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Many churches in the United States, regardless of denomination, are in
decline, facing a downturn in attendance and participation. As a means to
facilitate conversation about this concern, we at The Wired Word
suggest two media pieces.One is an editorial by Tom Ehrich, first published by Religion News Service and then picked up by The Washington Post. Ehrich, a church consultant and Episcopal priest, was responding to a letter issued earlier this month by the Taskforce on Reimagining the Episcopal Church -- a group formed to consider how to restructure that denomination at the national level to stem the decline in membership and attendance at the local level. Ehrich's response was not limited to the Episcopal Church, but applies to mainline denominations in general.
The other is an interview with John S. Dickerson, senior pastor of Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Prescott, Arizona, who recently published a book called The Great Evangelical Recession, which, as the title suggests, is about a decline in evangelical Christianity.
In the United States, "mainline" usually refers to Protestant denominations that have supported a "social gospel" approach to ministry and mission and are often described as liberal or progressive in theology. "Evangelical" usually refers to Protestant denominations that have focused primarily on individual salvation through Jesus Christ and are often described as conservative in theology and in social matters. But there is much overlap in the understanding of the gospel and in the practices of mainline and evangelical Christians and congregations. (Some Christian groups define themselves more precisely and wouldn't put themselves in either the mainline or the evangelical category.)
Denominations of various ministry practices and theologies have some congregations that are either growing or holding their own, but the common thread of concern for many Protestant churches of all persuasions (a concern shared by the Roman Catholic Church) is declining participation.
In Ehrich's article, he noted that mainline denominations are these days considering how to reinvent themselves because of "50 years of decline." He points out that collectively, mainline denominations are down from their 1965 peak by more than 42 percent, and "two/thirds below the level they could have been if they had simply kept growing with the population."
Dickerson sees a similar downtrend in evangelical churches. He says that evangelicals have an inflated view of their numbers, influence and financial stability. The reality, said Dickerson, "is that we are a much smaller movement than many of us have believed -- certainly not a majority of the United States, and, I believe, a gradually declining minority. Many of us attend growing churches that are attracting folks from other churches, so we have the perception that 'the church' is growing, when she's really just shuffling. Meanwhile, as we play musical churches, the broader population is growing."
He further says that evangelical churches are "bleeding out young people," a problem common in mainline groups as well.
Dickerson cites four independent studies that separately conclude that evangelical Christians are between 7 and 8.9 percent of the U.S. population.
Among the reasons usually mentioned for the downward trend in churches is the growth in the number of younger people who now identify themselves as "nones" -- that is, having no religion -- or who say they are "spiritual but not religious." Another reason is public dislike of social positions some evangelical groups have taken. But mainline churches that have embraced different positions have also experienced decline. Other reasons include cultural changes, increased religious pluralism, growing secularity, a more aggressive atheism, more competition from other activities, the perception of many that the church is irrelevant to their lives, church splits and more.
In his article, Ehrich said, "Local congregations are still doing mission and ministry in ways that don't work but are difficult to change." Three specific "ways that don't work" he named are Sunday worship, facilities designed primarily for large-group worship and congregations that face inward instead of outward.
"Sunday worship," said Ehrich, "hasn't been a growth engine for decades and now isn't even a survival strategy." While acknowledging that Sunday worship is the thing mainline congregations usually do best, he said it "fails to reach younger populations and fails to retain the interest of older populations." He added, "Audience-style religion fails to transform lives."
Regarding facilities, Ehrich said they are not only expensive, but are often "designed for weekly worship" and thus fail to engage anyone outside of the shrinking group of Sunday attendees. "Even the idea of a central location for community life misfires in an age of fragmentation," Ehrich said. "People connect with peers in smaller settings or self-determining networks. Facilities built for en-masse-style gatherings are no longer relevant."
About the direction congregations "face," Ehrich said, "Congregations that could be facing outward and grappling with the mounting woes of a society in free fall do the opposite: They face inward, with occasional sorties into mission. They pick symbolic battles, but don't convincingly send members out to make the world better."
Yet even if churches were to innovate in the areas Ehrich indicated, there's no guarantee that such changes would bring people back.
