The Assemblies of God in 2024

A big denomination with some really healthy statistical trends

People often ask me what trends I see in churches that are growing. I think there are a few big-picture factors that really matter. One is charismatic worship. That’s become the norm for a lot of fast-growing evangelical churches—not just in the United States, but around the world. Another common thread among growing parts of the faith landscape is that these churches tend to be non-denominational and anything but hierarchical. In other words, being tied to one of the major Protestant families often seems to slow growth rather than help it.

But there’s one major denomination that manages to buck that trend: the Assemblies of God. They have one big advantage—charismatic worship—but they’re also still a coherent denomination. Despite being fairly “institutional,” they’ve managed to post nearly continuous growth over the last five decades. That’s something almost no other major denomination in the United States can say.

Whenever I put together denominational reports, the story is usually one of decline. The metrics almost always point downward, and the future doesn’t look any brighter than the past for most of the old stalwarts of American Protestantism. But that’s not the case for the Assemblies of God. In fact, their best days might still be ahead.

Let’s start by tracking total membership in the AG since 1975.

As you can see, the line goes up for the Assemblies of God, and it does so in a remarkably steady way. There aren’t any bursts of exponential growth; instead, it’s a slow, consistent climb of about 2–3 percent per year. That’s actually a really healthy sign. This pattern continued almost completely uninterrupted from 1975 through 2018. Then, things started to shift a bit.

There’s no doubt that COVID-19 disrupted the Assemblies of God’s long-term trajectory. That will be a theme throughout the rest of this piece. Total membership in AG churches peaked right before the pandemic in 2019 at about 3.3 million members. That’s an increase of roughly two million since 1975. Not bad at all.

Now let’s zoom in on that most recent stretch, from 2014 through 2024, to get a more detailed look at what the last decade has looked like.

You can see that really steady rise between 2014 and 2019, which added about 150,000 people during that period. Like I said above, that’s solid growth. Not spectacular, but definitely healthy. Then the pandemic shut the world down, and that shows up clearly in the numbers. In just a single year—2020—the Assemblies of God lost about 330,000 members. The gains from the previous five years were wiped out twice over in one fell swoop.

But that was clearly the low point. The losses didn’t continue into 2022, and membership began to climb again in 2023 and 2024. The current total sits at 3,059,461. That’s just a bit higher than the 3.04 million members the AG reported back in 2011. So things are back on the upswing, but the recovery isn’t yet complete.

What about attendance?