Church membership has dropped sharply in the last 20 years

dzheremi · Dec 15, 2019

Occams Barber said:
With this attitude I sincerely recommend you just give up.

It's not so much attitude; just the reality of everyone having their own choice to participate in religious life or not. The same would hold even if there hadn't been a large decrease in the last 20 years.

(I can't believe that I'm trying to help Christians to resurrect their religion)
OB

You're not really helping. I wouldn't give myself that much credit if I were you.

pdudgeon · Dec 15, 2019

timothyu said:
Jesus told Peter to put away His sword because these things must come to pass. The same could be said of Judas' part.

There only needed to be one Judas, just as there only needed to be one Christ.
All the rest of us have one job: The Great Commission.

timothyu · Dec 15, 2019

pdudgeon said:
hat's why the church membership is declining.

Exactly. The old ways are dying in the world and a church that had no business aligning itself with the world is dying with it.

timothyu · Dec 15, 2019

pdudgeon said:
All the rest of us have one job: The Great Commission.

The Gospel of the Kingdom as commanded.

Occams Barber · Dec 15, 2019

pdudgeon said:
Nope. You have to look before then to see what happened. Try looking in the 1960's. that's when the largest generation (the Baby Boomers) started making life decisions for themselves.
That's when Viet Nam happened, when the first marches happened, and when people discovered that they had the power to change things. Women's Lib, birth control, abortion, freedom marches, Civil Rights, etc.

By the beginning of this century it was the children of the Boomers who came into power and started making their own choices, just as their parents had, only more so.
That was the "ME" generation, who now has power like never before.

So what's happening now is the death of the Boomers and their Last Hurrah (Democrats) the rise of their grandchildren ("the Earth is Dying") and all things relating to Planet Earth become more important than the people who inhabit it.

In these days the Church has been left behind in the dust, and it's now down to "The survival of Me" that is all important. That's why the church membership is declining.

The data would suggest that you're wrong but I won't waste your time with explanations you obviously don't want to hear.
OB

pdudgeon · Dec 15, 2019

Occams Barber said:
This attitude is normally know as "shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic". If you really wish to save your religion you need to use the brains God gave you and think about the problem.

At this stage it's a bit late for sermons.
OB

It's never too late for those who listen. For them, it's just in time!

Occams Barber · Dec 15, 2019

dzheremi said:
You're not really helping. I wouldn't give myself that much credit if I were you.

The operative word was "trying" to help.
OB

pdudgeon · Dec 15, 2019

Occams Barber said:
The data would suggest that you're wrong but I won't waste your time with explanations you obviously don't want to hear.
OB

Data only records what has already happened; it can't predict the future with any accuracy, because the future hasn't been recorded by pollsters.

For what happens in the future, we have to look to God, and to those with whom He speaks.

pdudgeon · Dec 15, 2019

Occams Barber said:
The operative word was "trying" to help.
OB

Thank you for your try, and for the concern that motivated it.

RestoreTheJoy · Dec 15, 2019

Hank77 said:
And there has been too much faking of the gifts of the Spirit.

That has happened, for sure. But as an old pastor used to say, "I'd rather see a little wild fire than no fire at all."

bekkilyn · Dec 15, 2019

pdudgeon said:
That's a nice try, but it's been done before.

The one place that anyone will always find Jesus is in the Church.

That's where Mary and Joseph found Him, talking to the Rabi's and teaching them so that they could in turn teach those who were ready to listen to God.

It's also good to remember that God was "silent" for 500 years because man wasn't listening.
That didn't mean that God wasn't active in the world, it meant that the World couldn't hear God because they tuned Him out.
God was everywhere around them during that time-- the whole World gave witness to His daily presence--but man was oblivious to everything that spoke of God.

Nice try yourself, but Jesus (God) is much, much bigger than the church. There isn't any place anywhere where God can't be found for those who seek for him. However, it is much easier to hear him in a place where hypocritical humans with their legalism and prejudices aren't doing their utmost to drown him out and drive out those who yearn to hear him.

bekkilyn · Dec 15, 2019

dzheremi said:
While I don't think sermonizing will do much either, I do have to wonder what exactly it is that anyone could say to a generation of people who don't want to participate in Christianity. Even if you could get all the smartest people together to come up with the the best thing anyone could ever possibly say, it still couldn't compete with "No".

