Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, was experiencing explosive growth, according to Outreach magazine, which ranks the "100 Fastest-Growing U.S. Churches." The 2007 list, out this month, put the church at number 15, with 30 percent growth.

There's a problem, though. The numbers don't add up. Outreach magazine's other list, of the largest churches in America, shows Fellowship Church had over 18,000 in weekly attendance in 2006, but only 13,000 in 2007. According to these numbers, the church experienced an almost 30 percent decline, not 30 percent growth.

What gives?

"It was a mistake," said John Vaughan, who helped compile the 2006 list.

A huge mistake, and by no means the only mistake on the list. A comparison of the lists published in 2006 and 2007 shows that of the 19 churches that appear on both lists of largest churches, and on the 2007 list of fastest-growing churches, 12 of them have significant discrepancies. The 2007 list was so badly flawed that publisher Lynne Marian said the California-based magazine would republish the lists in a special section that would be "poly-bagged" with an upcoming issue. The revised list is already on the magazine's website.

While the new lists correct sorting and ranking errors, they do not revise the erroneous information given to the magazine by the churches themselves. Dan Gilgoff covers the evangelical movement for U.S. News & World Report and is the author of The Jesus Machine. He told WORLD that in his experience, megachurch pastors "notoriously inflate membership" numbers. The reasons? "Media attention, political influence, and money," Gilgoff said.

Gilgoff did not want to comment on Outreach magazine's lists or methodology, but he said he was not surprised the magazine would not scrutinize the churches' numbers: "Journalists have long been guilty of taking these numbers at face value."

Nonetheless, Alan Freitag, associate chair of communication studies at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, called the lists "seriously flawed" and questioned the very reason for their existence. "I wonder what the point of these surveys is," Freitag said. "The methodology is badly flawed, so you don't get information that very closely resembles the truth. Using numbers to measure the effectiveness of a church seems a questionable measure in the first place, and when you compound that with flawed numbers, you have to wonder why such lists exist."

Publisher Lynne Marian had a ready answer to that question. She said the lists "get us attention. It's the most high-profile issue we do." She admitted the discrepancies on the list, but said, "It's not about the numbers. It's about taking a look at what God is doing."

Michael Horton, professor of theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, said if growth alone is a sign of what God is doing, then AIDS and Islam could share a claim for God's blessing. "If numerical growth is invariably a measure of God's blessing," Horton said, "then you can't pick and choose which growing numbers are from God and which are not."

For its part, Outreach has severed its relationship with John Vaughan, who had compiled the list since its inception. The magazine now works with Lifeway Christian Resources, a part of the Southern Baptist Convention and a major advertiser with the magazine. But Ed Stetzer, Lifeway's director of research, has no plans to change fundamentally the methodology. "We're doing a survey, not an investigation," Stetzer told WORLD. "We have accurately reported the numbers as we have received them."