Church Growth
A recent report of new construction growth shows churches at the top of the list for highest percentage of non-residential construction increases. Church construction grew by 23% in June according to McGraw-Hill Construction, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies.
Mark over at Tapscott’s Copy Desk turned me onto this topic when commenting that this is a “statistic you likely will not see in the MSM.”
What makes this an even more interesting story is when you factor in the numbers from creative ways that some churches are growing when they find themselves pinched out by the real-estate boom/bubble. I attend Seacoast Church in Mount Pleasant, SC. Seacoast Church has become a national poster church for multi-site growth. Multi-site church is where a church delivers the same message via video or tape to multiple services at multiple locations in a weekend. Each location and service has its own worship team and other church functions, but the message is common across all locations and service times.
The lead pastor at Seacoast, Greg Surratt, recently played tour guide to some visitors and got a look at multiple sites of Seacoast on one weekend. Pastor Greg reported, “It’s working, we’re healthy and I love it.” With this type of growth that is not represented in the construction numbers, the actual numbers on church growth have got to be much greater than the construction statistics could ever reflect. It is a great day for the Lord, but it is too bad that God will likely not get much more credit than what is given from a few of us bloggers. Seacoast started in 1988 in borrowed and rented space with 65 attendees. Today the membership is up to approximately 7,000 members across nine locations if I have my statistics correct. There have been some really creative moves by the staff at Seacoast to bring God’s word to this many people without building a bunch of new church buildings.
h/t: Bill Hobbs for the link to the construction data.