Ministries Fact File

The annual number of death sentences has dropped dramatically from a total of 300 in 1998 to 125 in 2004.
Today, 38 of the 50 states allow the death penalty
According to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, 1,045 individuals have been executed since 1976.
- The largest number in a single year was in 1999 with 98 executions.
- As of September, 41 individuals have been executed this year.
Since the first recognized execution of a juvenile offender in 1642, the United States has executed at least 366 people for crimes committed as juveniles
- Since 1990, the US has executed more juvenile offenders than all other countries combined

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Date: 10/19/2006

There are 1,210 Protestant churches in the United States with weekly attendance over 2,000, nearly double the number that existed 5 years ago.
The megachurches surveyed reported a 2005 average regular weekly attendance of 3,585 persons.
- Only 16% have 5,000 or more in attendance each week.
- The median seating capacity of the largest worship service was 1,400.
- At least 50% of churches use multiple venues for worship as well as satellite locations to increase seating capacity.
The four states with the greatest concentrations of megachurches are California (14%), Texas (13%), Florida (7%) and Georgia (6%).
The groups with the largest numbers of megachurches in our survey sample included nondenominational (36%), Southern Baptist (20%), United Methodist (9%), and Assemblies of God (5%).

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Date: 10/15/2006

Of the 750 Black churches surveyed by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, only 2.4 percent received funds from the Faith-Based Initiative grants.
Of the 50,000 estimated Black churches in the country the average membership is about 100 members.
More than one in four black churches had annual revenue of less that $100,000 and half of Black churches had revenue of less that $250,000.

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Date: 9/9/2006