Dickerson has a different diagnosis concerning problems in evangelical Christianity and offers different solutions. "My heart ... is not that we be liked by the culture. My heart is that we be faithful to Christ," he said. "Based on what Jesus said, I do expect us to be hated in this world, but that's sort of a footnote in the book. The real questions I ask in the book are: Are we fulfilling our purpose as Christ's presence in the United States? And, are we being the ambassadors of 'good news' that Christ calls us to be?"
Dickerson sees the main problem not merely as a decline in numbers so much as a decline in faithfulness to the church's mission of proclaiming the gospel. He does not look for structural change as a path to improvement, but a change of heart and an evangelical movement defined not by "whom we oppose" but by "grace and truth."
Dickerson has not lost hope. He says God's prescription for a church in conflict is found in 1 Peter 2:12: "Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us."
More on this story can be found at these links:
Denominational Restructuring Won't Work; Local Churches Must Innovate. Washington Post
The Great Evangelical Recession? An Interview With John Dickerson. The Gospel Coalition
How to Shrink Your Church in One Easy Step. Juicy Ecumenism: Institute on Religion & Democracy's Blog
The Big Questions
1. Is survival of a local church a worthy goal for that church? Why or why not? If so, whose responsibility is it to ensure its survival? How do circumstances affect the worthiness of the goal?
2. Are we who are part of the church called to innovate on behalf of the church? Is part of our calling to be effective? If not, what is our calling?
3. Is declining attendance a sign that Christendom is doing something wrong or a sign that society has gone wrong or a sign of something else? To what degree, if any, should we be willing to reshape the church in response to the spirit of the age? Why?
4. If a congregation were to innovate in the three areas Ehrich recommends, do you think it would make a difference in how many people would attend that church? Why or why not? Is Ehrich even right in identifying these three areas as contributing to the downslide? If we knew for sure such changes would not affect how many people participated in our church, should we make those changes anyway?
5. Is it important to be part of both the church and a church? Explain your answer.
Confronting the News With Scripture and Hope
Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:
Micah 4:1-2
Peoples shall stream to [the Lord's house], and many nations shall come and say: "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, ... that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." (For context, read 4:1-4.)
The "Lord's house" referred to in this prophecy was Israel's temple in Jerusalem. The prophet envisioned a time when people of "many nations" would "stream" to the temple eager to learn the Lord's ways.
Christians understand the church to be the spiritual successor to what the temple represented. There was a time when many people did stream to the church eager for its message, but that is less prevalent today.
Questions: What is the church's calling in an age when people are not streaming to it and some are leaving it? When in the church's history has the situation been similar?
Matthew 16:18
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. (For context, read 16:13-20.)
Jesus told Peter that the "gates of Hades," a biblical expression that can mean the same as the "gates of death," would not prevail against the church. The meaning is that the realm of death, which no human can conquer, is nonetheless {ITALIC}not stronger than the church founded on the rock. But what seems to be prevailing against the church today is something less strong than death but perhaps more debilitating: the spirit of the age.
Question: What might Jesus say to us today about the future of the church and our role in it?
Zechariah 8:12
For there shall be a sowing of peace; the vine shall yield its fruit, the ground shall give its produce, and the skies shall give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things. (For context, read 8:1-13.)
Matthew 7:13-14
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (No context necessary.)
Zechariah was one of the prophets who spoke for God to the community of Jews that formed again in Judah after being permitted to return from exile in Babylon. They were not a free people, however, and they had hard going to get themselves re-established in their homeland. In that difficult environment, God told the people through the prophet that circumstances would someday improve greatly for those who had survived the exile.
Note that Zechariah calls his audience "the remnant." The Bible uses that word to refer to those people who remain to continue the life of a community after many have been lost through some traumatic event.
The Matthew verses are from Jesus, who, while not using the word "remnant," refers to such a reduced group nonetheless. Although Jesus called all to follow him, he knew that not everyone would want to "enter through the narrow gate." Thus, only a remnant -- the "few who find it" -- will take the road that leads to life eternal.
Questions: Is a remnant a positive or a negative metaphor? Is there a sense in which the church is called to be a remnant? If so, what might the ministry of the remnant look like? Is it easy to be the remnant? In what sense can the remnant be like the yeast Jesus spoke about in Luke 13:20-21?
