Mainline Protestant and Evangelical denominations both declining, how do we change that?

[H_HiltonHudson]

It is an oft discussed subject that mainline Protestant denominations are declining and losing members. Evangelical denominations are also declining in recent years. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical denomination in the United States with 15 million members, is declining similarly as the largest mainline Protestant denomination in the US, the United Methodist Church with 7.2 million members.

The Southern Baptist Convention lost 1 million members.
https://baptistnews.com/article/southern-baptists-lost-million-members-10-years/#.WUg5mLSJmlI

The United Methodist Church, in the US, has also lost members. In 2011, the UMC lost 72,000 members.
2011 numbers show U.S. members still sliding - The United Methodist Church

For me personally, I enjoy a pastor that appears to be genuinely passionate when preaching the word of God. I think that the growing popularity of non-denominational churches has a direct affect on this. As I said before, I enjoy a pastor who seems passionate about the word of God, and not one that goes through in a consistent, monotone voice. As someone else stated also, "Pentecostalism is booming". I believe that witnessing someone who is so passionate and charismatic when preaching the gospel is attractive to younger people.

 

[HereIStand]

The Methodists seem a far cry from their circuit riding past. The Book of Discipline is there, but it isn't enforced. Their decline is understandable.
The Southern Baptists have declined, but have also expanded more widely than the mainline. There are divisions over Calvinism, but these and any other problems are far less serious than those in the mainline.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

House fellowship is where it is at (if you are able to pull it off and it is God's will).
For it's what they did in the New Testament.


...

 

[The Times]

At the end of the day Jesus will consolidate his Church, when the trumpet sounds.

The Why, How, When and Where is Christ's checkmate move against the Devil.

God bless all the American Denominations who place their hope in Christ and to do what is humanly required of them to do in these troubling times ahead of us all.

 

[jeffinjapan]

Jesus is not worried about keeping numbers up. He already knows His numbers.

Indeed He does. And that would be ALL! And that really is good news!

He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces . . . It will be said on that day, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation” (Is 25.8–9).

 

[mark kennedy]

It is an oft discussed subject that mainline Protestant denominations are declining and losing members. Evangelical denominations are also declining in recent years. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical denomination in the United States with 15 million members, is declining similarly as the largest mainline Protestant denomination in the US, the United Methodist Church with 7.2 million members.

The Southern Baptist Convention lost 1 million members.
https://baptistnews.com/article/southern-baptists-lost-million-members-10-years/#.WUg5mLSJmlI

The United Methodist Church, in the US, has also lost members. In 2011, the UMC lost 72,000 members.
2011 numbers show U.S. members still sliding - The United Methodist Church

I found a survey a couple of years ago that listed the top ten reasons for the decline, number one was religion had become irrelevant to them. There's a pretty long running survey on creationism, it had fluctuated between 44% and 42% over years, it's now dipped down the 38%. Churches more and more have accepted gay marriage and soft peddled the gospel for generations. With resources more available then ever Bible illiteracy continues to climb.

What do we do? What the church has always done, return to the simplicity of the gospel.

 

[bekkilyn]

Remove the current, obsessive focus on abortion and homosexuality and instead put that focus back onto Jesus and his commandments of loving God and loving each other. All a lot of people see when they hear the word "Christian" nowadays is extreme far right-wing politics and they go running the other way as fast as they possibly can before they even set foot inside a church building. People are sick of the hypocrisy of people who claim to be Christians and yet are about as far from being Christ-like as a person can get, so they don't want anything to do with the matter.

 

[pescador]

So a full church is the sign of an alive church? Good to know... could have fooled me!

Yes it most definitely is. What may not satisfy you satisfies many, many people. You can criticize them all you want but it will make no difference. To them and others you look Pharisaic.

 

[pescador]

I found a survey a couple of years ago that listed the top ten reasons for the decline, number one was religion had become irrelevant to them. There's a pretty long running survey on creationism, it had fluctuated between 44% and 42% over years, it's now dipped down the 38%. Churches more and more have accepted gay marriage and soft peddled the gospel for generations. With resources more available then ever Bible illiteracy continues to climb.

What do we do? What the church has always done, return to the simplicity of the gospel.

Salvation is by grace, not by works. People -- all people -- need to feel the love that is in Christ Jesus. Judging people and putting them under some kind of law is contrary to Christianity. End of story.

 

[dzheremi]

I don't believe that it is uniquely true of young people, but I think it is true that many people are looking for something ancient that has the aura of being unchanged, or at least of being rooted in traditional forms of worship and understanding. I know that those forms of Protestantism that most resonate with me as an Orthodox person are those that are very close to the roots of the faith as it is practiced in particular places -- keeping the traditional languages, chant forms, hours of prayer, etc.

For instance, this traditional Presbyterian chant from the isle of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides is electrifying:

This is a fine example of that most Christian of traditions: the chanting of the Psalms according to the daily hours. Something as simple and timeless as that would certainly be attractive to those looking for the ancient ways. Is this or something like it a part of the normative experience of mainline Christians in the West, however? Looking from the outside, it does not seem so. In fact, I was raised in the Presbyterian Church until the age of 13 or so, and I don't recall anything like that. The particular congregation I was in was very influenced by revivalism after the retirement of our more traditional pastor led to a change in worship styles when the newer, slicker replacement pastor came (and a lot of people left soon afterwards).

Maybe that is also part of it -- a loss of the traditional understanding of what it means to be Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, etc. due to the influence of newer, more charismatic-style worship that is maybe less firm in its theology or praxis?

 

[mark kennedy]

Salvation is by grace, not by works. People -- all people -- need to feel the love that is in Christ Jesus. Judging people and putting them under some kind of law is contrary to Christianity. End of story.

