Is the American Church Growing? The Data Says No

Arnie Cole, CEO of Back to the Bible, says the result is not a portrait of a “hardened secular America.” It is a portrait of an unresolved middle.

A ministry built on Scripture

Back to the Bible has operated from Lincoln, Nebraska, since 1939. Cole says the ministry began with one conviction, that the local church and the individual believer both flourish when Scripture is engaged, not just consulted. Its mission, he says, is to help people move closer to Jesus today than they were yesterday by engaging God’s Word, building daily spiritual fitness, and growing into people who disciple others. The ministry pairs Bible teaching with practical tools and honest research, so growth is not accidental.

“It’s measurable. It’s repeatable. And it’s reproducible,” Cole said.

Measuring the wrong things

Cole says the ministry’s research grew out of frustration with how churches keep score.

“We’ve spent 50 years tracking the wrong signals and calling it success, attendance spikes, baptism counts, podcast downloads, conference attendance, viral moments at a single church or in a single country,” he said.

A few rising numbers become a national narrative, he says, before anyone checks whether the underlying formation is deepening. It rarely is. Hopeful storytelling helps some organizations raise donations and sell products, and the people in the pews are not the only ones who want the story to be true.

“Professional Christians, Pastors and ministry leaders want it to be true, and so do donors,” Cole said. “A movement narrative is easier to preach, fund, and sell product to meet that falsely perceived need than a formation diagnosis.”

He puts it plainly.

“But what we measure shapes what we build. If we keep measuring activity instead of outcomes, we’ll keep declaring victories the SALT data doesn’t support,” Cole said.

He points to a framework.

“The framework we use is what we call the four-step rhythm of spiritual fitness: Receive, Reflect, Respond, Reveal. Receive the Scripture. Reflect on what it says, not just what we want it to say. Respond to it in real life,” Cole said.

The framework shapes his concern about young men. SALT shows a brief window of male re-engagement at 35-44, where 47.55% are active in a church and 15.63% read the Bible daily, the highest male profile in the entire series. Cole credits child-rearing for the bump and says it fades as the children grow. Male involvement falls to 32.61% at 55-64 and bottoms at 31.47% at 65 and older, the series low. Sixty percent of men over 65 read their Bibles zero days a week.

“That’s not a return. That’s an exit ramp,” Cole said.

Is the American church growing?

Cole says no, and he points to global evidence. A new Pew Research Center study surveyed nearly 80,000 adults across 36 countries, tracking what it calls religious switching, the gap between the faith people were raised in and the faith they claim now. Of all major world religions, Christianity is losing the most. In most of the 36 countries, it holds the highest ratio of leavers to joiners. Germany’s reaches 19.7 to 1, with nearly twenty raised Christians leaving for every one who joins.

By contrast, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism keep retention rates of 95% or more in countries such as India, Israel, and Nigeria, where almost no one leaves the faith of their upbringing. Christianity and Buddhism shed the most adherents, Cole says, and Christianity leads.

“The losses aren’t close,” he said.

The pattern holds at home. In the United States, Cole says, 28% of adults no longer identify with the religion they were raised in. Most of that movement is not lateral, not Catholic to Protestant or Buddhist to Christian, but disaffiliation, people leaving Christianity for no religion at all. The one group gaining across country after country is the religiously unaffiliated, the so-called nones. Among younger adults, especially in the U.S. and Western Europe, the rate of leaving is accelerating.

“The pipeline is widening, not closing,” Cole said.

Seven steps for the next three to five years

Cole offers seven moves, all drawn from the data.

First, change the scorecard. Stop measuring decisions, attendance, and impressions as if they are outcomes. Start measuring Scripture absorption, observable life change, and reproducible discipleship. What we measure is what we build.

Second, address moral striving with grace, explicitly and pastorally. A fifth of Americans think they are going to heaven because they tried to be good. They are not hostile to grace. Most have never had it cleanly distinguished from moral effort. Teach the difference between respect for Jesus and trust in Jesus, in plain, non-insider language.

Third, build Scripture engagement as a scaffolded habit. Prayer is happening. Bible reading mostly is not. Do not assume biblical literacy. Build stepwise pathways from prayer into Scripture, with short reading plans, prayer-to-Scripture transitions, and accessible micro-teaching that meets people where they are.

Fourth, pair every piece of media with a rapid relational pathway. Attention is not transformation. Content without community leaves the central deficit untouched. Every campaign, every podcast, and every digital touchpoint should funnel toward conversation, mentorship, or a local group within days, not months.

Fifth, recover mentorship as an intentional, intergenerational practice. Cole calls this the most urgent finding in the series. The women 65 and older who carry the deepest faith formation are the least likely to disciple the 18-24 cohort, who carry the thinnest. Closing that transmission gap is the highest-leverage move available to the American church.

Sixth, re-engage older men. They are the most spiritually exposed group in the study, with the highest nihilism, the highest persistent uncertainty, the lowest church involvement, and the lowest Scripture engagement. Programming will not reach them. Patient, honest, presence-based pastoral relationship will.

Seventh, equip discernment for the AI age. AI Jesus is already in the room, especially in the private, late-night moments of midlife men carrying questions they can’t bring to a small group. Teach Scripture-based discernment as a pre-commitment, not as post-hoc damage control.

“None of this is fast, and none of it is flashy. But the legacy of the church we leave behind won’t be measured by how loud our metrics were. It’ll be measured by what kind of disciples we left for the generation coming up behind us. That’s what the SALT Index is finally trying to help us see, clearly, without panic or pride, so we can get back to the long, patient work of formation,” Cole said.

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MAINA MWAURA is a freelance writer and journalist who has interviewed over 800 influential leaders, including two US Presidents, three Vice-Presidents, and a variety of others. Maina, is also the author of the Influential Mentor, How the life and legacy of Howard Hendricks Equipped and Inspired a Generation of Leaders. Maina and his family reside in the Kennesaw, Georgia area.