The Church is Losing Members. Read On to Find Out Why.

[paulbern77]

Are People Abandoning Churches?


There can be no question today that organized religion has a credibility problem. The Catholic church has been beset by ongoing allegations of sexual molestation by priests of young boys and is mired in a series of lawsuits and legal judgments that threaten to bankrupt the Vatican. Meanwhile, the Protestant denominations are doing no better with some sexual scandals of its own such as the recent admission on TV that a certain well-known evangelist was unfaithful to his wife, as well as the molestation scandal of the so-called “bishop” Eddie Long right here in Atlanta that made national headlines last year. To make matters worse, the TV channels are flooded with preachers who spend most of their time begging for money. Many of them are living in million-dollar mansions and are driving around in cars with six-figure price tags, yet there is a complete absence of accountability with these people. Nobody knows anything about how much in donations these “nonprofits” are accumulating, but the two biggest Christian TV networks, Trinity Broadcasting and Christian Broadcasting, are known to be sitting on tens of millions in cash – each!


I know of two additional statistics regarding the church, one concerning the divorce rate and the other concerning the state of its youth. First, the divorce rate for people who regularly attend church is about the same as those who do not – roughly 50%. Second, two out of three high school kids coming from Evangelical homes who go off to college are agnostic or atheistic by the time they graduate. Organized religion is losing its youth in droves. In light of all this, I see the need to ask some relevant questions, such as why the modern church is hung up on things like abortion and same-sex marriage when it should be preaching and teaching about the extreme immorality of war. Why is it sinful for a woman to have an abortion in this country while the US simultaneously has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians during the American occupation of 2003-2011. Why is it sinful for two people of the same gender to fall in love, but hating them is OK for moral reasons? These are hard questions and they pose some deep thoughts about the state of organized religion today.


Chances are that if you are in your 20s or 30s, you are not hanging around a church. Polling is now a highly sophisticated industry, and religious organizations are being fed some irrefutable numbers about what is happening among their constituents. In a single generation, the Christian church dropout rate has increased fivefold. The Barna Group, a leading research organization focusing on the intersection of faith and culture, says 80 percent of the young people raised in a church will be “disengaged” before they are 30.

In the past 20 years, the number of American people who say they have no religion has doubled and has now reached 15 percent. Those numbers are concentrated in the under-30 population. The polling data continues to show that a dramatic exit is taking place from American Christian churches. Beyond those numbers, denominations across the board are acknowledging loss of membership, but it is worse than they are reporting. Many churches report numbers based on baptized constituents, yet actual Sunday morning attendance doesn’t come close to those numbers. Once baptized, always a reportable Christian! Simply put, denominations are no longer a reliable source of membership information. As a result, they are losing their credibility. Is it any wonder? The mega-church movement also has flattened, with people leaving as fast as they are recruited. The only real growth among Christians appears to be in the home church movement in which small groups of independent believers gather in a house to worship.


While the polling numbers are in, the debate about the reasons is only just beginning. When a pollster asks if a person has left the Christian Faith and a church, the answer is answered “yes” or “no.” However, when the pollster asks “why?,” the answers become mushy and the numbers lose their significance. Why are people leaving churches so fast? I am not a pollster, but rather an observer of the religious scene operating outside the boundaries of traditional denominations. As such I teach and preach the gospel as it truly is, quoting the Bible verbatim while intentionally omitting any hint of denominational prejudice and belief. By the same token, my impressions are anecdotal and in no way scientific. All I do is receive personal responses to my columns, and I carry on conversations with a steady flow of people by e-mail or when I meet them at book signings. But I am also a missionary. Not in some distant country, but right here at home in the inner city of Atlanta. While it's always good to reach the multitudes with the Gospel of Christ, I find I do best working one-on-one with people. I step aside within myself and yield power and authority to Jesus. In so doing I let others see Jesus by letting them see Him through me. Not by eloquent words or poetic sermons, but by example through kindness and tender-heartedness toward the poor, the disabled, widows and orphans, the homeless, the mentally ill, as well as ex-convicts and other vulnerable individuals, some of which don't even realize how vulnerable they actually are.


I am convinced that we church people and clergy need to look at ourselves for at least some of the reasons for the decline in membership. I offer three observations:

[1] Churches are no longer intellectually challenging. More and more of our young people are college-educated and in the future even more must and will accept the challenge of post-high school education. They are thinking people who are expanding the limits of their curiosity and knowledge.

Speaking of expanding our horizons, what will happen to organized religion when life is discovered beyond earth, which will definitely happen in another ten years or so? Will religious entities be able to cope with the change in our view of ourselves in relation to the rest of God's universe when that inevitable day arrives? Nobody currently knows the answer to these questions, but it is for these reasons that these young people often conclude that they know more than the person in the pulpit and are not willing to accept the church’s rigid catechism, an educational method that teaches the religious questions and the correct answers. As an educational tool catechism is outdated and provides no challenge to students eager to question and discuss. Ministers must re-establish themselves among the leaders of the intellectual community. They can no longer rely on the outdated method of teaching unquestioning obedience as a method of control of their congregations and of whole denominations.


[2] Churches are no longer leaders in moral and ethical discussions. Young people have grown weary of churches that cannot get past issues such as homosexuality and abortion.
What they hunger for is a church that rails against the accumulation of wealth and the hoarding of material goods. Today's youth pines for a church that teaches gentleness, kindness, patience, empathy and compassion while rejecting material goods and the financial trappings of capitalism. Our new crop of church drop-outs is still very interested in alternatives to a selfish, hedonistic society. Justice is high on their agenda, and they are looking for opportunities for public service. Our young people want to be involved in solving environmental problems and in peacemaking. By contrast, pizza parties and rock concerts – techniques that have been used to make churches appear more relevant to the young – are not high on the agenda of young people concerned about society’s deep-seated problems. In other words, too many churches are concerned about same-sex marriage when the preacher should be talking about the unacceptability of war.


[3] Churches are no longer visionary. They have remained focused on saving souls for the next life and offering rituals tied to perpetuating theologies that no longer seem relevant to many young people. Churches are no longer significant players in shaping the life of our communities. If ministers and churches will not lay out what the kingdom of God on earth might actually look like, young people will continue to look elsewhere for other models. In that sense, I am less concerned about the young adults who are leaving the churches than the churches they are leaving behind.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. I replied in the other thread, but I would love to

hear what people think: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1021&pid=56

[Liberal Insights]

2. Why start this over again from scratch?

The other posting of this thread had dozens of good responses. Is'nt it possible to just have THAT posting moved HERE?

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Interestingly not all the same people visit all the same forums, so there's

a fair amount of cross-posting that goes on in order to reach more people.

[Thats my opinion]

4. What churches?

The churches you cite are certainly not the ones I know anything about from the inside. You describe what exits all right, but that is not the whole story.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. The part about denominations not being a reliable source for membership info

is only partly true. It depends on the denomination.

My father was a Lutheran pastor, and the standard for what was then the LCA was that you were dropped from the rolls if you hadn't attended for two years.