The American Church in Crisis

Groundbreaking Research Based on a National Database of over 200,000 Churches

By: David T. Olson

Narrated by: James Adams

Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

Groundbreaking research based on a national database of over 200,000 churches shows that the overall United States population is growing faster than the church. The director of the American Church Research Project, Dave Olson, has worked to analyze church attendance, showing that it is virtually unchanged from 15 years ago - while our population has grown by 52 million people.

What does this mean for you, your church, and the future of Christianity in North America? The American Church in Crisis offers unprecedented access to data that helps you understand the state of the church today. “We live in a world that is post-Christian, postmodern, and multiethnic, whether we realize it or not,” says the author. This book not only gives a realistic picture that confirms hunches and explodes myths, but it provides insight into how the church must change to reach a new and changed world with the hope of the gospel.

Listeners will find a richly textured mosaic with optimistic and challenging stories. Questions for discussion accompany the chapters.

©2008 David T. Olson (P)2009 Zondervan

Good job of revealing the crisis.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Yes. It definitely showed some of the problems with the American church and raised my awareness that we need to ask why these things are happening. Without knowing the problems we have in the American church it is impossible to begin to fix them. Therefore, as the pastor of Creekside Bible Church, it was good to see the statistics so that we can continue to strive towards discipling people.

On the flip side, the author made an attempt at solving the problems. This took the latter part of the book and really was not very informative. This aspect of the book seemed far less thought out than the statistical data that drove home the crisis shown in the first part of the book.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

The most interesting aspect of the story was statistical data about the American church. It was fascinating to see the data on different types of churches.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

It was weird having a guy narrate with a British accent when the book was about the church in America. I'm not sure why they did this. The author is from Minnesota and the British accent took away from the voice of the book.

Could you see The American Church in Crisis being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

No. This is definitely not THAT type of book. Perhaps a documentary could be loosely based on its contents.

Any additional comments?

I really enjoyed most of the book, but the part focused on a solution left a lot to be wanting. The data was straightforward and the author did a good job of making a book no numbers interesting enough to finish.