About

What Is The Outreach 100?

The Outreach 100 Fastest-Growing and Largest Churches study is a collaboration between Outreach magazine and our friends at Lifeway Research and the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. It's our attempt to identify and learn from the country's fastest-growing and largest churches in order to discover principles that can be adapted for thriving churches of every size.

What Is Your Methodology for Fastest-Growing Churches?

Each year, the Lifeway Research team surveys churches, verifies the numbers, calculates the results and compiles the lists. In preparation for this annual report, they solicited participation from more than 10,000 churches. Through the process, they were contacted multiple times by email and fax. This is a self-reported survey, based on attendance averages, not membership. Churches that participated answered questions about their 2024 in-person, weekend attendance averages for February and March as compared to their 2023 numbers. The final Fastest-Growing rankings reflect an average of numerical gain and percentage gain.

What Is Your Methodology for Largest Churches?

To provide as complete of a list as possible for the Largest Churches, in addition to the Lifeway Research survey, we drew numbers from Hartford Institute for Religion Research—which is not a survey, but is secondary research drawn from publicly available attendance data. This included the church's own website, year-end reports, public interviews and attendance reporting in sermons online. We integrated that public data with the self-reported survey from Lifeway. Whenever the survey and the public data reported on the same church, we reported the church's response to the survey. Although we go to great lengths to confirm data, the information is reported by pastors, staff or church officers, or was publicly available at the time the information was collected. The timing of these attendance estimates varies. As such, the reporting reflects their perception and the attendance figures they have published on the internet or disclosed in services. And, of course, this is a survey (for those who responded) or a publicly available number (for those on the Hartford site, HIRR.Hartsem.edu ). This is not an investigation of those numbers, but is a survey and list.

Why don't I see ________ Church on the list?

We seek the broadest possible participation from evangelical Protestant churches, but since the Outreach 100 is not an independent investigation, there are omissions. Some churches chose not to respond to multiple interview and data requests for a variety of reasons. Others did not make their attendance data publicly available online. If you notice the absence of a high-profile evangelical church, chances are they were invited to participate, but opted out. As public attendance data is concerned, a number of large churches disclosed their membership, but not their attendance, or reported their attendance as a combination of both in-person and online. (The Outreach 100 only reports in-person attendance data.) For those reasons, a church may not appear.

What's the purpose of the Outreach 100?

Since 2003, Outreach has tracked the Fastest-Growing and Largest churches in America, not because we believe they are special or exceptional—God works through smaller, faithful churches in powerful ways that transcend their numbers—but because we want to celebrate what the numbers represent: lives that are being transformed by the beautiful truth of the gospel. The numbers we count and the stories we tell are meant to inspire churches of all sizes that our great Savior continues to build his church through the power of his Spirit, just as he has since its earliest days in the Book of Acts, and just as he continues to work through your church to bless your own community today. If your church would like to participate in future Outreach 100 surveys, please email researchteam@lifeway.com.