{"id":3597,"date":"2011-09-05T11:17:19","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T15:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=3597"},"modified":"2011-08-31T14:51:05","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T18:51:05","slug":"churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive","title":{"rendered":"Churches&#8217; Dilemma: 80 Percent of Flock Is Inactive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0There is a secret inside many churches. According to researchers Scott Thumma and Warren Bird, most churches \u2013 mega-sized and small, black and white \u2013 are actually run by 20 percent of the congregation.<\/p>\n<p>The other 80 percent, they say, tend to act like spectators: they are minimally involved and attend infrequently or not at all.A National Congregation Survey shows the Southern Baptist Convention had a membership of 16,160,088 people in 2008, but a yearly attendance rate of 38 percent.<\/p>\n<p>The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America had a membership of 4,542,868 in 2009, but the yearly attendance rated rested at 28 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Though many churches are struggling to boost attendance and participation, Thumma states, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/topics\/pastors\/\">pastors<\/a> and church leaders rarely address the issue.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive-51581\/\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0There is a secret inside many churches. According to researchers Scott Thumma and Warren Bird, most churches \u2013 mega-sized and small, black and white \u2013 are actually run by 20 percent of the congregation. The other 80 percent, they say, tend to act like spectators: they are minimally involved and attend infrequently or not at&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,8],"tags":[2204,2201],"class_list":["post-3597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","category-news","tag-christian","tag-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Churches&#039; Dilemma: 80 Percent of Flock Is Inactive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Churches&#039; Dilemma: 80 Percent of Flock Is Inactive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0There is a secret inside many churches. According to researchers Scott Thumma and Warren Bird, most churches \u2013 mega-sized and small, black and white \u2013 are actually run by 20 percent of the congregation. The other 80 percent, they say, tend to act like spectators: they are minimally involved and attend infrequently or not at&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-09-05T15:17:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-08-31T18:51:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Churches' Dilemma: 80 Percent of Flock Is Inactive","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Churches' Dilemma: 80 Percent of Flock Is Inactive","og_description":"\u00a0There is a secret inside many churches. According to researchers Scott Thumma and Warren Bird, most churches \u2013 mega-sized and small, black and white \u2013 are actually run by 20 percent of the congregation. The other 80 percent, they say, tend to act like spectators: they are minimally involved and attend infrequently or not at&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-09-05T15:17:19+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-08-31T18:51:05+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive","name":"Churches' Dilemma: 80 Percent of Flock Is Inactive","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-09-05T15:17:19+00:00","dateModified":"2011-08-31T18:51:05+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/churches-dilemma-80-percent-of-flock-is-inactive#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Churches&#8217; Dilemma: 80 Percent of Flock Is Inactive"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3597"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6824,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597\/revisions\/6824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}