On the front page of @CNN and the @drudgereport right now: “A Looming ‘A Tsunami’ of Church Closings is Poised to Remake America” by @JohnBlakeCNN. (Link in the replies.) But there is no evidence—cited in the article or in the actual data—that something like a tsunami of church closings is coming. The data points to decline. But it is slow decline and churn, not a tsunami. And its headline does not address church planting—and it also confuses closings with property changes. We actually have some real data on closing and starts. According to a @LifewayResearch project released this year—which updates research we started when I was there more than a decade ago—the 2024 numbers were: • 3,800 new Protestant churches opened/started (and hundreds more if you include new multisite campuses) • 4,000 Protestant churches closed • Net change: –200 churches So, it’s not 10,000 churches disappearing a year, as suggested in the article. And it’s not a tsunami. To be fair, editors—not authors—generally choose headlines. But most people will only see the headline, and this one is unhelpful for sure, and misleading at worst. Lifeway Research has conducted this same basic project for more than a decade. (Full disclosure: I created the project over a decade ago. See their full methodology at their website.) And this brings me to another number that gets repeated a lot: the claim that 100,000 churches are going to close. I confess that I get a little frustrated seeing the “100,000 churches” figure thrown around so widely, because it appears in different places with different definitions and different timelines. But there’s an important distinction here. The 100,000 figure associated with Mark Elsdon’s Gone for Good? is generally a projection that as many as 100,000 church buildings or properties could be sold or repurposed, not that 100,000 congregations will necessarily close. Those are not the same thing. Elsdon himself has described the projection this way publicly, while acknowledging that the actual number could be half—or even less—of that estimate. Yet the 100,000 figure has increasingly been repeated as if researchers have established that 100,000 congregations are about to close. I have not been able to find underlying data that substantiates that claim. And a projection repeated often enough does not become data simply because it has been widely quoted. If there is solid data behind an estimate of 100,000 congregations closing, I’d genuinely like to see it. There’s another data issue in the CNN article, but in the other direction. The article cites Hartford Institute for Religion Research data, stating, “For the first time in 25 years, the number of people attending in-person worship in the US has increased.” But that’s not what the study found. The Hartford research does not show an increase in the total number of Americans attending church. It shows an increase in the median in-person worship attendance of the congregations studied, from its previous levels to 70. Those are very different things. In fact, Hartford itself cautions that much of the observed growth reflects “internal reshuffling rather than an expansion of religious participation overall.” So, no, the Hartford study does not demonstrate that more Americans are attending church. It tells us that median attendance among the congregations studied has increased. (And, Hartford, your headline could be clearer too.) Shocking headlines get clicks. But they don’t always help us understand what is actually happening. Here’s what I think is happening. There will be a lot of empty historic church buildings in the years ahead. Many older and smaller congregations are struggling, and some will close. Mainline Protestantism, in particular, continues to face significant institutional decline. At the same time, there will be a lot of new churches—particularly immigrant, ethnic, and church-planting congregations—that don’t own buildings at all. They’ll meet in schools, theaters, community centers, storefronts, and other churches’ facilities. So, yes, there will likely be lots of church buildings to sell or repurpose. But buildings changing hands and congregations disappearing are not the same thing. And Blake’s article actually points some of this out. I’m afraid, however, that nuance will get lost beneath the headline and some of the unsupported statistical claims. The American church landscape is changing. There is real decline in some places and real growth in others. Churches are closing, merging, being planted, and going multisite. People are shifting between congregations. And the kinds of churches Americans attend—and the buildings in which they meet—are changing. That is a significant story, and one worth telling accurately. I hope CNN will consider additional articles clarifying and explaining the full story. The underlying story is important enough that it doesn’t need exaggerated statistics or a “tsunami” headline to make it compelling. And, @CNN, this would be a great time to add a full time religion reporter like the old days. Regardless, A net decline of roughly 200 Protestant churches in a year is not a “tsunami” of church closings. It's decline, but mostly it is churn, older churches being replaced by young (and more diverse) ones. And, before you ask, adding Catholic congregations does not remotely bridge the gap between the documented Protestant numbers and claims of 10,000 closures a year. Catholic parishes represent a relatively small share of the total U.S. congregation count. The story is change, transition, and some real decline—not the wholesale collapse one might infer from the headline. In a time when some are claiming revival where the data doesn’t support it, while others are claiming collapse when the data doesn’t support that either, we’d do well to stick to the facts. Facts are our friends, folks.