Living next door to Wheaton, IL, the “official” town with the most churches per capita in the US, this little story caught me by surprise.
“They are not the words one expects to hear from a politician or a Southerner, and Leonard Scarcella is both: “Our city has an excessive number of churches.”
Scarcella is mayor of this Houston-area community, which has 51 churches and other religious institutions packed into its 7 square miles. With some 300 undeveloped, potentially revenue-producing acres left in Stafford, officials are scrambling to find a legal way to keep more tax-exempt churches from building here.”
Can’t say I know what to do with this, other than it fascinates me. On one hand, predictions are that up to 50% of Christian churches will close in the next 20 years and then you have this. I’m not it says much for our effectiveness as missionaries as it does as building contractors.
You can find the full story here.
That comes to an average of 1 church for every 377 people. In the Chicago area there is an average of one for every 1400 people. So that is a very churched area. But at the same time, the average church in the US has less than 200 people, so just over half of people in this town are members or regular attenders at one of the gatherings.
@adam:
Where are these statistics from? (I’m not challening the accuracy, I’m interested in reading more.)
[…] een tremendous development there and things have changed remarkably. Tom Lyberg (from the Wired Jesus Podcast/Blog) postmodernly notes: Can’t say I know what to do with this, other th […]
Am I the only one posing here who has actually been to Stafford, TX?
I went to school there at one point.
There are 51 houses of worship, but only 45 are churches.
There are 6 houses of worship for other religions.