Lead Time
Lead Time
LCMS at a Crossroads: Decline, Growth… or Something Else?
If you care about the future of the LCMS, you won’t want to miss this one.
Your perspective matters, let's have discussion that honors Christ!
New LCMS data reveals a stunning reality: nearly three-quarters of congregations worship fewer than 100 people each week. Tim and Jack unpack what this means for the future of our pastors, our mission, and our very identity as a church body. Are we facing an “emerging emergency” in staffing, sustainability, and representation? From micro-church struggles to the influence of large congregations, this candid conversation doesn’t shy away from the hard truths — and the hopeful opportunities.
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This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack Kalberg. It's a beautiful day to be alive. Pray, the joy and love of Jesus is firing you up today for some learning. And today Jack and I are talking about LCMS data as it relates to congregational size. The LCMS recently came out with the data in 2024 on the sizes of congregations in the LCMS, and we're going to walk through some of the implications of this new data, jack. How you doing, though, before we get into this, I'm doing well, man.
Speaker 3:It's a beautiful time For those. I don't know exactly when we'll be publishing this episode, but, tim, you're getting ready to do some time on sabbatical. That must be exciting for you and I'm doing everything I can to make sure I'm prepared well for that not having you around for a while. But I'm excited for you and I'm also excited with the season that we're at with our church. We've seen a lot of growth. It's been a lot of. It's a real joyful thing to go through that and after a season maybe where we've kind of saw a little bit of a flat line with attendance, kind of seeing a new growth cycle happening, and it's always really fun. But it also creates a lot of problems and I like to call them fun problems things like parking and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are some fun problems.
Speaker 3:Well.
Speaker 2:Let's get into the conversation. Today we have congregational average worship attendance sizes and in the LCMS and we know this and we've known it for a while we're trending. Our congregations generally are not growing. I think a lot of them are, and if you're a member of a church, you're probably seeing this across the church body. Most of them, a lot of them, are holding serve God willing and many of them are declining. So what was most shocking to me is this stat point I'll let you move from here, jack is that 45% of our congregations worship less than 50 people, and that makes up 2,652 congregations in the LCMS, and then moving up to 128.2%, making up 1,634 congregations worship between 51 and 100. And so, as if you're watching, we're sharing screen right now that means that, uh, 73.9 percent of LCMS congregations worship less than 100 people on a respective Sunday. Um, that's, that's an interesting data point, jack. What are some of the ramifications of that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the the church size that we're talking about of zero to 50, that would be generally what we would classify as a micro church, like sometimes well, you'll hear the term like house church or microsite, microlocation, microplant.
Speaker 3:That would be generally the size that we're thinking about zero to 50. And what's interesting about that size of a church in particularly is that that is a type of congregation, based on its demographics, that would really struggle to afford a fully seasoned, full-time, what we call called and ordained pastor to serve at their church. When you think about what a salary and benefits would be for one full-time person with an MDiv right, they would really struggle to provide that full benefit and pay package. And so what you would expect, especially in the context of a pastoral shortage that we're dealing with, that you're probably seeing a large number of these churches really, really struggle to staff. Some of them may have pastors that are serving in that context already, but if they lose them or if he retires, they're going to have a real, real, real, real difficult time, especially in the context of a pastoral shortage, filling that vacancy and then kind of moving beyond that into.
Speaker 2:Let me pause on that Before we move on. Congregations that don't have a pastor are in transition. Their pastor is nearing retirement. A pastor are in transition. Their pastor is nearing retirement. The economic realities, especially in some of our higher cost living communities think San Diego, la, new York.
Speaker 1:Phoenix.
Speaker 2:I mean our housing costs have gone very high, so that makes it all the more difficult, increasingly difficult with the elevated cost of living for a congregation to afford a pastor. Yeah, Any thoughts there?
Speaker 3:Jack, well, yeah, and I'm thinking in terms of national average, but you're absolutely correct. Like I would say, it might be even more challenging in Los Angeles or San Diego if that were the case for the congregation. Even now in Gilbert, where we're at Tim, it's getting pricey for housing. Mesa is a little bit more affordable, you know Apache Junction is more affordable, but definitely the town we're in we're seeing some of that impact of housing making it difficult to transition church workers from outside of this area in I'll use myself as an example, myself as an example.
Speaker 2:I couldn't afford the house I live in right now. Jack, right, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, like our houses and you may say, well, great for you and equity, but I'm thinking about my kids and I'm thinking about future church workers. You know it's like what are we doing here? You know like this is very economically challenging, especially if you're a smaller congregation worshiping a hundred or less, to get someone from outside to come to your urban or suburban community.
