them - to be holy, to strive for unity, and to do good works.

He illustrated from the book of Job that God's favor was Job was tied to the man's benevolence. "It's not that he had wealth; it's what he did with wealth," Nichols said.

He also challenged the negative image of a "social church."

"As far as I know, Israel is the only nation that ever passed a law that you have to take care of the poor," he said. And he added that no one was more adamant than the apostle Paul about salvation by grace, referencing Ephesians 2:10. "But, he said you have to act, it's in your DNA," Nichols explained.

"An empty stomach has no ears," he quoted from a Kenyan proverb.

"I really believe that wherever there is a church, no one [should] go hungry in that community; wherever there is a Christian, that no one will go hungry in that neighborhood," he proclaimed. "We are about a caring God, and we are about a caring church."

Sharing Good News in a Hostile Culture

Matthew Watts, pastor of Grace Bible Church, Charleston, W. Va., addressed the gathering on the third component of the prayer-care-share strategy: evangelism.

"We have slightly misunderstood the Great Commission," he told the leaders gathered, saying the way Jesus modeled the Commission was to go into the system--the marketplace, the political arena, the religious sector. "He went into the system and won people in the system," Watts said.

"We do not know how to do ministry in a hostile environment," he admonished. He identified the greatest neglect of the Church as the evangelism and discipleship of children, that young people have not been nurtured, embraced, and discipled by the church.

"The most dangerous society you can live in is a society that is free and children have no discipline," he stated, saying that leads to anarchy. He talked about school-based mentoring programs, mentoring in the church, and community-based re-sentencing re-entry initiatives for juveniles.

"Start where you can have some victory," he said. "We have children and grandchildren in the public schools. Start mentoring programs in schools with people in the church. Win children to Christ."

Lon Allison, director the Billy Graham Center and the Proclamation Evangelism Network, also addressed the topic of evangelism.

"I don't believe that the gospel is simple," he challenged. "The gospel talks about cosmology, theology, anthropology, psycholgy, sociology, eschatology....You tell me that it's simple to explain God squeezing himself into tininess and living on planet earth? ...that blood atonement is necessary for the forgiveness of sin?"

"God calls us to take the complexity of the gospel, pray like crazy, say 'Jesus help me,' and then just declare it as truth," he said.

We define ourselves and our world through language, Allison said, emphasizing that words matter. God is calling for men and women to proclaim His message through the power of words and public speaking by prayer, he said, "and the Holy Spirit will deliver the goods."

The Mission America Coalition annual gathering concludes on Thursday with Dave Olson, director of the American Church Research Project and director of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church, unveiling new research findings about the state of the church in U.S.

The Mission America Coalition is a network of churches, ministries, denominations, and Christian leaders with a shared vision to collaborate in prayer, evangelism, and revival. Since its inception, leaders from 81 denominations, over 350 ministries and dozens of ministry networks have been involved in the Coalition. Mrs. Vonette Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ), Dr. Billy Graham (Billy Graham Evangelistic Association), and Dr. John Perkins (Christian Community Development Association) serve as honorary co-chairs.

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