The Great Dechurching

[Josh]

Globally, people are much less religious than they used to be. Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist / Taoist / Shinto / Confucianism, Christian, Judaism, miscellaneous animist tribal religions - all of these faiths are in sharp decline. Every day, fewer people practice these faiths. Children of adherents are less likely to join their parents’ faith.

What is growing en masse is non-religiosity, or rather, a new faith based on modernism and materialism has emerged and is growing rapidly and converting many people. It has institutions dedicated to its propagation. It portrays itself as a universal truth and one other religions must be subordinate to. This is the new future we face.

Plain Anabaptism is exempt from these trends, and continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

[Ernie]

Interesting take on why fewer and fewer Americans go to church.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... op/674843/

Nearly everyone I grew up with in my childhood church in Lincoln, Nebraska, is no longer Christian. That’s not unusual. Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. That’s something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history.

The Great Dechurching finds that religious abuse and more general moral corruption in churches have driven people away. This is, of course, an indictment of the failures of many leaders who did not address abuse in their church. But Davis and Graham also find that a much larger share of those who have left church have done so for more banal reasons. The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.

And here is a link for those who cannot access the article in the OP.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... aign=share

[Sudsy]

Interesting take on why fewer and fewer Americans go to church.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... op/674843/

Nearly everyone I grew up with in my childhood church in Lincoln, Nebraska, is no longer Christian. That’s not unusual. Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. That’s something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history.

The Great Dechurching finds that religious abuse and more general moral corruption in churches have driven people away. This is, of course, an indictment of the failures of many leaders who did not address abuse in their church. But Davis and Graham also find that a much larger share of those who have left church have done so for more banal reasons. The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.

And here is a link for those who cannot access the article in the OP.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... aign=share

Thanks for the access to that article. I'll read it again but on my first read I think he is missing a key component to being an effective church. This first read was too self focused about what is in it for me to be part of a community looking out for one another. There is that element of community necessary but we are not called to live in nice protected communities and those who have gone that route show little impact on actually reaching the lost.

I will read this again but my first impression was that this is not how to have a growing and vibrant local church. I have been in a close knit community church and also in a vibrant soul winning community of believers and the key difference I see is one has the compassion of Jesus to reach out to those outside the church while the other is very self focused and would not care for the environment of having new converts and all the challenges they bring.

But I will read this again as this is just how it first hit me.

[Sudsy]

Well, on my second read I'm sticking with my experiences in churches that believers wanted to attend throughout the week to learn and be involved in the excitement and blessings of seeing the unchurched becoming Christians and beginning their new walk with the Lord. It isn't hard to get Christians involved in the various other aspects of being the church when you get to see, first hand, how God works in miraculous ways as people become part of and grow in Kingdom life.