We took the Southern Baptist Convention's public church directory, all 37,293 congregations, and checked every one for a working website. This page is the full count, free to cite with attribution.
"Broken" is not a style judgment. It means the site did not come back at all: 1,994 dead domains (DNS failure), 1,221 failed security certificates, 795 connection timeouts, and several hundred more returning errors. These are churches that paid for a website once and lost it to time.
State by state
States with at least 20 directory churches. "Dark" is the share with no working site (none plus broken).
| State | Churches | No site | Broken | Working | Dark |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TX | 4,424 | 2,326 | 576 | 1,522 | 66% |
| GA | 2,810 | 1,320 | 283 | 1,207 | 57% |
| NC | 2,680 | 1,055 | 382 | 1,243 | 54% |
| TN | 2,546 | 1,340 | 315 | 891 | 65% |
| FL | 2,451 | 914 | 405 | 1,132 | 54% |
| AL | 2,339 | 1,404 | 290 | 645 | 72% |
| KY | 2,016 | 1,176 | 298 | 542 | 73% |
| MS | 1,839 | 1,259 | 173 | 407 | 78% |
| SC | 1,799 | 803 | 237 | 759 | 58% |
| MO | 1,757 | 1,041 | 167 | 549 | 69% |
| OK | 1,494 | 819 | 223 | 452 | 70% |
| LA | 1,297 | 891 | 71 | 335 | 74% |
| CA | 1,295 | 476 | 213 | 606 | 53% |
| VA | 1,235 | 405 | 163 | 667 | 46% |
| AR | 1,232 | 812 | 121 | 299 | 76% |
| IL | 814 | 429 | 93 | 292 | 64% |
| OH | 564 | 201 | 95 | 268 | 52% |
| MD | 352 | 80 | 55 | 217 | 38% |
| AZ | 328 | 77 | 49 | 202 | 38% |
| NM | 294 | 132 | 43 | 119 | 60% |
| KS | 279 | 101 | 45 | 133 | 52% |
| NY | 276 | 134 | 52 | 90 | 67% |
| CO | 269 | 58 | 37 | 174 | 35% |
| IN | 264 | 67 | 38 | 159 | 40% |
| MI | 238 | 78 | 42 | 118 | 50% |
| PA | 237 | 74 | 33 | 130 | 45% |
| WA | 204 | 55 | 28 | 121 | 41% |
| WV | 180 | 91 | 30 | 59 | 67% |
| MA | 179 | 67 | 23 | 89 | 50% |
| NV | 140 | 49 | 22 | 69 | 51% |
| MT | 109 | 44 | 16 | 49 | 55% |
| OR | 103 | 33 | 12 | 58 | 44% |
| IA | 100 | 26 | 8 | 66 | 34% |
| NJ | 92 | 50 | 8 | 34 | 63% |
| WI | 89 | 21 | 16 | 52 | 42% |
| WY | 85 | 43 | 10 | 32 | 62% |
| AK | 83 | 31 | 8 | 44 | 47% |
| HI | 83 | 26 | 12 | 45 | 46% |
| MN | 80 | 26 | 13 | 41 | 49% |
| UT | 80 | 17 | 12 | 51 | 36% |
| ID | 78 | 23 | 12 | 43 | 45% |
| NE | 69 | 37 | 2 | 30 | 57% |
| CT | 59 | 24 | 6 | 29 | 51% |
| SD | 46 | 19 | 7 | 20 | 57% |
| VT | 44 | 12 | 3 | 29 | 34% |
| ME | 32 | 10 | 5 | 17 | 47% |
| DE | 28 | 7 | 4 | 17 | 39% |
| ND | 26 | 8 | 8 | 10 | 62% |
| NH | 23 | 7 | 1 | 15 | 35% |
Why it matters
Roughly half of first-time church visitors look a congregation up online before attending. For 23,066 churches, what they find is nothing, or worse, a dead page. The gap is not indifference; it is that websites, as commonly built, assume a person at the church with time to maintain them. Half the denomination has no such person. That is a product gap, not a faithfulness gap.
Method
Counts from the public SBC church directory (37,293 rows). Sites were checked programmatically in April 2026 and re-verified on sample in July 2026. "No website" means no URL listed and none discoverable. "Broken" means DNS failure, certificate failure, connection failure, or an HTTP error at fetch time. Directory data changes; individual churches may have changed status since the check. Corrections welcome: start@parson.church.
To cite: "The State of Southern Baptist Church Websites 2026, Parson (parson.church)". A link is appreciated.