Sam Rainer's Blog

We are living in a lonely nation and serving in quiet churches.

Our nation and our churches are operating at two deficits:

I will first explain the problem, then how I believe sports and recreation ministries can solve both.

The Collapse of Social Capital in Society

So, what is social capital? Social capital is the “relational glue” that enables a neighborhood, team, church, o...

Church attendance in America is being propped up by one unusually large generation: the Baby Boomers. That is not conjecture. It is a demographic reality.

Ryan Burge’s analysis of denominational age structures shows that Boomers comprise roughly 40–50% of adult membership in many Protestant denominations, even though they represent only about 20% of the U.S. adult population. In other words, Boomers are about twice as prominent in churches as they are in society at large. This imbalance explains...

We’re hearing it more at Church Answers. Church leaders are communicating, “We are not doing discipleship well.” It’s not due to neglect so much as to an outdated strategy. Most discipleship systems in North American churches were built for an era when people attended weekly, married younger, had more stable family rhythms, and Baby Boomers formed the backbone of both volunteering and giving.

That world is fading. Attendance frequency is declining, household formation is delayed and stressed, an...

The debate over women in ministry is often shaped by top leaders in denominations. But what does the typical person in the pew actually believe? Church Answers Research wanted to look beyond official doctrinal positions and leadership-level debates to understand the views of everyday congregants, especially those who identify as Bible-believing Christians. Our goal was not simply to ask what denominational leaders have said, but to discover how people in local churches think about women in minis...

The headline is the kind many church leaders have been waiting to see: Church worship attendance is up for the first time in decades. According to the latest report from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, median in-person worship attendance has increased from 65 people to 70 people since just before the pandemic. That is only five people. But statistically, it represents a 7.7% increase. After years of decline, disruption, closures, and post-pandemic uncertainty, a five-person increas...

Denominations do not exist apart from their churches. They reflect the health of the congregations within them. When more churches are healthy than unhealthy, the denomination tends to have strategic capacity. When more churches are unhealthy than healthy, denominational leaders are pushed into triage mode rather than long-term leadership.

That dynamic is increasingly evident in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The denomination’s challenges are not merely institutional. They are congregati...

I blame Margaret for everything.

One Sunday stands out. Our student ministry brought in a guest worship leader. The volume was too loud, and the music selection was too metal. Margaret was in the back watching. She saw me approaching the sound booth and grabbed my arm, staring intently at me.

She knew exactly what I was about to do.

“Margaret, you’ve got to let me go so I can tell them to turn it down.”

“You will do no such thing, pastor.”

“They’re headbanging.”

“No, Samuel Solomon,” using my fi...

About 80% of churches are either declining or plateaued. We should celebrate the 20% that are growing, but this post is about the larger group. Struggling established churches are notorious for hanging on—not for years, but for decades. How is it that some churches can remain on life support for so long? The reasons are varied and, to some degree, contextual, but one demographic factor stands out.

Most established churches naturally settle into a mode of demographic replacement.

Assuming a churc...

If you pastor a church of any size, you must manage the organization, which involves a combination of technical and cultural issues. Technical matters—such as facilities management, curriculum selection, and program coordination—require specific expertise, but can often be handled by a single leader or a committee. Cultural issues, on the other hand, are pervasive to the organization and cannot be solved by technical expertise. Instead, these issues involve general acceptance by everyone.

There’...

Planning for Easter Sunday raises a strategic question: should this service look and feel bigger and more energetic, or should it resemble the regular rhythm of worship? Both approaches have advantages and downsides. Because Easter is often the highest-attended Sunday of the year, how leaders answer this question shapes not only the experience of that day, but also what first-time and returning guests assume about the life of the church.

The Special Production Strategy

A “special” Easter service...