Let me tell you what these numbers actually mean. There are several columns there. There is the “Range.” There is the “Number of Churches and Attendance.” There is the “Number of Churches and Members.” And then, there is the “Number of Churches and Adherents.” Then you notice this range of membership going from over 3,000 at the top all the way down to the bottom which shows congregations between 1 and 49. These numbers were published in the year 2000, so this information is a few years old, now. But, what it tells us is that in that timeframe, in the late 1990’s when this information was compiled, there were 2 congregations that had attendance over 3,000, and the total of those 2 congregation’s attendance was 6,740. And then, there were 4 congregations that had members—they showed up membership of over 3,000, and the total of membership for those 4 congregations was 14,039. And then the table shows 4 congregations that had adherents.

Now, what’s the difference between attendance, membership and adherents? Well, simply this: We publish every week in our bulletin the attendance from our Sunday morning worship service. For us, we’ve been averaging around 240 to 250, around that number, in attendance. When we gave the information that was compiled to put all of this together… And by the way, we’re included in this table. But, we gave them our average attendance on Sunday morning. And then, there is another number we gave them, and that is our membership. Well, if you go through our directory, then you can sort of count there and say, “Okay, there are about this many members [those who have placed their membership] of the Northeast congregation.” And then, adherents are people who have not necessarily identified themselves as members, but they are regular in their attendance. And every congregation, or the majority of congregations, has some people like that. We have here in this congregation probably 30 to 40 people who are here on a regular basis, who participate in the worship, but have never identified [placed their membership] with the congregation. We sort of consider them to be “regular visitors.” They’re welcome here, but that’s their desire; it’s not because we have kept them from placing membership; it’s not because we don’t want them to identify with us, but that’s their choice. They prefer to do that.

Well, again, so that’s the numbers here that we’re looking at. And then, the Range: We see that within the churches of Christ are these very large congregations. There are really very few. When you get down to somewhere there around 300 to 399 and 200 to 299, we see that there are a good number of congregations that are around that size; but then look how that size jumps when you get down to the 100 to 199, and then the 50 to 99. You see that there are 2,407 congregations in the 100 to 199 membership range, and 3,712 congregations in the 50 to 99 membership range. And then, even down at the very last one, the less that 50 membership range, there are over 5,400 congregations.

Now, how accurate are these numbers. Well, they are only as accurate as the input. It’s like everything else. If the input is flawed, then the numbers will be flawed. There are two or three of our brethren who pay a lot of attention to this: Brother Flavil Yeakley is one, and Brother Mac Lynn—he’s now retired from the faculty at David Lipscomb University—but they are a couple of the men who really keep their finger on the pulse of growth, the size of congregations, and so on.

But, isn’t it interesting to see that we have so many congregations in our brotherhood that are of such small size? Now, what does that tell us? Well, it reminds us that one of the things that we talked about was some of the changes that took place in the 1960’s, this continued urbanization, the fact that, as one writer put it, “the church moved across the tracks,” so to speak; it went from a little clapboard buildings—one-room buildings that, you know, were out on the edge of town somewhere; and they moved into the urban area; moved into the cities; built big buildings, and so on. And that was part of the growth and development of the church in the 1960’s. However…however, the character of the church, we see, is still very much dependent on small, not always rural congregations. In fact, we have one or two congregations here in our community that would fit into this last category here, between the 1 and the 49 (well, maybe just one now). And so, these small congregations are not necessarily all out on the edge of town, or out in the country somewhere—many of them are—but there are some in urban areas. So, anyway, I thought that those numbers were interesting and I wanted to share those with you.