You can't really argue with "No".

Participating in "Christianity" isn't the same as participating in "Christ" though.

bekkilyn · Dec 15, 2019

pdudgeon said:
There only needed to be one Judas, just as there only needed to be one Christ.
All the rest of us have one job: The Great Commission.

The Great Commission isn't about being the world's morality police and getting all offended over the perceived sins of others and blaming them for the decline of church attendance. What we *are* to do, however, is summed up in John 13:34.

Pope66 · Dec 15, 2019

pdudgeon said:
Nope. You have to look before then to see what happened. Try looking in the 1960's. that's when the largest generation (the Baby Boomers) started making life decisions for themselves.
That's when Viet Nam happened, when the first marches happened, and when people discovered that they had the power to change things. Women's Lib, birth control, abortion, freedom marches, Civil Rights, etc.

By the beginning of this century it was the children of the Boomers who came into power and started making their own choices, just as their parents had, only more so.
That was the "ME" generation, who now has power like never before.

So what's happening now is the death of the Boomers and their Last Hurrah (Democrats) the rise of their grandchildren ("the Earth is Dying") and all things relating to Planet Earth become more important than the people who inhabit it.

In these days the Church has been left behind in the dust, and it's now down to "The survival of Me" that is all important. That's why the church membership is declining.

Birth control existed decades long before then, as birth control clinics opened up in the UK in the 1920s and quickly spread to the US. That had a huge impact on the birth rate where it declined, and birth rates have never been to levels over 100 years after the 1920s.

The Civil rights were bound to happened to the century old Jim Crowe Laws in the US south existed for a century due to the impact of Television worldwide. Before the impact of TV Southern White politicians can easily get away with treating their blacks as second class citizens. However with the impact of the huge growth of TV throughout the nation and the world it became unacceptable for Conservative white politicians to defend segeration.

The impact of TV also shaped American perception of the Vietnam war. In the first time in history Americans can watch live on TV on what is happening with their troops in Vietnam. It eventually shifted opinion of the war and eventually most Americans could not support keep sending their troops to fight a in impovished Asian nation, and who troops were continuingly being killed there.

Anyway Concern and caring of the EArth does not mean you care less for people. The Earth is a lot more polluted than it ever was. Have you heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastic, floating trash halfway between Hawaii and California, has grown to more than 600,000 square miles, a study found. That's twice the size of Texas?

Where I am there ha been record breaking temps in Spring and Summer and it seems the springs and summers are getting warmer than when I was growing up. Anyway I have had friends over 90 years old say they remember the winters were even colder than these days. Much of the change in weather is man made.

Alos we live in a society were it is acceptable by many out there to keep chickens in tiny cages and never see the light of day and barely move for the rest of their life. Or Pigs to be confined that way too. They are also subject to torture too. But as long as the farmers are making money who cares of the welfare of those animals.

cow451 · Dec 16, 2019

pdudgeon said:
I have come up with a different answer than you have done.

1. I would put the blame on the changing morals of the World which resulted in WWII,
2. the ease of obtaining prescription birth control,
3. the legitimacy of abortion as a choice,
4. the world wide outbreak of AIDS,
5. the acceptability of alphabetical sexual identification,
6. and finally the subsequent decline in the birth rate after the 1950's.

All of these things above were directly opposed to God and what He created. As a result, satan had a free hand to wreck havoc in the world, with the results that we see today.

IOW, uppity women.

faroukfarouk · Dec 17, 2019

bekkilyn said:
Participating in "Christianity" isn't the same as participating in "Christ" though.

@bekkilyn Absolutely; and participating in Christ means being born again (John 3); the supposed need for politics in being truly born again Scripturally is irrelevant.

faroukfarouk · Dec 17, 2019

bekkilyn said:
John 13:34.

Great verse there...

And..."We love Him, because He first loved us" (1 John 4.19).

"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4.10)

lismore · Dec 18, 2019

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
(Matthew 7:13-14).

variant · Dec 18, 2019

The only think that has really changed over the last 20-30 years is the speed at which information travels.

The problem with Christianity is that there is no real way to tell if any religious proposition is true, and the most selfish, arrogant, narcissistic, aggressive, and materialistic people in the world make very poor witnesses for a religion meant to be steeped in a simplistic spiritual connection with community and the divine.

Church membership has dropped sharply in the last 20 years

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