Sight Seeing December 1, 2008
Posted by Doug L. in The Church.Tags: decline, growth, Jesus, life, peace, post-modernism, The Church, the future, truth
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This next weekend when you go to Church take a look around. Notice the age groups. Notice how there is a 10th of young people as there are of older. It all of the sudden dawned on me that Church in 20 years is going to look a whole lot different then it does now. The Church is going to be the minority! Granted, that could change if people began to see something that, deep down they wanted. But that depends on the Church, right? Anyways, it was an interesting observation and wanted to share it.
I agree with you, it definitely depends on the church. (I use “little c” when I talk about individual churches, and “big C” when I’m talking about the body of Christ”
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I’ve visited some very different churches – some of em are a sea of white hair (my first tiny baptist church) and some of them are mostly twentysomethings and thirtysomethings. I notice more demographic curiosities than just age, too – some churches are made up of people who have been in the church for generations, and others have lots of brand new believers who worship in completely different ways because nobody has told them, “this is the way you worship God.” Each have their cool aspects, and their inherent issues they have to deal with.
I think that some churches are actively turning people off to Jesus by trying to tack a lot of unrelated dogma (my nice way of saying “total BS”) to the gospel. Other churches are reacting to the same trend, and saying, “in what ways can we continue to honor the great commission in a changing culture and population?” I’ve seen some awesome churches that are far from “traditional” that preach the gospel, and some that have sadly compromised and present Jesus as this huggable teddy bear that is there when you need him, and asks nothing of you in return.
We definitely have to look at both what cultural changes are drawing people away from certain churches, and also what things that churches do or teach that are causing people to leave. We can’t blame it on just one or the other.