Roundup Q&A

The answer: 1 to 2 million. But it depends a lot on the definitions.

When we say "Protestant," do we mean only mainstream Western Protestants, or do we also include independent churches (like Chinese house churches) or, say, Anglicans? How does one account for Protestant churches that are elder-led, and don't necessarily have a "pastor" role? Do we count all pastors (e.g., mission pastors, youth pastors, and so on) or just the "senior pastor"?

A methodology

However one counts them, the number of Protestant pastors would certainly number in the millions. There are an estimated 2.38 billion affiliated Christians (all kinds) in the world, and 4.18 million congregations (but this figure doesn't include a lot of "house churches" like those in disciple-making movements). This averages out to about 600 per church—a very rough figure, but useful for one purpose. There are about 586 million Protestants in the world, so probably about 1 million Protestant churches. There are another 384 million Independents (and their churches are often smaller), so we could estimate that in all there might be 1.5 million Protestant+Independent churches, broadly speaking.

(These figures are from the 2026 Status of Global Christianity, in the International Bulletin of Mission Research, January 2026)

Most of these churches would have someone in a pastoral sort of role. So we could estimate about 1 to 2 million Protestant pastors.

The answer: A not small number of Catholics are switching. But it's not altogether clear where they are switching to.

A brand new article from Pew, based on their 2024 surveys, now gets at an answer to C's question (he sent this to me a while ago, and while I answered him at the time, I have an updated answer now). The article covers several South American countries, including Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil.

In each of these, Catholicism has seen significant switching out. In Brazil, 69% were raised as Catholic; today, 44% still identify, but 25% have left. The article doesn't specifically say where they went. But it does analyze the growth in Protestants: the percentage of all adults in the country who (a) left Protestantism after having been raised as Protestants (losses), and (b) joined Protestantism after not having been raised in it. In Brazil, 15% of Brazilians became Protestants who were not raised in it.

The caveat

In Brazil, if 69% were raised Catholic and 15% were raised Protestant, then 16% were raised 'other.' So, some part of the 15% who joined Protestants could have come from within that margin. And 15% joining Protestants is less than 25% leaving Catholics. There's some secularism going on—but also, a fair number of Catholics are switching.