Outreach magazine has compiled statistics on the largest and fastest growing churches in the U.S. A number of cities and states have multiple churches on the list. Wisconsin has only one.
The only “mega-church” in the Badger state, according to Outreach magazine, is Elmbrook Church in surburban Milwaukee.
According to the magazine, Elmbrook Church in Brookfield ranks 73rd, with a Sunday attendance of 7,000. That’s quite a ways behind Lakewood Church in Houston TX, which is number one with 43,500 attendance. Willow Creek Church in South Barrington Illinois, just south of the border, ranks fourth with 24,000 attendance. Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, ranks sixth with 18,763 attendance. Total attendance in all of the top 100 churches, 1,012,832.
Madison’s largest church is without question Blackhawk Church, which three years ago moved into a new building just beyond the western edge of the city, to accommodate its significant growth over the past decade. Sunday attendance is reported at 4,700, according to a recent news report on Blackhawk’s addition of new Sunday morning services at a second location, the Majestic Theater downtown.
Longtime church members will remember a small building on Blackhawk Avenue, just off University, which was built when the Evangelical Free Church congregation started 45 years ago. It was sold to another congregation when the move was made to a larger facility on Whitney Way. The Whitney Way church was also sold to another congregation when the current building on Brader Way was completed in 2007.
The rest of the statistics on the largest and fastest growing churchs in the U.S. can be viewed in this PDF document:
http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/files/lwcF_corp_news_LWR_Outreach100_2010.pdf
By way of background, Outreach explains: “The listings are based on February and March weekend attendance averages, not membership. The Largest list includes churches of more than 5,500. The Fastest-Growing list includes churches with attendance greater than 1,000, a numerical gain of 250 or more, and a percentage gain of at least 3 percent.”
Outreach adds: “The Outreach 100 is not so much about numbers as it is the individuals those numbers represent—people who have found hope in Christ, and the churches pointing them toward to Him. If we glean insight from those churches and catch something of their passion for outreach, this special issue will have fulfilled its purpose.”