American visitors to Japan primarily visit Tokyo, and perhaps Kyoto. They see a thriving metropolis and assume all is well. They never see the reality of the hinterland. Similarly, when a newcomer arrives in a community and asks for church references, they are likely to be steered to the town’s thriving churches. I see this in my community. And who are the most visible and influential leaders in evangelicalism? Typically the people who run the largest and most successful churches.

What happens when the population falls?

This isn’t just a hypothetical scenario. Many countries around the world are losing population. Others are projected to. Even in the United States, which will likely keep growing, in two thirds of counties more people are dying than being born. Over 1,200 counties are already losing population. Our falling birth rates mean that at a minimum we will be seeing demographic weakness going forward.

How will this affect the country and churches?

One general rule is: decline produces concentration.

By that, I mean that as population, or the economy or something else, goes into decline, people and activity pool into a limited number of successful places.

For example, during the dotcom era, lots of cities boasted of having tech startup scenes. Chicago was going to be the “Silicon Prairie” for example. But when dotcom crash happened, virtually all of these got wiped out, and the industry reconcentrated in Silicon Valley and its traditional hubs. A true tech crash today would likely have the same effect on many startup communities around America.

If you look at the American Rust Belt, which lost enormous amounts of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s and 80s, you see states where growth and success have pooled into a handful of successful places like Columbus in Ohio or Indianapolis in Indiana, with much of the rest of it continuing in decline and malaise.

The same thing happens with population loss. When a country starts losing population, it doesn’t lose it evenly. Instead, peripheral or other areas with some sort of challenge are affected first and worst. As their populations age and opportunity declines, young people actively leave and move to places that are still vibrant, typically a big city and often the capital.

Hence in Japan many towns have already disappeared while Tokyo continued growing for many years after Japan started losing population (though even Tokyo is now shrinking). This is a pattern we should expect to see repeated in many other places.

Paradoxically, decline can actually be good for the metropole. Indianapolis never really took off as a growth city until the rest of Indiana went into decline in the 1970s. The city likes to attribute its success to great leadership and good decisions. There was some of that. But I don’t think it’s any accident that Indy’s trajectory took a turn for the better just as the Rust Belt era was hitting the rest of the state hard.

The same phenomenon is going to hit churches as demographics weaken and adherence to Christianity continues to decline. As churches shrink, get older in average age, and struggle to reinvent themselves, some congregants will stay until the end but many others, especially younger people, will leave for more vibrant congregations.

This decline of Christianity will tend to reward well-resourced congregations with very compelling pastors. Many of these will be megachurches. Indeed, we see that the suburban megachurch phenomenon is still thriving today. Indianapolis has several of these, with thousands of members each.

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