If Sunday and midweek attendance patterns are not going back to the 1950s, then every church should consider creative ways to engage people in the culture as it exists, not the culture in which our grandparents lived.
Congregations should keep eye on the (golf) ball for survival clues, church coach says
It’s become pretty common for churches struggling with declining memberships and tithing to study congregations that are doing well. But maybe they should focus on the game of golf, which has seen massive course closure rates since the economy tanked…
Where do Southern Baptists go when they leave? The answer in one chart
Most of the decline in the Southern Baptist Convention is coming because SBC churches are not holding onto those who were raised in their congregations.
Women are leaving church, and the reason seems clear
The years that women’s church attendance began to decline are the very years when religious leaders in the Catholic Church and the evangelical movement fused religion with the culture wars.
It’s the Church’s birthday, not its funeral
I’m not going to tell you my age but not because I’m embarrassed by the number. I’m not that old yet. I’m only partly kidding. No matter what I have collected — a couple of degrees, student loans, a marriage…
Comparing faith decline in U.S. with Europe, Japan misleading, says professor
Christians anxious about the troubles of the American church often look to Europe’s beautiful-but-empty cathedrals as signs of things to come. But a scholar who studies the connection between fertility, immigration rates and religion said American Christianity is at nowhere near the same place as its European counterpart.
When all seems lost, apply the 20-year test
There is a school of thought running rampant in congregations these days that sounds something like this: “This is the worst Pastor/Group/Recession/President/Situation/Era/Event that we have ever known! We must get rid of him/her/it/them immediately or we are doomed.” As a…
What is slowing down the decline of many denominations?
As a group, established denominations are in decline for various reasons. Typically this happens when the collection of congregations in a denomination do not innovate the style of their ministry to present the substance of the gospel in a manner…
What’s in a name? Religious nones and the American religious landscape
Over the last several years the term religious “Nones” has become a major topic of discussion and analysis by those who pay attention to religious trends.
Don’t forget to count the non-denoms
In all the hand-wringing about the statistical decline of Baptist congregations in America — which follows similar declines before in the mainline Protestant churches — one important shift seldom gets mentioned. That is the rise of the nondenominational church within…
In organized Christianity, some people are gone and others are done
Do we need another category to describe people who are either no longer related to organized Christianity or never were? Probably.
Time for panic or hope?
The Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting wrapped up last week. As usual there have been several statements and statistics which are causing at least minor stirs. Their announcement of a court petition to uphold the traditional definition of marriage may…