Speaker 3:Yep. And so what's happening now and this is what I would expect is you're going to see a lot of small LCMS churches. They may continue to decline if they have a sustained vacancy, or they may shutter or they may leave the denomination. That's possible too. I've heard some talk from some people that we're starting to see some smaller churches leave the denomination because other church bodies have maybe more accessible systems to get pastors in place, either raising them up locally and we're not having a conversation about advocating for changing anything here. We've made a commitment not to make certain critiques about our system, but there are demographic issues that our church body is going to have to deal with and think about the implications about that. So right now, I think what the LCMS is going to have to tackle and this isn't a side issue, because look at the stats here so if you look at again, 45% of these churches being in this category, with 50 members or less, to dip into the next category, this next category of churches I'm calling small churches. These are 50 to 200. That's typically what we call a small church. Well, some of those would still probably be in the category of struggling to afford a pastor, because really, about 75 in worship is about what a church needs to have to be able to hire one person full time and have some other money to do other stuff with that person, right, hire one person full time and have some other money to do other stuff with that person, right. Otherwise, if you're anything less than that, you're probably spending like way too much of your budget trying to cover the staffing piece and not having any resources to do anything like maintain your building or do marketing or anything like that. So if you look at those churches too and you add that, you're probably looking at roughly 60% of LCMS congregations that are in the category of potentially struggling to recruit externally pastors when a vacancy occurs in their local context. I'm not saying they're all vacant. I think our numbers right now is that roughly six to 700 churches currently have a vacancy. But what's going to happen is when somebody retires and we're hearing that people are staying way, you know, way longer than they've expected in ministry because there's just nobody to fill their role. So this is, I would say, really you know, when we think about what are these numbers telling us.
Speaker 3:Recently, our seminary presidents got onto, all Things Considered and kind of said there's not an emergency, not an emergency with regards to pastoral staffing. It's urgent, but not an emergency. I would say maybe it is an emerging emergency that's happening right now in terms of our ability to staff pastors. That's what the data is telling me, and I think that we're going to feel the impacts of that more and more over the next decade or two. And then what might happen? This is kind of crazy. What might happen even in the future if you project far out, if some of these churches are just never staffed, they may shutter or leave our church body, and then you may have kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy where at that point in time, the amount of pastors being produced actually does match the churches that you have, not because you've grown the pipeline, but because these churches don't exist anymore, sadly. So that's an interesting kind of thought experiment to go that far out, right.
Speaker 2:No comment yeah, no comment yeah.
Speaker 3:So, all that being said, we're just saying we're really just talking about numbers right now and in terms of like there's numbers and there's urgency, and we're just kind of being blunt about that, without we're not advocating that anybody do anything that's not authorized or anything like that. That's not what we're saying. But we are saying there is an urgency here on this matter.
Speaker 2:So only slightly more than 10% of LCMS congregations worship more than 200 people a week, so that means, in effect, the LCMS is a church body of many, many small congregations Anything more to add there. How does that shape the nature of our discourse?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so 7.9%, just about 8% of congregations are worshiping in the range of 200 to 500. I'm calling those medium-sized churches. Generally, medium-sized is classified as 200 to 400, but they don't break it out here. They go to 500. So, roughly speaking, that's the number of what we call medium-sized churches, and then 1.4% worships 500 or more. So that would be roughly the cutoff to be a large church. 1.4% of LCMS churches are classified as large churches.
Speaker 3:Now there's sizes beyond large, what we call mid-mega, that's the 1,000 plus, and then mega church is 2,000 plus, and we'd have no data on that. I imagine that number is very small. We are now in a season right now where we're just approaching the thousand, the thousand mark at Christ Greenfield, with some of the growth that we've seen recently. So we might be, might be classified in that mid mega range, but I imagine that number has got to be really small. Now here's the thing. There's something called the Pareto principle, and the Pareto principle usually kind of says that 20% of the activity or 20% of the participation is responsible for 80% of the result. I would say that probably holds true very much.
Speaker 3:In this chart. We're seeing a Pareto type of distribution happening, and so what I would guess is that roughly 80% of LCMS worshipers are being represented by 20% of churches, with most of those churches kind of being in that, you know, 250 plus range. So that would represent about maybe 1,100 to 1,200 congregations, representing 80% of the actual full church body of the LCMS. So an interesting question that that kind of reveals to us is if that's true, if 80% of our church body is concentrated in these churches, how well of a job are we doing with representation at the national level? Are we representing that 80% really well in when it comes to policymaking and sort of the future values and visions of the church moving forward with mission? So what are your thoughts, tim, on that kind of observation?
