Why Bragging About Evangelistic Attendance Misses the Point
Let’s talk numbers.
David Trim, Director of the SDA Archives, shared a report during the 2025 GC session that shed light on Adventist retention statistics. And this is what he reported: Since 1965, over 47 million people have joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Nearly half—over 20 million—have walked away. That’s a 43% net loss. More than 4 out of every 10 members are gone.
Now sit with that for a minute.
We are hemorrhaging people almost as fast as we reach them. And yet somehow, every time an evangelistic campaign gets a full tent or racks up baptism numbers, we’re patting ourselves on the back like the mission is complete.
It’s not.
You can pack a room with good marketing. You can fill a church with a charismatic speaker. You can stir emotion, generate hype, and spark short-term conviction. But none of that guarantees transformation. None of that equals spiritual maturity. None of that builds the Church.
The Church doesn’t grow by events. It grows by relationships.
Jesus didn’t say, “Go therefore and host evangelistic series.” He said, “Make disciples.” That means walking with people. Teaching them how to follow. Showing them what grace looks like with skin on. And sticking around when the water in the baptistry dries up.
But most SDA churches don’t have a plan for that. We dunk and forget. We count baptisms but not conversations. We measure attendance, not transformation. And the result? The data speaks for itself.
This is not a dig at evangelism. Evangelism matters. But without a system of everyday discipleship on the other side, it’s incomplete. You can’t frontload the spiritual journey into one intense week and expect people to know how to walk with Jesus afterward.
We need churches that know how to care, how to equip, how to walk alongside. Not programs. Not pamphlets. People.
We need simple, measurable, repeatable discipleship pathways that are actually embedded in the life of the church. Systems that turn guests into family. Seekers into followers. Converts into disciple-makers.
Because hype doesn’t change people. Love does.
And until we stop celebrating crowds and start building communities, we’re going to keep bleeding people out the back door.
So let’s stop bragging about how many came to the meeting. Let’s start asking how many are still walking with Jesus six months later—and what we did to make that possible.
The harvest is ready. But if we don’t build nets that can hold people, we’ll keep losing them.
It’s time to rethink church.
Is your local Adventist church stuck doing the same stuff that hasn’t worked in over 50 years?
If you answered yes, I made each of these resources for you:
From Survival to Revival Ebook (Free Ebook that maps out a simple, 3 step path to waking your local church up)
The 90-Day Church Revival Bootcamp (3 Month, Step by Step Revival Program where I walk you through my proven church-revitalization system)
Missional Church Planting Course (A detailed, dirt under the fingernails course for those ready to church plant something different)
The Mission Collective (An online community of creative and missional Adventists learning the art of missional living in the secular west)
