America's churches are dying

I'm with you. Every time I go to a church and hear the choir or a few members in a musical ensemble of sort trying to play this psudo-rock-pop with the continual reference to the blood of Jesus, etc. I want puke. I wonder if the authors of the classic hymns (many of which have become accepted as classical music in general) such as Bach, Charles Wesley, etc., think of this vanilla, McMusic that's as deep as a kid's wading pool.
A friend of mine active in church choirs all his life said only a little bit of modern Christian rock is any good. He calls the rest "Five and dime music ... it's the same five or 10 words, over and over again."
The humorist P.J. O'Rourke once wrote of listening to some "Christian Rock" in a music store. Of genre he wrote: "I didn't find a song titled, 'I found Jesus but lost my talent,' but I'm sure it was just an oversight."
One thing religion is supposed to do is inspire. Modern Christian music doesn't inspire me.

 

Sure he will, because he and his ilk don't give a jumping jack shit about who takes care of the poor or uninsured -- just as long as it ain't him.

 

That's debatable.

http://truthandgrace.com/mormonmembership.htm

There are a lot of reports that the LDS fudges quite a bit with numbers. That's not to say that the LDS doesn't have a growing membership (it's relatively young compared to other religions, so its higher birth rate helps). But it would be naive to say that LDS isn't affected by a lot of the same trends put forth in the report.

 

Amen to that.

I guess all that counts is that someone worships. Personally though, I can't stand new megachurches with their shouting and rock music. Give me a gothic church and an organ any day.

 

Some churches have just grown old because their congregations grow old.

Many Megachurches have turned into ugly corporate images that really don't have much to do with worship and doing good. Because they all began by tapping into the consumer mindset of Americans. Christians are supposed to be in not of the world. The recipe ultimately becomes incompatible with the world/corporate order. Slick marketing campaigns aren't necessarily biblical.

Then you have churches of acrimony. If you really look close at many of the denominational breakups, they were based in political differences masked in theology. American Presbyterianism balked at sending their clergy to Scotland to be trained. Other presbyterian denominations began to evangelize the frontier and the American presbyterian branch, or PCUSA, demanded they send their clergy folk to train at east coast seminaries when the argument was they needed training on the run to take it to the frontier. Since the US didn't capitulate to Scotland, and the frontier folk didn't capitulate to the PCUSA, you had five or six presbyterian factions.

And then there's the church split over how Aunt Bessie cooked her apple cobbler.

Acrimony too often happens when people are in church or run church for the wrong reasons. There's a whole lot of people out there not going to church because they didn't see the example of biblical/golden rule love in it.

 

I'm Jewish, too (Conservative, though) and completely agree about the length of services. I would probably go more often if the service was shorter. I don't belong to a synagogue, but there's one near me that has a great rabbi. I occasionally go on Friday night, because it's an hour long service (I used to see Rahm Emanuel there on occasion when he was working in the White House).

Last month, I went to a Catholic service when my friend's daughter was being baptized. It was a black church - mainly Caribbean and African transplants. I was expecting a quick hour long mass (what I'm used to from going to church with my best friend's family growing up). Instead, it was over 90 minutes and that was before the baptisms! On the other hand, they had an amazing choir and a totally kickass band. That made the time go by faster and I enjoyed listening to them. The place was packed.

 

That the vast majority -- although admittedly not all -- of American churches are still segregated is also a problem. How much of one, I don't really know. I don't know that anyone stops going for that reason.

 

That's Bob i

That's Starman in the corner losing his religion.

 

Printdust, I generally always disagree with you.

But I can't disagree with anything you wrote here.

 

Well Bob, the consequence of all that (not that you agree but the issues I point out), it's those things that make some people blow off God. Not all but some. Others were never real about their relationship in the first place.

There's nothing wrong with true Christianity. It's the people who morph it into an ugly witness.

 

We currently attend two churches -- one down our street where we've attended for several years and a Chinese congregation so our adopted son can grow up with people who are from his birth culture -- and both are very committed to local missions. One operates a food pantry, has a "benevolence" ministry to help out those who are truly down and out to get by and has lots of classes on budgeting, et al, to help people get themselves out of poverty. We haven't quite got a pulse on the other yet, as we haven't attended much, but it has a slightly different mission as an ethnic congregation.

The megachurch that I grew up in does *a lot* of inner-city ministry. Another megachurch I've attended recently opened up a gymnastics/sports gym in one of the poorest neighborhoods in town and uses it to help teach the youth life skills and keep them off the streets. All also have international missions that they do -- one has been delivering filtration systems to Haiti to provide safe drinking water.

The belief that churches don't take care of their own is a fallacy.

 

I work on Sunday and the last thing I wanna do when I get off work is go to church. I would rather come home, watch football and cook dinner for myself.