I love the
church. Fellowship,
discipleship, community worship, mission activities—almost everything about
church appeals to me.
God
obviously loves church, too. Sometimes
the Bible refers to the church as the bride of Christ. Sometimes it is likened
to the earthly embodiment of Christ. Regardless of the metaphor,
Christ loves His church.
If you love
something, you want what’s best for it.
You cherish it, you study it, you spend time with it. And if something is wrong with it, you take
notice. Maybe you’ve noticed—maybe you
haven’t—but it sure seems like there are a lot of problems with modern church
in America. Let’s take a quick gander:
- Only about 18% of Americans regularly attend church.
- While more Americans are seeking God, a growing number do so away from a local church.
- The US population is growing significantly, but church attendance is declining.
- Most of the decline is seen in churches established prior to the 1970s.
- Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant denomination, saw baptisms decline 5.5% last year, membership decline by 105,000, and Sunday worshipers decline by 188,000.
- The Millennial generation (born between 1985 and 2004) is even less likely than older generations to attend church, a disturbing trend for the future.
I could go
on, but you get the point.
Even scarier
is knowing that this isn’t just a very recent trend and isn’t something that
should have surprised anyone. I have
shelves of books that acknowledge the problem and offer suggestions: You Lost Me, Essential Church, Organic
Church, The Forgotten Ways, Comeback Churches, Transformational Church, Contagious
Church, etc, etc.
Based on all
the books out there by some very smart and experienced folks, we can tell that
there are quite a few problems and even more solutions. I sure can’t summarize all those in this
little blog, and I definitely don’t have the
answer. But what I’d like to do over the
next few posts is take a look at some of the basic challenges and consider some
biblical guidance. I’d love for you to
join me as we explore these issues, and I’d REALLY love to hear your
observations and ideas.
More to come
soon…..!
I am curious what you have to write about this subject. By your own submission, many authors previously produced many works supposedly with answers. Since I have not read these works, it is possible no answers were provided. Again, looking forward...
ReplyDeleteBig Billy, There are plenty of books out there with lots of mumbo-jumbo. But there are also some with good, biblical recommendations. However, one problem is that the very people who need to take off their blinders and face up to the tough issues are the same people who ignore the problem and don't want to hear what needs to be said. "Everything's fine as long as I ignore the problem." Sometimes it's easier to calmly preside over a sinking ship rather than take the tough route of fixing the problems.
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