Its no secret to many that Christianity is on the decline in the west. Surveys upon surveys have appeared showing that many are walking away from the cross. My church itself has felt this blow.
In the past, Christianity was the most dominant force on the Planet and has a strong foot in much of our culture. I have many theories why people are leaving but it all comes down to one thing. They don't believe.
Do you see this changing in years? Can our faith resonate with the next generation or will it fade away and be all but gone.
Or does it even need to rise again? Is it better this way? What do you think
I am confident in the Gospel as the power of God to save all who believe. Thus we shouldn't worry about what the numbers say, because Christianity has never been about numbers of adherents, but faith in Jesus.
Where I think there is something depressing is that many who leave do so because, perhaps, they have heard the faith wrongly in their churches--rather than hearing the beautiful word of the Gospel of God's loving grace toward sinners, they have perhaps heard any number of things which have turned them off. It is possible, perhaps, that they have not rejected the Gospel, but have rejected a false gospel--and that we should in fact stand in solidarity with them in their rejection of false gospel.
I think we should also remember that there was a time when the Church consisted of little more than a group of men and women seated around a table in an upper room in Jerusalem.
In part I think we are seeing the "post-Christian world", that is we are living in a time after what has been many centuries of cultural Christianity--by this I mean being a Christian in the west was largely equated with being a member of a western society and culture--to be French, or Spanish, or English, or Scottish, or--even--American often meant to be Christian with only few exceptions. But that isn't how things are. It is no longer considered part of decent society to identify as a Christian; and this isn't exactly a bad thing. One shouldn't be a Christian because of social pressure, or because it is culturally or politically convenient or expedient--one should be a Christian because of the truth of the Gospel.
I don't believe the Gospel has become defective because many are leaving the Church or have walked away--there can be any number of reasons for this, including the failure of churches to preach the Gospel or churches being toxic environments in which the love and grace of God is not encountered; or perhaps simply people no longer believing with no fault of the church. But it is never a problem with the Gospel itself.
What, perhaps, this can be of benefit for us is to evaluate ourselves as churches--and to make sure that we are, in fact, being faithful communities of Jesus preaching the Gospel and loving our neighbor; and if we are being this, then simply trust the Lord, and trust that as we faithfully be the Church toward our fellow man, loving them, preaching Christ's Word, serving others that the Holy Spirit indeed delivers faith and bring those outside of the Church into the Church. For it is always the Holy Spirit who does this, not we ourselves.
-CryptoLutheran