Speaker 2:Tim Cynova 00,00,00. Well, I think generally our circuit distribution works because it is based on the amount of members, Okay, and congregate, so. So you have representation there for synod resolutions, bylaws, et cetera. And and then at the national level, though, we made the change on the vote for president right, when every congregation gets one one vote past, gets one pastoral and one lay vote. That means that that vote in particular is definitely weighted in balance toward a higher voice for smaller communities. So that's kind of how it plays out at the national level. And yeah, I mean, I just am coming off.
Speaker 2:That's a fascinating insight I think for folks kind of just kind of running through these numbers, 2010, I think, was when Synod Convention made that change. That was connected to the Blue Ribbon Task Force, giving greater representation to every congregation representation to every congregation, I think. In effect, it sounds good, but I don't know that. We saw 15 years ago where we'd be today in terms of the sizes of our congregations. Right, you have any thoughts there?
Speaker 3:Well, and to be clear here, we are not disparaging small churches and what they bring to the table, and I think a lot of times some of the most interesting innovation can happen in the small church context. But, that being said, you may see in a church that's dominated by small congregations that some of the decision making that happens are decisions that ensure that more of the body starts to look like the small churches.
Speaker 2:So give me an example, Jack, I don't know Well.
Speaker 3:I guess you know we just get very, very high level here. We have a conversation about missional versus confessional right and generally speaking, I would say that the churches now this is this is an over over over, a broad statement. I'm just saying that right off the bat here. But I'd say the reasons why many of these LCMS churches that are large have gotten large in some cases is because they've really taken a missional attitude towards reaching the community. Now, that's not 100 percent true.
Speaker 3:Sometimes these churches just happen to be in Lutherpalooza in terms of their demographics right. So some cases it's just like this city is Lutheran. That's why this church is so big. But in many other cases, like here in Arizona, you know, if you're a big Lutheran church, it's because you've been very missional and very proactive in reaching the community and showing a lot of hospitality to people that may not have Lutheran roots. So what you may see is an underrepresentation of the missional perspective within our church body, whereas many of these small churches may be small because they've not adopted as much of a missional perspective on things.
Speaker 3:And they may be small because they've not adopted as much of a missional perspective on things and they may be in declining communities. That's 100 percent. So that's something to be like, fair. This is like the nuance of the conversation. Sometimes a church is in a farm area and people are leaving that area because it's machinery and automation and people you know, big corporations buying up farms and it makes sense that that church would decline because the city is declining. So that's a total fair context to add on that. And I, you know, to be fair, this chart doesn't tell you that. This chart doesn't tell you what percentage of that is due to demographic decline versus what percentage of it is declining because they've just not been as hospitable and missional to the community. It's a mix, probably, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's on a church by church basis and-. On a church by church basis.
Speaker 2:But I'm also, like I think, a lot of times I'm thinking of Lyman Stone and his demographic data and seeing an increase in young people desiring liturgical worship in churches that prioritize that may see more of a growth, I would say, at least as long as they are hospitable, like. This is a community that will love and care for you and will bring you into the riches of our Lutheran liturgy, of our Lutheran liturgy, and I think that there's a lot of potential in this day and age, especially with the new Pope coming in. A revival of sorts, I think, is in the water for something that is ancient, something that is traditional, and so we're advocates. Do your liturgy very, very well, excellent, excellent liturgy. Do not compromise what it means to be a Lutheran and how we articulate God coming to us. Not compromise what it means to be a Lutheran and how we articulate God coming to us in the divine service, to be sure, but you can be both open to reaching more people with the gospel, and you could say higher church, lutheran, liturgical, etc. So you can see both things happening at the same time.
Speaker 2:I think what you're saying is it's the posture of the congregation toward their community. Do we exist for ourselves or do. We exist to get the gospel into as many hearts and ears as possible, and so, yeah, I'm praying that there's a revival of many of these congregations that are small, that start to dream new dreams, reach new people with the gospel, while not compromising what it means to be St John's Lutheran Church in rural America, wherever they happen to be. We're definitely not anti-small church at all, but we do see and I think this demographic is seen true in the wider American church, not just in the LCMS is that larger churches generally are becoming larger and smaller churches are are becoming larger and smaller churches are generally becoming smaller. So a big question for me, looking at this, there's 15% of our congregations worshiping between 100 and 200 people. In the coming decade, which direction will many of those congregations go? Will they grow or decline? Anything more to say?
