Mission Spokane servant leaders commissioned an initial church survey of Spokane County last year to discover the state of the harvest force that has responsibility for this harvest field. Begun in September 1998, the survey took a year to complete, collate with the population and dig out the implications. These are the promised results in summary.

The Church of Spokane:
362 Christian congregations in Spokane County.
(As of September 30, 1999)

These are the questions examined in this section:

We are currently worshiping in three hundred and sixty-two congregations in Spokane County: 185 in the city of Spokane and 177 in the rest of the county. 330 are Protestant (165 city; 165 county) and thirty-two are Catholic/Orthodox (20 city; 12 county).

What denominations are represented in Spokane County?
Our congregations identify themselves using 81 denomination-designations. Thirty-five of the eighty-one groupings only have one congregation in Spokane County. Eleven have two each. The ten denomination-designations that have the greatest number of congregations account for 181 (50%) of our 362 current congregations and 44,428 (63%) of our reported attendance of 70,224. Those with twenty or more congregations are Roman Catholic, Community Churches, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and Southern Baptist.

The eleven denomination-designations have reported attendance exceeding 2,000 represent 47% of our current congregations and 69% of reported 1997 attendance. The largest are Roman Catholic with 17,421; Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) with 4,763; Assembly of God with 3,668 and Community Churches with 3,640.

What percentage of our population is in weekly Christian worship services?
Our survey figures show there were a total of 358 Christian congregations in Spokane County in 1997. We have 1997 attendance figures on 326 congregations (91%) that reported a total average weekly-unduplicated attendance of 70,224 or 17% of the population. Protestant congregations reported 52,273 attendance (12.75% of the population). Catholic/Orthodox congregations, 17,951 (4.4% of the population). The average reported weekly attendance per congregation was 213. Catholic/Orthodox congregations averaged attendance of 665; Protestant congregations averaged 169.

Adding educated guesses of attendance in the 32 congregations that did not report resulted in an estimated total average weekly attendance figure of 75,589 during 1997 or 18.4% of the population.

Are the congregations in the city and county of Spokane growing? How much?
Two hundred and forty-six established congregations reported attendance figures for all three years requested: 1993, 1995 and 1997. During those five years, thirty-one of these congregations were plateaued and seventy-two declined. One hundred and forty-three congregations gained ground. Nineteen of the newer, smaller and immigrant congregations more than doubled in size. Nine larger congregations gained at least 200 in attendance.

There were 6,642 more people worshiping in these congregations in 1997 than in 1993. Congregations gained an average of twenty-seven persons at 6.75 per year. The total growth in attendance was 14% over four years, averaging 3.5% each year. Growth was faster in the county at 16% than in the city at 11%.

Which denominations are growing?
Twenty of the eighty-one denomination-designations (those with three or more congregations reporting) grew in attendance by at least the overall growth rate of 14% between 1993 and 1997. In most cases, the remarkably high percentage growth rates over 30% were in groups that have many young and/or small congregations where it is easier to gain a significant percentage increase than it is in older, larger congregations. In some cases, most of the growth was in one strong, larger congregation. The highest growth rate recorded was due in large part to transfer growth by immigration. Those leading in growth were Evangelical Baptists, Independent Baptists, Christian and Missionary Alliance and Church of God in Christ.

Some of the largest numerical growth, on the other hand, was in the established congregations. Fourteen denomination-designations reported growth of at least 200 persons between 1993 and 1997. The largest gains were in the PCUSA, Independent Congregations (Pentecostal and charismatic), Community Churches and Foursquare Gospel.

Nine clusters of denominations:
The eighty-one denomination-designations may be summarized as nine clusters:

Four clusters showed the greatest growth rates of about 25% in four years: Seventh Day, Methodist/Holiness/Nazarene, Pentecostal/Charismatic and Baptist.

The largest numerical growth was posted by the Pentecostal/Charismatic (2,059) and the Methodist/Holiness/Nazarene (1,139).

