Are We Stagnating?

Last year I read a fascinating if not disturbing book about the decline of the church in Canada.

It was written by two professors of theology from Toronto, Brian Clark and Stuart Macdonald, called Leaving Christianity: Changing Allegiances in Canada since 1945 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017). In general, theirs is not a happy story to tell.

They point out that Christianity enjoyed a favoured place in Canadian culture up until relatively recently. For instance, it used to be that many public schools opened their day with the Lord’s Prayer. Remarkably, the Centennial celebrations in 1967 opened with a Christian worship service.

But this influence has long faded. Many Canadians today have little familiarity with basic Christian truth like the identity of Jesus or the contents of the Ten Commandments. In a real and profound way, Canadian culture has become de-Christianized.

Churches for Sale

You are likely unsurprised by such observations. We all know the familiar sight of a boarded up United Church building, or a former Anglican church turned into a trendy cafe. But much more than sharing anecdotes and gut feelings, the authors provide a plethora of statistics from national censuses, household surveys, and denominational yearbooks.

Cold, hard numbers tell this story too. After times of extraordinary vibrancy in the 1950s and 1960s, rates of decline in the so-called mainline churches have been steep. For instance, between 2001 and 2011, the United Church of Canada saw a 24.9% decline in membership, which amounts to a loss of almost 160,000 members.

Even in churches that have enjoyed some membership growth in the last forty years, it is often at a nominal level, typically adding less than 2% per annum over a decade.

Evangelical denominations are one of the few forms of Christianity that is growing moderately in Canada, or at least not shrinking.

The authors point out that one of the only segments that is growing consistently and above minimal levels is the Pentecostal churches, whose various denominations saw an almost 30% growth in membership between 2001 and 2011.

Our Growth

Reading Clark and Macdonald’s account of churches in precipitous numerical decline suggested a question to my mind: What about my own denomination, the Canadian Reformed Churches? What story would be told by our numbers? To answer these questions, at least partially, I looked at the membership numbers that have appeared in the annual Yearbook of the Canadian and American Reformed Churches, published since 1952. 

Across the 1950s, during the height of immigration from post-war Europe, our churches had an annual rate of increase of around 7% to 9%. To put it concretely, each year about 540 new members were added to the total membership, a trend that continued into the early 1960s.

Now, I should note first of all that I am not distinguishing between communicant and non-communicant members, or baptized and professed members. Second, “new members added” is net of any membership losses due to death, excommunication, or withdrawal. Adding 540 members per year does not sound like a really significant addition, but as a proportion of the total membership, this is healthy growth. When your denomination totals just 3600 souls, for instance, this is a noticeable addition of members.

But then growth begins to slow. In each of the subsequent decades, from 1960 to 1990, membership growth stood at about 3% per year. Since 1991 until today, the net rate of growth has been hovering around 1.5%, or roughly 240 new members added to the grand total each year.

The numbers fluctuate in curious ways. For instance, from 2023 to 2024, the entire federation gained just 19 members; the following year, 254 were added. It remains in the positive range, but this is minimal. If you picture a crowd of 20,000 people, adding 250 more does not make a significant impact. Congregation sizes are trending downwards too. There are now 70 congregations in our federation, compared to 50 about twenty years ago; twenty years ago, the average congregation size was 317 members, now it’s 287.

A Limited Picture

The picture from these yearbook statistics is limited, and the numbers invite more questions than they can answer. For instance, on an annual basis, how many people are being excommunicated—or perhaps more likely, withdrawing—from our churches? Has this rate of departure been increasing, decreasing, or has it been stable over the last few decades? Or how many members are joining from elsewhere, not entering the church through being baptized as infants but later in life?

If it could be done, I’m sure that a study of the meta-data for our congregations would reveal interesting trends in relation to birth rates, death rates, the median age of members, etc. For example, it would be a safe wager that the birth rate is falling in our churches, seeing as this rate is declining rapidly in almost every Western country. Comparisons of rural, urban and suburban rates of growth for our churches could also be intriguing. There are economic reasons (such as the cost of housing) for shifts in population, leading some individual churches to decline, others to grow quickly. And no doubt one church grows and another church declines because of the “circulation of the saints.”

I have been told that demographics is a complex science, so I’ll stay in my lane. Nevertheless, the nominal rate of growth (1.5%) for our churches across the last three decades causes me to reflect. Every year, babies are being baptized, and every year new members are joining and making public profession of faith. On the other hand, every year there are members whom God calls to himself, and every year there are some who are excommunicated or who withdraw. Even so, one might expect the rates of total growth to be higher. If we gain 250 people per year, this means that on average, each congregation has had a net growth of only 3.5 members—certainly not a skyrocketing increase.

“Numbers” is only one aspect of church growth, of course. Other forms of growth are far more important, such as growth in the fruit of the Spirit. The authors of the aforementioned book respond to this: “Some may think we are preoccupied—even obsessed—with numbers. But dealing in numbers is the only way to identify trends with precision and to assess their magnitude and momentum. Now, admittedly, faith is a difficult thing to count. Yet the reality is that, like so many things in our culture, we insist upon counting faith or at least various things that we take to be representative of faith” (p. 9).

And when one looks at the cold, hard numbers for my denomination, decade over decade, one sees only very modest growth. One might fear that we are stagnating. Will the year be soon when we have a net loss of membership?

Towards Growth

As churches, it should be our aim to always grow in the faith and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Pet 3:18). To this end, holding fast to true doctrine and maintaining faithful preaching ought to be our priority. This is particularly so when considering the cautionary tale of those many churches that saw a total membership collapse—often in the wake of accepting liberal theology or caving in to unbiblical ethics.

The book of Acts describes how “the Word of God increased and multiplied” (12:24) and how the churches “increased in numbers daily” (16:5). Jesus said 2000 years ago that the fields are ripe for harvest, and so they remain. One challenge is that our society is post-Christian.

We cannot assume that visitors will have basic familiarity with Christian teaching and practice.

Therefore we should be ready to receive them with a generous and patient spirit, teaching them well and integrating them quickly into congregational life.

In recent years many hundreds of thousands of immigrants have arrived in Canada, and a good number seem to arrive with the intent of finding a new church home. This presents us with a wonderful opportunity. A recent Pew Report on migration and religion notes that nearly half of the migrants in this world are Christians. This has potential to reshape the religious landscape in countries like ours, as Christians migrate here from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Seeking to grow the Lord’s church through preaching and sharing the gospel, we should also promote the increase of families. Our culture values the freedom and autonomy of singleness, and those who do marry, tend to marry later in life and to have fewer children. These same trends in the churches can be countered only through faithful Biblical teaching and mentoring. We should seek to help and encourage our young people to cut against the cultural grain so that we can be fruitful and faithful. 

Reflecting on statistics and trends, peering cautiously into the future, we’re grateful to rest in the knowledge that God alone gives the growth (1 Cor 3:6). To him we prayerfully commit the future of the church, while also accepting his charge to guard sound doctrine, to be fruitful and multiply, and to make disciples of the nations and our neighbours.