Ethnic Churches | Nazarene Presence in the Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion (1898-2017)

One of the surprising insights from this data is that the largest ethnic demographic among churches in this megaregion are Hispanic. One would have expected Black/African-American. 

About 9% of the membership is found in an ethnic church, which comprises about 15% of the churches.

Only one out of five (21%) ethnic churches have more than 75 in worship attendance, or a sustainable congregation that would be able to pay for space, a senior pastor, and missional endeavors. I do not think this kind of church entity is the goal, necessarily, and if it is not then more organic approaches to church multiplication will need to be considered. This is not just the situation among ethnic churches but across the board among all types of church demographics.

Two-thirds of the ethnically-designated congregations are in the North Carolina, South Carolina,, Tennessee and Mississippi.  Opinion alert: I think that the ethnic designation needs to be dropped. I would favor a way for local church pastors to report churches by how many languages are spoken rather than by ethnicity or race. 

Resources

• Church Closings | Piedmont Atlantic 
• Organized Churches| Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion
• Pastors | Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion
• Women in Ministry | Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion
• Other U.S. Megaregions