Is the Church of Spokane growing as a percentage of the population?
Even with 6,642 people added and 14% numerical growth from 1993 to 1997 in reporting congregations, we barely stayed ahead of population growth. Spokane County's population was 383,600 in 1993; 401,200 in 1995; 409,900 in 1997.

In 1993, reported average attendance in the 246 congregations was 12.5% of the population, 12.9% in 1995 and 13.3% in 1997. In other words, we were gaining only 0.2% each year compared to the growth of the population in our established congregations.

Are there enough congregations serving our overall population?
With three hundred and sixty-two congregations serving a population of 414,500, there is one congregation for every 1,145 persons in Spokane County. One rule of thumb recommends that there be a Christian congregation for every 1,000 persons so that every one is in close proximity to a worshiping community in his or her own language and culture. Groups which very likely need more congregations are the younger generation-Millenials, the poor, the divorced or widowed and the singles.

Are there sufficient congregations serving each ethnic-language-culture group?
Overall about 18% of Spokane County's population is in Christian worship on an average weekend. Are there an adequate number of congregations serving each of our culture, language and racial groups for the size of their populations?

Eleven congregations are serving 12-15,000 Slavic, Russian-speaking refugees. With 2,620 reported attendance in ten congregations averaging 262 persons, they are at least as churched as the majority population with between 17.5% and 22% worshiping.

Four congregations serving 11,821 Hispanics report about 0.035% of the Hispanics attending.

Seven congregations are serving more than 10,000 Asians (four Korean, one Japanese, one Chinese and one Hmong) with an average attendance of 68 reported for an attendance of 0.03%.

One congregation reports that it is predominantly Native American with an attendance of 40. Another multi-ethnic congregation may double the number of First Nations people in attendance, which would still be only 0.015% in worship.

Fourteen congregations that are predominantly African-American (with a reported average attendance of 83) plus four multi-ethnic congregations serve a population of 6,468. An estimate of average weekly attendance in all of the congregations is 1,305 or 20%.

There have been many new churches planted in recent years.
One very bright note is that there were 37 new congregations planted between 1993 and 1997. By 1995, the earlier church plants reported 1,427 in worship (1,290 in the city, 137 county), by 1997, 4,152 (2,237 in the city, 1,915 county). With these additions, reported worship attendance was 13.2% of the population in 1995 and 14.3% in 1997. There was a one-percent gain in attendance entirely because new congregations had been planted.

Sadly, even with the additions in the new churches, our attendance growth rate as a percentage of the population was still only 0.458% per year. We were making progress, but gaining little ground.

How are we doing at planting churches at the present time?
By the end of 1999, at least eleven new congregations will have been started this year in Spokane County. There were four new congregations planted in 1998, fourteen in 1997, seven in 1996, twelve in 1995, five in 1994 and ten in 1993 for a total of sixty-three. During the same time period we also lost a number of congregations. At least eight congregations have either merged or closed during 1998 and 1999, including three of the new congregations.

Conclusions
We are able to draw some important conclusions from the statistics stated above.

1. None of our congregations working alone is winning a significant percentage of the population of Spokane County. Nor is any denomination working alone. Nor is any cluster of denominations taken together. The cluster making the best progress is growing at 0.091% compared to the population each year. It would take that cluster of seventy-one congregations almost 110 years at that rate to win ten percent of the population of Spokane County.

2. Taken all together (all of our denominational clusters and all of our new church plants between 1993 and 1997) we were gaining 0.46% compared to the population each year. If the worshiping Church of Spokane (including all 358 congregations in Spokane County in 1997) is currently 18.4% of the county's population as we estimated, at this rate it would take almost 69 years for all of us working together to become 50% of the population in Christian worship.

3. If this growth rate is unacceptable and if the Church of Spokane were to choose to seriously pursue the completion of the Great Commission in Spokane County, then we would have to say, "It is time to do things differently than we have been!"

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Report submitted by Dan Grether on behalf of the Mission Spokane Servant Leaders, September 30, 1999. For more information: 509-468-4855 or dgrether@soar.com.