Four Trends in 2025: Storms or Opportunities

Every year I look for the “experts” to predict the latest trends in culture and the church.  Will it be a good year or a bad year in their crystal balls.  Over the years these futurists have sometimes been right and sometimes wrong but it always gets me looking to the future and that is a good thing.

So with that disclaimer let me share what I’ve found several futurist saying about 2025.

1. Greater receptivity to the gospel by Gen Z. 

Those young adults and teenagers born between 1997 and 2012 comprise the group commonly known as Gen Z. Our research at Church Answers, as well as work done by Ryan Burge and others, at least implies that Gen Z is more receptive to the gospel. The irony is that there is also evidence that Gen Z is leaving the church.  So can both things be true at the same time?

Of course.  It seems to me that it is both an opportunity and a potential storm on the horizon.  Gen Z is searching and if you can help them find purpose and meaning they will stay.  But they are not a patient generation.  They want to see the church as Jesus intended it, salt and light, in the community.  How will we intentionally reach out to a hungering generation?

The words of Jesus in Matthew 9:37-38 are still powerfully relevant today: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields’” (NLT).

Is this a storm or opportunity?

2. Approximately 15,000 churches in America will no longer be able to pay a full-time pastor. 

Of the 375,000 congregations in the U. S., the estimate is that four percent of them will no longer have the funds to compensate a full-time pastor.  I confess I see and hear this frequently in my work as a personal coach and organizational consultant. This shift is not enormous, but might be more significant. Since over one-half of churches today do not have the budget to pay full-time pastors, we can easily see the part-time pastor model becoming the dominant model.

How will local churches and denominations adapt to this new reality?  I think my own United Methodist tradition could learn from our past.  The Circuit Rider went from town to town establishing congregations, training people to do the work of ministry, and then moving on to the next town.  Could the future of the Church be something similar where the laity take seriously their call to be ministers and the clergy see their role as chief trainer and see empowering the laity as their job?  Will denominations put a greater emphasis on leadership development and discipleship and help local churches do both effectively and economically? How will we help local churches prepare for this transition to a part-time pastor model? It is already the model in a majority of churches. It will soon become the dominant model if the futurist are correct.

Is this a storm or opportunity?

3. The median time a church will have between pastors will be longer than 18 months. 

This was an interesting prediction I saw.  In the Methodist tradition you have, in the past, had a guarantee of a pastor.  You were spared the whole “search” model of other denominations but the trend seems to be more churches not able to support, or pastors not available to fill, all the openings. Will the role of the interim pastor be even more critical in 2025. Will denominations and/or networks be prepared to resource co-vocational churches, circuit-rider churches, and interim churches to be relevant to the congregations they serve. When I was appointed to a single point charge a friend said to me, “You found the proverbial golden goose.”  How will fewer “golden goose churches” effect the number of pastors who enter ministry or consider it a legitimate option in their life?  How will congregational expectations of their pastor have to evolve as more multi-point or part-time pastors become the norm?

Is this a storm or opportunity?

4. About 15,000 churches will close.

Seeing this prediction made my heart break.  I love the local church and vehemently believe every church has the potential to grow but many will not. Many of these churches held on tenaciously, but the number of congregations facing imminent closure has grown. For the first time in modern church history, 15,000 of the churches will cease to exist in a period of one year. It is projected that 15,000 churches will close and that 15,000 will move from full-time pastors to part-time pastors. Those 30,000 churches represent about one out of twelve existing churches. The change is dramatic.

The flip-side of that prediction is that far fewer churches will be started in 2025 then will close.  We know new churches are more effective at reaching new people and yet we struggle to start new churches.  Will denominations find a way to start more new churches despite smaller amounts of money coming into their offices?  How might the way we start new churches or new venues change to provide the number of new churches we need to reach an increasingly secular audience? Some point to the growth of mega churches as the answer but those churches are not growing by confessions of faith but more by transfer growth.  Is there a way to change that trend in large churches?

Is this a storm or opportunity?

I had a friend describe himself as a pess-optimist.  He said, “I’m a realist but I’m hopeful.”  Though the challenges are significant, I remain an obnoxious optimist about the future of congregations in America. I do believe we are in a time of major change at every level of society but this is not the first time the church has had to move through great change and it will not be the last time.  What do you think?  Are you a pessimistic optimist…optimistic pessimist…or something else?