Matthew 16:25
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. (For context, read 16:24-26.)
Questions: What might these words of Jesus teach us about our efforts to keep our church alive by accommodating the world around us? What is the difference between losing the essential life of the church due to accommodating or appeasing the spirit of the age and losing our life for Jesus' sake? What does service in a "lose your life" mode look like? Does this involve self-conscious awareness of your choices?
For Further Discussion
1. Comment on this, from an interview by Religious News Service (RNS) with theologian Barbara Brown Taylor (BBT). She recently wrote a book titled Learning to Walk in the Dark.
RNS: What's your working definition of darkness?
BBT: Darkness is everything I do not know, cannot control, and am often afraid of. But that's just the beginner's definition. If I am a believer in God, then darkness is also where God dwells. God may also be frightening and uncontrollable and largely unknown to me, yet I decide to trust God anyway.
RNS: You say "many old-time Christians are looking into the dark right now." How might your message help them?
BBT: I mean "mainline" Christians. It only takes about a minute in any news source to notice decline in everything from membership to budgets to congregations combining and buildings going up for sale. Sometimes when I visit these embattled churches, I feel almost like I'm working for hospice visiting churches that are just scared to death they're dying. You can almost smell the sweat in the room as they fret about what in the world they're going to do.
But if you really work for hospice you learn to work with what is left. The remaining time, resources, relationships. Even for mainline Christians who are looking into the dark, there is reconciliation and healing and intimacy and community that can take place in the dark. There's also a lot of humility in the dark, which might be a great curative for a religious tradition that's been on top for a long time. ...
There is a lot of what happens these days that I would call "spiritual bypassing," where one offers a religious formula to help you stay on top. But I cannot sell out the Christian message, which at its heart says that when the bottom drops out and you're screaming your guts out at God, there's more. It says that if you are willing to enter the cloud of unknowing and meet God in the dark -- maybe even the dark of a tomb -- you might be in for a surprise.
The great hope in the Christian message is not that you will be rescued from the dark but if you are able to trust God all the way into the dark, you may be surprised.
See full interview here.
2. Read the article "What the Church Can Learn from the U2/Apple Mistake" and discuss anything from it that might apply to your church's outreach efforts.
3. Regarding the church, TWW team member Kim Coyle asks, "Will brick-and-mortar buildings with full-time staff continue? My daughter (20-something) finds meaning (and worship) in working with urban kids, and doesn't feel drawn to be part of the Sunday morning tradition that she grew up with." What should we do, if anything, about people who feel as that young woman does?
4. Comment on the following by C.S. Lewis (in God in the Dock): "[T]he 'decline of religion' becomes a very ambiguous phenomenon. One way of putting the truth would be that the religion which has declined was not Christianity. It was a vague Theism with a strong and virile ethical code, which, far from standing over against the 'World,' was absorbed into the whole fabric of ... institutions and sentiment and therefore demanded church-going as (at best) a part of loyalty and good manners or (at worst) a proof of respectability. Hence a social pressure, like the withdrawal of the compulsion, did not create a new situation. The new freedom first allowed accurate observations to be made. When no [one] goes to church except because he seeks Christ, the number of actual believers can at last be discovered. It should be added that this new freedom was partly caused by the very conditions which it revealed. If the various anti-clerical and anti-theistic forces at work in the nineteenth century had had to attack a solid phalanx of radical Christians the story might have been different. But mere 'religion' -- 'morality tinged with emotion,' 'what a man does with his solitude,' 'the religion of all good men' -- has little power of resistance. It is not good at saying No."
5. Respond to Ehrich's claim that "Audience-style religion fails to transform lives."
Responding to the News
This is a good time to consider Jesus' "Great Commission" in Matthew 28:19-20 -- "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
We believe the church of Jesus Christ survives the various incarnations of it in local communities. But when our own congregation is in survival mode, should our great commission tactics change in any way? Why or why not? When our congregation is in survival mode, are we even still responsible to fulfill this commission?
We should ask ourselves those things, and then take seriously what Jesus says to us in the final sentence of the commission.
Closing Prayer
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