According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as of 5.27pm, December 12, 2006 there were 20,713,873 Australians.
Every two minutes the number goes up with a new baby born. Every four minutes it goes down with a death. With migration factored in, that's a net gain of one person every two minutes.
Less than 9% of Australians attend a church weekly. About half of those who do are Catholic. The rest are Protestant: Anglican, Pentecostal, Evangelical, Liberal or “mainline” and everyone else in between.
In 2001 there were 10,447 Protestant congregations in Australia. One Protestant church church for every 1800 people, with an average of just 75 people attending weekly.
Allowing for continuing decline since 2001, today there may be around 10,000 Australian Protestant churches. NCLS are crunching the numbers from the 2006 survey right now.
What is clear from their studies to date is a strong link between the numbers of churches in Australia and weekly attendance. NCLS research reveals that typically, the denominations that grew in weekly attendance between 1991 and 2001 also grew in the number of congregations. Denominations that declined in numbers of congregations also declined in weekly attendance.
1991-2001 Weekly attendance and number of congregations
Anglicans: 7% decline in weekly attendance, 9% decline in number of congregations*
Lutherans: 18% decline in weekly attendance, 5% decline in number of congregations
Uniting: 22% decline in weekly attendance, 22% decline in number of congregations
Apostolic: 32% increase in weekly attendance, 67% increase in number of congregations
Assemblies of God: 30% increase in weekly attendance, 37% increase in number of congregations
Baptist: 9% increase in weekly attendance, 12% increase in number of congregations.
Christian City Church (1996-2001): 42% increase in weekly attendance, 41% increase in number of congregations.
Christian and Missionary Alliance: 46% increase in weekly attendance, 33% increase in number of congregations.
All Protestant: 3% decline in overall weekly attendance, 6% decline in number of congregations
There is no surer way of increasing the numbers of Australians with a meaningful church involvement than the planting of healthy missional initiatives, congregations, churches, initiatives. Whatever you want to call them. The movements that plant churches are growing. Those that don't decline.
Church planting is still the most effective means of evangelism under the sun (Peter Wagner).
next1000 exists to build partnerships between individuals, churches and organizations that result in the planting of 1000 healthy, missional Australian churches.
*Anglican decline is even worse when the strong growth of the evangelical diocese of Sydney is removed from the national figures. Between 1996-2001 Sydney Anglican attendance grew by 9% against a population growth of 6.5%. Source