Speaker 3:to that. I think it's going to be both, and I think you're going to see a lot more really tiny churches and a lot more really, really, really big churches, and both are going to play a very important role in reaching the next generation with Christianity. I think the question is, if that's true, then how do we create really good systems for both of that Right, how do we create and you know we're going through consultation right now, tim, about how we grow. We're going through some growing pains right now and we need external, we need an external voice on that, and we need to learn from people that are more seasoned operating in bigger churches than we've been in.
Speaker 3:And I think, also a church body if that's the reality, if, let's say, the economics is really small and really big at the same time how does a church body get really, really, really, really good at equipping and staffing these really tiny churches? What is their model to do that? How do you articulate that model to your body so that they can participate fully in that, and is it a really good, viable model to work that way, fully in that and is it a really good, viable model to work that way? I think that's a really really important question that every church body needs to deal with, and especially our own church body needs to deal with that. I don't know what that answer is right now. I don't know what would you say is kind of what's being communicated as the answer to that. Oh no, jack.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But what I?
Speaker 2:can say is I know there's a lot of district presidents that want their churches not to close.
Speaker 3:I agree.
Speaker 2:And want to explore whatever it takes to keep that gospel footprint, because when we close a church we lose a gospel asset. Man, I don't care if the district or synod gets millions of dollars Like that is awful, that is hard. Now those resources can be repositioned to other places. Hopefully the resources stay in that circuit, stay in that area so that new dreams for new ministries can kind of go about. But to your point, unless there's leaders to kind of execute on those new things or the revitalization work, it's going to be hard sledding into the future. But I do know that from national, the district level, we all agree we want to see far, far, far fewer closures of our congregations and that should necessitate conversations on how we keep that, how we keep that from happening.
Speaker 3:Anything more.
Speaker 2:I mean, let me I'll throw this out there If only 1.4% of our congregations worship 500 or more a weekend, that's a small, that's 82 congregations, by the way that's 82 congregations. That's a very small representation and we're in that category right.
Speaker 2:Very small representation of who we are as a national church body. But the question is too, in those 82 congregations I know, probably the majority of those have larger staffs. Probably a majority of those have Lutheran schools, and so what percentage, if you just add maybe the 300, and that's about 5% if you go 300 in worship or more what percentage of commissioned ministers and staff that are fueling our Concordia plans are a part of those congregations?
Speaker 2:I would venture to guess and again I don't have this data- A lot more 40 to 50 percent is what I would say are those who are in Concordia plans are represented in that smaller group of 300 plus in worship congregations. So what are your thoughts there, Jack?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I think I talked about the Pareto principle in terms of congregation size and actual membership, but I think you're right. I think when you factor in schools and the fact that you have schools that might be, you know, disproportionately large to their worshiping body, I think that that, from a staffing perspective and the number of people that are rostered, you know of staffing participation, so that's something to think about. Like you know, how well are we representing staffing right, those who are in professional church work in total, when you factor in teachers and school administrators and DCEs and music directors and all that kind of stuff, how well is that represented? Or is there a very, very high concentration that doesn't necessarily get the representation that it needs to get?
Speaker 2:And when you say representation, what do you mean?
Speaker 3:I think, in terms of a church, you know, like a church, a national church body's ethos, right? Or you know, speaking into the overall vision and values of a church body, right? There are, tim, multiple confessional Lutheran church bodies in the United States. Sometimes we act like we're the only ones, but we're actually an altar and pulpit fellowship with other Lutheran church bodies in America that are confessional Lutheran, right, and they're different than the LCMS. They've got different sets of values, they've got different polity that you know.
Speaker 3:So we as a church body, we come together and we vote about the things that make us uniquely LCMS, and is that representation happening well from our entire workforce, right? Is that being spoken into? Or is that maybe is some of that voice being lost because of the concentration that exists in these, in these church bodies? I don't, I don't know the answer, but I think what we're saying is like, maybe that is the case, that there's not as much of a voice that needs to be shared there. I'm being fair, I'm being kind of speculative here because I don't have all of the data. We're just kind of making some rationalizations here about what this may be looking like.
