Warren Bird (born 1956) is an American writer and researcher of megachurches. He has authored or co-authored 36 books on church leadership, including Emotionally Healthy Church and Prepare Your Church for the Future, which have both achieved the bestseller status of 100,000 or more units in print. He has also overseen more than 30 research reports on issues affecting large and growing churches. His research on megachurches is regularly cited in mainstream and religious media. He most recently served as Senior Vice President of Research for the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA).
Bird was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and lived there until his college years. His formal academic training comes from Wheaton College (BA, MA), Alliance Theological Seminary (MDiv) and Fordham University (PhD). An ordained minister, he has served in several church roles including church planter and assistant pastor, including his longest tenure being for 10 years (1997-2006) on staff at Princeton Alliance Church. While pastoring, he also served as long time adjunct professor at Alliance Theological Seminary.
He has been licensed for ministry under the Christian & Missionary Alliance.
Bird is married to his college sweetheart. He and his wife, Michelle, live in a suburb of New York City.
In his early years, Bird served on Carl GeorgeâÂÂs senior management team of the Pasadena-based Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth where he visited, interviewed, researched, and profiled many of the largest, fastest-growing, or newest churches in North America. In subsequent years, he did similar research and development for the Canada-based Leadership Centre Willow Creek Canada, and for the Asbury Theological Seminary-based Beeson Institute for Advanced Church Leadership (1996-2006). From 2006 to 2018 Bird served as Director of Research and Intellectual Capital Development at Leadership Network.
In 2018 he became Senior Vice President of Research at the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), the nationâÂÂs oldest and largest nonprofit accrediting agency designed to enhance trust and certify integrity in Christ-centered churches and ministries.
He has compiled and maintained a sortable list of US and Global megachurches published by Exponential since 2010.
Bird has published more than 200 magazine articles on church leadership including two cover stories for Christianity Today and the cover story for Evangelicals (the National Association of Evangelicals). He has written a âÂÂLeadership from the Global Churchâ column for each issue of Outreach magazine since 2014. He has also contributed collaborative chapters or sections to 8 other books. He has also written guest columns on megachurch issues such as âÂÂNot a Baby Boomer PhenomenonâÂÂMegachurches Draw Twice as Many People Under 45â in Christian Post. In 2022, he oversaw the nation's largest research to date on new churches, many of which were started by megachurches. In 2025 he co-directed the nation's largest-ever research of megachurches through the Hartford Institute for Religion Research
Bird's research has focused mainly on megachurches (Protestant congregations with 2,000 or more in-person weekly attenders). He has authored more than 25 published reports based on original research including a collection of reports on comparative trends in US megachurches. This includes a 2021 co-authored study that was the nationâÂÂs largest-ever study of megachurches, âÂÂThe Changing Reality in AmericaâÂÂs Largest Churches: Megachurch Research Report.â Specialty studies include Canadian megachurches, internships/residencies in large churches, multisite megachurches, and salaries in megachurches. He also co-authored two scholarly chapters on the global megachurch phenomenon. He has contributed articles to Review of Religious Research and to the Journal for the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
Bird has authored or co-authored 35 books (listed below). Bird received the prestigious Gold Medallion Award, the top honor given by the international trade association for Christian publishers, for Emotionally Healthy Church (2004).Teams that Thrive was named Leadership Resource of the Year by Outreach magazine in 2019.
Translations of his books include Burmese, Chinese, Czech, French, German, Indonesian, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese,<sup>[31]</sup> Russian, and Spanish.
Books are listed in order of publication newest to oldest: