Problem with Counting Chrisitans

Actually, there are two problems with counting Christians: what exactly is a “Christian” and how does one count them?

Defining a Christian is a pricklier problem than you would assume.  I recall a meeting that I attended about a year ago where this subject came up.  The dozen of us in attendance all had similar backgrounds- we were all Westerners (Europeans and North Americans) working with evangelical churches in Europe.  After ninety minutes of discussion, our group was still very far from a commonly agreeable definition.  Every time we approached consensus, a member of our group would point out that the proposed definition would include a particular group that generally had a theology that they found disagreeable.  The focus of deliberation was clear.  Who had the “right” beliefs to make it into heaven?  After all, this is an important question for a group dedicated to seeing that people would become convinced of a certain set of beliefs in order to be saved.

Nearly all of the current research generated by the missions community actually sidesteps the issue by measuring something different: church attendance and church membership.  Though most of the more serious research that I have read is careful to state that attendance or membership is being measured, the missions practitioner often walks away equating these numbers with the number of born-again Christians in a given area.  In other words, affiliation is equivalent to salvation.  Is this good?  Wasn’t this Martin Luther’s contention with the existing church five hundred years ago?

Affiliation is really just one of many ways of defining “Christian”.  In North America, the Barna Group chooses to define born-again Christians as someone who would agree with the following two statements:

• I have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in my life today.
• When I die, I will go to Heaven because I have confessed my sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as my savior.

This reflects about 40% of the U.S. population.[1]  Do 40% of the people in America actually follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?  Could it be so high while there is so much crime, poverty, and violence in America today?

I had to face this difficult issue head-on in my own recent research study, the European Spiritual Estimate, ESE.  In this study, I chose to measure intentionality instead of belief or affiliation.  The ESE considers Christians at two levels: culturally affiliated Christians and Gospel-oriented Christians.  This first category is usually a large number in Western society as it simply includes anyone who would call themselves “Christian”.  In my own study, it is no surprise that 72.7% of Europeans would label themselves as “Christians”.  The second category includes all who would indicate that they follow Jesus Christ and are actively concerned about the people in their community and their relationship with Jesus Christ.  These are people that are concerned about the spiritual destiny of others.  Perhaps this value is closer to what we ought to measure.  But is this definition even enough?  After all, isn’t the “road to Hell paved with good intentions[2]?”

Maybe an even better measure would be right activities instead of right beliefs or intentions.  How many people have shared their faith?  How many have discipled someone else?  But this approach raises a whole new set of questions.  Which activities are the right ones to measure?

Even if we are able to define “Christian” with some degree of satisfaction, we are still faced with that second issue: how do you count them? 

In most current missions research, the method of counting is a product of what the researcher is measuring.  Counting church attendance or membership simply requires consulting a denomination’s internal data.  Because this is usually a very time consuming process, the researcher also needs to make the additional assumption that the information will remain the same over a long period of time- at least the lifetime of the study as well as the time until a new study is done.  From my experience, this is usually a five year period.  Is it likely that this type of information will be true for five years?  Will it even be true after one year?