Last week, we posted a link to Matthew Lickona’s blog in which he reported a conversation with someone who works in a megachurch, and who, in turn reported that 60% of their members were from a Catholic background. Much discussion ensued as to what exactly that might mean, with our long-time reader and friend Jeff Gill, who is a Methodist minister and blogger offering his very useful 2 cents that in his experience in church-planting, most Catholics who come to his churches are of the faintest "Catholic" background imaginable. (Not that this is always the case. Now Commonweal blogger Peter Nixon told me last year of, I believe, 3 couples, active in his large Catholic parish who had stepped over to the local big Protestant megachurch without blinking or looking back.)

Well, This story from our local paper this morning gives even more perspective.

Just since 2000, local religious leaders estimate, more than a dozen new congregations, mostly evangelical Protestant, have been started in Allen County. Those churches join at least 18 others in Allen County started in the previous decade, according to statistics from the Association of Religion Data Archives.

There may be plenty of churches in Fort Wayne, says St. Joe’s Byman. “But we think there are a lot of people who just don’t go anymore. We don’t know why, but some may have strayed, or they might feel they don’t fit what they think a church member is. There may be some wounds. I don’t know how to say it, but we’ve shot a lot of our own.

“There’s also a generation of young people who have had no experience, no church experience, no Sunday school experience, so they don’t know what church is about … So that’s where new churches enter in.”

‘Birthing new churches’

Church planting also involves more than a pinch of self-preservation, as church leaders increasingly recognize that denominations and congregations have life cycles, just like people.

That life cycle can be complete in as little as 50 to 80 years as Americans now are less likely to have multigenerational religious loyalty, Ransom says.

There’s a graphic on the story which I’ll reproduce here, even though it’s hard to make out:

What does it say? Among other things, 72% of the population of Muncie claims no religious affiliation. Even for a university town, that’s astonishing. Here in Fort Wayne, it’s 50%. Jives with the meme I’ve heard many times "Unchurched" is America’s biggest denomination.

Go, therefore..and make disciples of all nations….