Largest Churches
The shape of the American megachurch is constantly shifting.
What are the churches at the forefront of the movement and how are they innovating?
Each year, the Lifeway Research team surveys churches, verifies the numbers, calculates the results and compiles the list. In preparation for this annual report, they solicited participation from more than 10,000 churches. Through the process, the churches 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 2026 in-person, weekend attendance averages for February and March.
To provide as complete a list as possible for the Largest Churches, in addition to the self-reported Lifeway Research survey, we partner with Hartford Institute for Religion Research—sourcing attendance data from secondary research that is publicly available. This includes 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 Lifeway 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. Because of this, the recency of these attendance estimates varies. As such, the reporting reflects their perception and the last-reported attendance figures they have published on the internet or disclosed in services. This is a survey (for those who responded) or a publicly available attendance number (for those on the Hartford site, HIRR.Hartsem.edu), not an investigation of those numbers.
Explore the Outreach 100 study and how your church can participate in the coming years »
