exodus

In October 1960 the Baptist Press did a door to door survey of Miami-ans and found that out of the 1,358,191 people surveyed, only 485,798 of them were regular church goers. No doubt the reporter was shocked that Miami only had a 35% church affiliation rate. Nearly half the normal rate of other large cities in the US at the time. This no doubt spurred a great effort to reach the over three quarters of a million people for Christ. So, in retrospect, how have they done in the past 50 years? Well, Miami-Dade has nearly doubled in size to 2.2 million and a whopping 14.5% of them are now going to church. Yep, that's right 319,000 people are now church goers, that's a 35% decrease. Even though the population has nearly doubled, church attendance has decreased by over 166,000 people!

Operation: Miami is not just about getting people to church, it's about reaching the lost for Christ. It's about serving the poor, it's about loving God and loving our neighbors.

But, looking at the numbers gives us an idea of how wide spread dissension of the Church in general is and hopefully will keep us from re-inventing a broken wheel.