Charts: Ten Largest Churches in America

In Matthew 18:20, Jesus is quoted as saying, “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”
But you’d never know that by the American obsession with church size.
Image: Journey Online, Australia (click to link)

The Outreach Magazine list is always considered the most authoritative, but only includes participating churches. Nonetheless, here’s how it looked in 2016:

1. North Point (Atlanta) 39,056 (Andy Stanley)
2. Church of the Highlands (Birmingham) 38,346 (Chris Hodges)
3. NewSpring (Anderson) 33,761 (vacant)
4. Gateway (South Lake) 28,399 (Robert Morris)
5. Saddleback (Orange County) 25,612 (Rick Warren)
6. Willow Creek (NW Chicago) 25,371 (Bill Hybels/Steve Carter)
7. Christ’s Church of the Valley (Peoria, AZ) 24,108 (Donald J. Wilson)
8. Christ Fellowship (Palm Beach) 23,845 (Todd Mullins)
9. Southeast Christian (Louisville) 23,799 (Dave Stone/Kyle Idleman)
10. Crossroads (Cincinnati) 22,458 (Brian Tome)

So right away many of you noticed that Lakewood (Joel Osteen) and LifeChurch (Craig Groeschel) are missing. That’s the problem with this list. It only lists churches that completed Outreach’s full survey. They charge money for their reports, and that’s disturbing because almost by definition, the lists are incomplete.

Go to The Christian Post and you’ll find what might be a better list, but it doesn’t have the data:

1. Lakewood
2. Willow Creek
3. LifeChurch (North Oklahama City; Craig Groeschel)
4. North Point
5. Saddleback
6. Gateway
7. Shadow Mountain (San Diego; David Jeremiah)
8. New Season (Sacramento; Samuel Rodriguez)
9. Prestonwood Baptist (Plano, TX; Jack Graham)
10. The Rock (San Diego; Miles McPherson)

Regular readers here will notice that there are many churches I would consider to be presently more influential that don’t make these attendance-based lists.

Some readers here would be able to rattle off a list like this off the top of their heads. What I thought would be really interesting would be to list the Top Ten Catholic Churches in the US by attendance. Such a list proved elusive. At least one branch of Christianity isn’t focused on numbers.  Other churches on similar lists include Woodlands (Kerry Shook),  Potter’s House (T.D. Jakes) and Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale (Bob Coy).

If you want to sort by denomination, or state, this list at the Hartford Institute is a good one to know about. They also have an alphabetical Canadian list, but I’m not sure when it was last updated.

Image: Christianity Today (click to link)