Love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit but the gospel is the root. You cannot divorce christian conviction from doctrine, it simply doesn't work that way. The Mosaic Law and the ten commandments is one thing, essential doctrine is another.

 

[Raphael Jauregui]

Churches by and large today are dead... that is the problem.

Too many have replaced Christ with PC appropriate messages and sermons.

Jesus wasn't PC and he doesn't want us to be either. The truth is the truth.

The Southern Baptist Convention is not liberal and would not be 'PC' by mainstream standards. I would argue that 'PC' is, in itself, a flawed concept because too many people think that being rude is better than being polite these days. To me, 'PC' means respectful and polite, in other words, Christian behaviour should be consistent with 'PC.'

 

[FireDragon76]

I
This is a fine example of that most Christian of traditions: the chanting of the Psalms according to the daily hours. Something as simple and timeless as that would certainly be attractive to those looking for the ancient ways. Is this or something like it a part of the normative experience of mainline Christians in the West, however?

One of our elders is the cantor and he does a really good job with the psalms, it's one of my favorite parts of the service. I've even grown to tolerate some of the inclusive language modernist stuff occasionally used (change 3rd person "he" to 2nd-person "you"), just because it's so much better than having just responsive reading.

 

[dzheremi]

What does "responsive reading" mean in this context?

 

[Tolworth John]

Most surveys on the decline in church numbers follow what these two links say:-
https://winteryknight.com/2016/11/20/new-study-progressive-churches-declining-as-conservative-churches-grow/

http://apologetics-notes.comereason.org/2016/02/trying-to-become-more-relevant-makes.html

That by watering down the bible to make it attractive to modern views one also makes it irrelevent to today.

 

[Paidiske]

Maybe that is also part of it -- a loss of the traditional understanding of what it means to be Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, etc. due to the influence of newer, more charismatic-style worship that is maybe less firm in its theology or praxis?

Certainly I notice this in Anglicanism, and I suspect it is actually not a helpful thing, when even some of our clergy have difficulty articulating what makes being an Anglican priest distinct from being a Baptist pastor (for example).

What does "responsive reading" mean in this context?

I suspect it's something like the way the psalms are often experienced where singing them has fallen out of favour. Where the person leading reads a verse and the congregation respond with the next verse, and the person leading reads the next verse, etc. In practice it is often dull, dry and droning. It's one of my bugbears that I try to convince my congregations to sing the psalms more often.

What I notice, too, is that so many of our churches have for generations done well enough simply by virtue of existing. Society was "Christian enough" that this gave them the numbers of members to be viable. Our society is no longer "Christian enough" and we have, in many cases, forgotten how to build the connections and relationships in the community which will draw people in. But re-learning is hard when church cultures are very resistant to change.

 

[LovebirdsFlying]

I don't think we do change it. Jesus rhetorically wondered in Luke 18:8 if, at the time of His return, He would even find faith on the earth. I think the surface Christians are going to keep peeling away, layer by layer, until at the end, it almost looks like nobody believes anymore. The church has been underground before, and my guess is that it will be again.

 

[dzheremi]

I suspect it's something like the way the psalms are often experienced where singing them has fallen out of favour. Where the person leading reads a verse and the congregation respond with the next verse, and the person leading reads the next verse, etc. In practice it is often dull, dry and droning. It's one of my bugbears that I try to convince my congregations to sing the psalms more often.

Hmm. I wonder why singing the psalms has fallen out of favor in Western Christianity in the first place, though. Do you have any insights or thoughts on this? I have several recordings of various types of Western chant (Mozarabic, Corsican polyphony, etc.) from the 15-17th centuries that show that this was the norm until quite recently, but I don't know enough about Western Christian history since that time to know what happened.

What I notice, too, is that so many of our churches have for generations done well enough simply by virtue of existing. Society was "Christian enough" that this gave them the numbers of members to be viable. Our society is no longer "Christian enough" and we have, in many cases, forgotten how to build the connections and relationships in the community which will draw people in. But re-learning is hard when church cultures are very resistant to change.

Oh. Well, yes. I'm trying not to sound critical in any way, but I think we can all agree that it is not a good idea to take your place in society for granted, since it's not a foregone conclusion that this will stay as it is from generation to generation or era to era if you do not do the work in your own time to make it so. Egypt, Syria, Turkey, etc. were all once strongly Christian societies, too, and now look at them.

 

[Jeffwhosoever]

Maybe other Denominations should try to learn and adopt a bit of pentacostalism?

 

[Paidiske]

Hmm. I wonder why singing the psalms has fallen out of favor in Western Christianity in the first place, though. Do you have any insights or thoughts on this? I have several recordings of various types of Western chant (Mozarabic, Corsican polyphony, etc.) from the 15-17th centuries that show that this was the norm until quite recently, but I don't know enough about Western Christian history since that time to know what happened.

I could make some educated guesses, but that's all they would be; certainly not definitive answers.

- Singing the psalms is something that has to be learned and taught, and we have, on the whole, moved towards making our liturgy easier for beginners to participate in.
- The decline of church choirs. Where once every parish worth the name boasted a choir which rehearsed and could lead the congregation in something like this, now (at least where I am) that's the exception rather than the rule. Without the choir there is a crisis of confidence in this.
- The decline of chanting in general. We do not (except for a very few parishes) expect our clergy to be able to chant (although in many parishes if we can it is welcome), nor are we properly taught to do so. I learned only because I had a supervising priest who insisted, but many of my colleagues have never had the opportunity. So - if you have a priest who does not know how to lead, and no choir, and little musical expertise, then it is easier to read without singing...

That's speaking particularly from an Anglican perspective, but I suspect similar trends are at work in other Western traditions.