Speaker 2:Well, I can tell you on behalf of many commission ministers that they feel like they have not had a voice throughout their entire ministry at the district or national level. And there have been some creative overtures to add representation. Because at the national level you get one pastor and one lay per circuit. Right Now, I know this would add, but there's some resolutions going on meaning add resources to give voice here. You know the National Synod Convention which is taking place here in Phoenix in July of 26,. It's an expensive endeavor, right, you're bringing a lot of people into the city and so this would add to the expense for sure. But to get more representation you could add one more lay vote per circuit and then you could add one more commission votes. You'd have two lay votes and then two rostered church work. One pastor, one commission minister. That seems reasonable. It does. I think there's some logistics that have to get figured out to make that happen, but we'll see what the future holds.
Speaker 2:In our district, jack, you and I are going to be at our district convention. We're going to have the advisory vote of the commission ministers. So every time, something non-electoral, meaning it's not an office, it's being a vice president or senate president or district president that's being elected, every other resolution that comes, or overture that gets presented to the floor. We're going to see. What do the commission ministers think about it?
Speaker 2:And it was kind of cool three years ago. The voters went, they agreed with the advice of the commission ministers. There was great influence in that voice prior to the actual vote. And there's a number I don't know how many, but there's a number of other districts that have some similar arrangement. Could a similar arrangement also be made at the national level? Maybe I think many of them would appreciate not just having an advisory vote but an actual vote. But we'll see. But that does color the nature of the national church body conversation when the majority of those workers are in congregations that can't afford them, frankly, because they have schools and kind of an economic engine to make the education thing happen.
Speaker 2:So yeah, jack, I don't know that there's much else to say. I the tone of this.
Speaker 2:People listen to lead time and they're like man you guys talk about some hard like leadership is talking about what is. I can't. I can't live in what I would like it to be. I have to live in in what is, and this is from a demographic perspective. Besides the congregations, this is is what it is, and so I hope we can have loving, kind, caring, challenging conversations around growth toward the advancement of the gospel in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Any final comments? Jack?
Speaker 3:I would say, yeah, I would articulate it like this that it's three things.
Speaker 3:Number one is that it's like it's a ruthless acknowledgement of what the current truth is, or an unfiltered acknowledgement of what the truth is.
Speaker 3:But number two, it's vision casting for the future, seeing a different future. Right, that where we are right now doesn't have to be the way that we are in the future. We can think very optimistically, we can trust in the Lord, we can start to see the problem, you know, through the, through a biblical lens, through a missional lens, through an evangelical lens, and then we can start to build systems around, moving us towards that future. And I would say that's probably the entirety of leadership that we need to be thinking about as an entire church. It has to happen at the local level, right, and we like to encourage and train and equip and coach people to do that at the local level. But we also need to be doing that at a national level too, at a district level, at a circuit level, right. I think all three of those types of things have to happen, where we are collaborating winsomely for those outcomes Brutally honest about the current reality, seeing a different vision of the future, building systems and alignment towards that future right.
Speaker 2:And the ULC is here. We're working with congregations of all different sizes right now. This is not a pejorative. Small congregations can work. I pray they do work from a place of strength and creativity and nimbleness, rather than scarcity and remembering nostalgically what once was and no longer is. It's too short. The days are too short for us to live with a victim mentality in our small churches or with a prideful mentality in our larger churches. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. Jack, closing comment.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I'm just going to say this, to emphasize this being big and small is not what's right. So we don't judge a church based on the fact that it's big or small. What we want to do is we want to see churches that are healthy. So if you're a small church, be a healthy small church. If you're a big church, be a healthy big church. And that means you know again, that really means how are we leading through the resources that God has given us in this time? How are we building culture? How are we creating a vision? How are we, you know, building in this time? How are we building culture? How are we creating a vision? How are we, you know, building the systems that make sense for the size of the church that we're at to create the healthiest future and to galvanize people to move forward in mission towards a healthier tomorrow? Right, amen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I pray this conversation was helpful for you. I pray pastors are talking about this. I pray pastors and churches are collaborating, dreaming new dreams, and I pray for leaders at every level in our synod to make God-pleasing decisions, resolutions, overtures as we head into the political season here in the LCMS, all for the advancement of the cause of Christ. Jesus loves his people, he loves his church and the gates of hell will not stand against the advancement of his big C church and I pray that the gates of hell will not stand against the advancement of of his big C church and I pray that the gates of hell uh, the advancement against the gates of hell includes includes many, many, many congregations in the LCMS United to make Jesus known. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Good work, jack.
Speaker 1:God bless, guys. You've been listening to lead time, a podcast of the unite leadership collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.