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America's churches are dying

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Bob Cook, Sep 21, 2011.

  1. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Eh, I think that's the case for most things. My brother worked in a pizza joint through college and he refused to eat pizza for years after.
     
  2. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    Well, I'd say it's opposite. If more "churchgoers" knew how the sausage was made, so to speak, they'd have more grace for it. I don't blame their intolerance for it now.
     
  3. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    But nobody wants to see the sausage made, right?
     
  4. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    Oh, I think people would ultimately feel better about things if they knew others struggles and could be truly transparent about their own.
     
  5. albert77

    albert77 Well-Known Member

    My wife is much more religious than I am, and when our kids were at home we were pretty active in church. We're still members of a smallish Southern Baptist church (@200 on Sundays), and while we still consider it our home church, we rarely attend services any more. And a lot of it is due to my personal loss of faith.

    When I had heart surgery four years ago, our pastor and a number of church members came by to check on me, and I appreciated it. Nevertheless, that surgery really altered my view of the so-called afterlife. When I came out from under the anasthetic, I felt like I had come as close to death as I'll ever come in this life, and there was nothing. No soul, no thought, just a black void. I basically was dead on that operating table, and it made me wonder if that's what death is really like. You die and that's it. I've started to believe that all the Christian talk of "life after death in Christ," is just so much wishful thinking.

    Once you go down that road, you start to really rationally think about the foundations of Christianity – the Blessed Virgin, the Resurrection, etc. – and you realize that there is a lot of it that is too absurd to believe without that deep well of faith, and I've lost a lot of that.

    Another thing, too, is that I'm 56 now, and after working until well past 11 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, I'm usually too tired to make the effort to go to church on Sunday, especially when I don't have a real good reason for going.
     
  6. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    Amen to that.
     
  7. HC

    HC Well-Known Member

    I attend a very progressive church (United Church of Canada) and am paid to be there as a musician. That said, while not a religious person, I value that time that I spend thinking about larger issues than my personal life. I do wonder why I'm here and what is the point of it all.

    Count me as someone for whom the music matters as well. I want a service and music that is larger than every day life - otherwise why bother? I can hear pop music anywhere. Mendelssohn and Mozart lift me to a place that pop can't (and I say that as a pop/rock/country/rap fan).
     
  8. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    More on dying churches: http://bit.ly/n1917M

    Here's what should scare the support hose off most church members:

    This generation is not only the most ethnically diverse in US history, it is also the most religiously diverse. Millennials are half as likely to be white Evangelicals or Roman Catholics and a quarter less likely to be white mainline Protestants compared with older generations. By contrast, they are twice as likely to be Hispanic Catholics or unaffiliated and a third more likely to be non-Christians (Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists), finds Pew.

    As a result of all these trends, only two-thirds (68 percent) of Millennials are Christian, compared with about 80 percent of older Americans. Fewer than half (43 percent) are Protestant, in contrast to 53 percent of all older generations and almost two-thirds of senior citizens.


    According to the article (from the Christian Science Monitor), here is the one hope churches have:

    In the immediate future, however, religious organizations will have to emphasize those aspects of their belief structures that most strongly mesh with Millennial values.

    On one level this means that America's denominations will at least have to recognize that Millennials are far less driven than older generations by traditional beliefs on the cultural issues – women's rights, homosexuality, and evolution – that have divided the nation since the 1960s.

    Millennials will also be drawn by appeals that emphasize service more than doctrine and ritual. No generation in American history has been as involved in national and community service as the Millennial Generation. Millennials make up a disproportionately large and growing share of large national service organizations – the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, as well as the armed forces.


    The question is, can churches, and their older members, bend what they do to appeal to the younger generation? And even if they do, will they come?
     
  9. KJIM

    KJIM Well-Known Member

    If by "bend on what they do" you mean change their belief system to be more "welcoming," then I would hope not.

    It's odd to me that people expect churches to become more "tolerant." Well, the thing is, over thousands of years, God's laws haven't changed since "the book" (being whichever of the three you believe) were written. Interpretations change, but the laws are the same.

    If it's written that X is wrong or that Y will happen if you don't Z -- and this is the entire basis of the church -- to change that to "grow" attendance is just wrong. You either believe it or you don't.

    Like one of the previous posters, for awhile I attended a really big church. It took me a while to figure out that they NEVER preached an actual Bible lesson. They used scripture to teach "clean living" but never once spoke of any fundamental beliefs. Even on Easter -- not that the sanctuary even had a cross (it might have offended some).

    What's the point?
     
  10. printdust

    printdust New Member

    Yeah, it's called an apostasy.

    2 Timothy 4:3-4 Paul says, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” (NIV)

    Bingo. And the way these people will run to it, there may actually be a literal 144,000 who are spared.
     
  11. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    You know, I'm pretty sure the Pope said the same thing about Martin Luther. How'd that turn out?

    The Christian church has been evolving and changing since roughly 15 minutes after the stone was rolled away from the tomb. What makes you think your version of Christianity is any more right than the others? Once upon a time, wanting to read the Bible for yourself was a mortal sin.
     
  12. printdust

    printdust New Member

    The basics remain the same, and the end-time message hasn't changed. One day the so called "evolution" you point out will be called. And it will be when the current version has no resemblance to anything Christ knew about.
     
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