A common question that is asked whenever there is talk of starting new churches is: "Why do we need New Churches?  The fact is the Kentucky Conference United Methodist Church has ~800 churches with a total of 58,810 persons attending worship each week.  Kentucky, as a whole, boasts more that 7,143 Congregations which ranks in the Commonwealth as 16th as the most "churched" state in the Union but population wise Kentucky is ranked 26th.  So, comparatively speaking,  Kentucky does have a lot of church buildings in relation to the population when compared with the rest of the country.

Church buildings do not make a church . . .  32% of all Kentuckians have no connection to a any church group and another 20% have nominal contact.  That is more than 2,000,000 people.  If this total population suddenly decided to begin attending a UMC church, each congregation would gain more than 2500 new members.   The truth is that is not going to happen.

If we are going to reach new people with the transforming message of Jesus Christ we must establish new faith communities across the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  We need to be planting churches at a rate of 10 to 20 per year if we hope to impact our culture for Christ.  This is our mission, this is our historical experience, this is our destiny.

Go to Path1 to explore about why we need new churches