Understanding the Situation

State of the the Church 2020

It’s really easy to focus on our current situation and our own small circle of believers when planning for needs. However, this would be a disservice to that large number of people in our communities who don’t come to church, who don’t identify as Christians but who are suffering from the anxiety and worries resulting from the world and the issues that surround us.

One place to look for help is the Barna Group, who have put a lot of work into understanding the landscape that we exist in as church in a report called State of the Church 2020. There is a focus on the American church but there are still a lot of lessons that can be learned and ideas that can be shared.

It was released just as COVID-19 was starting to take hold, and they were unaware when they were writing it just how timely this research would be.

“We dreamed of this State of the Church 2020 project which would really try to help the Church understand its place in a changing culture, but we had no idea how fast and how significant that would look in this real-time disruption.”

David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group