As far as the original intent of this thread goes, when it is mentioned that church attendance/membership numbers are on the decline, or that there are fewer Christians in the US my only real response is, "So what?"
It's not that I don't care. And I think there are reasons for it that should be addressed that I think often aren't. It's that I've never considered faith to be a game of numbers. Christianity began, basically, as a group of twelve nobodies. People leave the Church/leave the faith for all sorts of reasons, and those different reasons can and ought to be addressed in different ways.
Sometimes it's just that someone though raised in a Christian home just never really took that faith seriously and so, as an adolescent or in their early 20's didn't feel any reason to stick around, they didn't have a bad upbringing in the Church, it's just that faith didn't "stick" as it were. Sometimes, as in the Parable of the Sower, the seed hits the soil and withers before it takes root, or start to takes root and dies. Sometimes people who never really take their childhood faith seriously do, later in life, come back.
Many times people are driven out of the Church because, let's face it, the Church can often be her worst enemy. There is a quote often attributed to St. Augustine, "The Church is a harlot, but she is also my mother." The Church exists as a paradox of faithlessness and faithfulness. She is at once unfaithful, and like Israel of old chasing after false promises and idols; and at the same time she is a mother to all the Faithful, the instrument by which God brings us into His family by Baptism, nourishes us with the Word of the Gospel, and feeds us the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine of the Supper. The Church is both rightly criticized for its failure to look after the poor, the weak, the abused, and the broken--but the Church has also been there in the trenches feeding, clothing, and housing the poor, the weak, the abused, and the broken. Faithless and faithful. The paradox that is true of the Christian--simul iustus et peccator (simultaneously saint and sinner)--is true of the Church as a whole. We confess in the Creed that she is the Unum Sanctum (the One Holy), the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; but very often her actions are far, far less than holy.
I have a number of friends who are no longer Christian or, at least, no longer church goers. One my closest friends left the church because the youth pastor and other leadership of the church, effectively, told him he was unwanted (this was when he was a teenager)--this is also the same church that kicked my family out when I was only a child. Many times we've spoken, and he has been frank that he never stopped believing in Jesus, but that the church wrecked him spiritually.
I also see what many churches have become due to things like the Church Growth Movement. The whole point of the Church Growth Movement is that church "growth" (i.e. new numbers) is a measure of spiritual competence. Programs are designed specifically to bring in new faces, these are often larger or mega churches, the sorts you will find with book stores and gift shops inside the narthex, where the entire worship service is designed as a concert light show, where every attempt is made to appeal directly to the emotions of people and manipulate them into coming again and again. Some stay for the long run in these churches, but I imagine burn out results in a high rate of overturn. Particularly when rather than focusing on being and doing church the focus is on membership numbers, and maybe join a small group (or maybe not, depending on what sorts of cliques exist).
Being now a member of a Mainline Protestant church (ELCA) I can understand how numbers drop. I think our church can seat maybe 200 people, and we only have a packed house on Easter Sunday, most Sundays there's somewhere between 40 and 50 people on average. And aside from a few college students and a couple of families, I'm arguably one of the youngest people I see on any given Sunday. My church isn't exciting, it's just church. We don't have concert light shows, we have a small choir and an organist, and we sing hymns like:
"
To be your presence is our mission here,
To show compassion's face and list'ning ear.
To be your heart of mercy ever near,
Alleluia!
To be your presence is our mission bold,
To feed the poor and shelter homeless cold,
To be your hands of justice right uphold,
Alleluia!"
A great little hymn, but not exactly this (thank God!):
But I would say, fortunately, there are many younger people who honestly want substance over show, and the big mess in the video above isn't the sort of thing that can last the test of time.
-CryptoLutheran
