A New Kind of Church Is on the Rise in America

The new generation of pastors and churchgoers are making a huge impact on the future of America’s churches. In fact, many people believe that future churches will look a whole lot different compared to what we know today.

According to The Christian Post, a new generation of pastors is adopting a new form of success and approach to location. A report was recently released by the Leadership Network that shows a majority of pastors who are younger than 40 want to not just reproduce churches, but multiply them. The study questioned more than 1,500 people and found that the younger generation is more likely to be drawn to the multiplication of churches.

In the same way that a business owner might set up franchises throughout their region, more pastors are looking to adopt a similar model when spreading the Word. The Christian Post spoke with Warren Bird, the director of Research and Intellectual Capital Development at the Leadership Network.

“They are also not content with just growing their own ministry and then reproducing it in other places,” Bird said. “There is an emerging strain of young leaders who understand that the mission of Jesus is accomplished through movement. They are also grasping parts of the secret that God’s mission expands when you have aspirations for the Kingdom and not just for your church.”

The study also says that unchurched people are more likely to be drawn to already existing churches that create new churches rather than older churches with one fixed location. Currently in the United States there are 156 million unchurched people. Growing new churches out of other existing churches are often referred to as church planting. This is very popular for churches in North America who gained many new members but don’t have the seating for all of them.

Finally, the study shows that filling the house is no longer the primary goal of many young church leaders. Rather, they feel as if God is calling them for much bigger purposes. The use of multi-site churches has grown over the past 20 years. Originally, there were only five multi-site churches. However, now there are thousands of them, and more and more multi-site churches are popping up every year.