The Birth of a Vision

“The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will either be pulled either when the money runs out (80 percent of money given to congregations comes from people aged 55 and older) or when the remaining three-fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both.”

Church is changing. Across denominational lines, mainline church attendance is declining as more and more men and women find spiritual fulfillment in experiences outside of traditional Christian institutions. Some are turning to large, nondenominational mega churches where there is a direct sense of getting “more bang for their buck” following the secular consumer trend of super-malls and super-shopping centers. Others are abandoning churches all together, turning instead to community clubs, other faith traditions, political and social movements and the internet for spiritual connection and growth. Pastors and researchers alike have commented that the moderate, historic Church today fails to connect with the real needs and yearning of people in our current social context. Stained glass, central pulpits and stiff pews no longer connect with a majority of younger generation professional, technology savvy, IM-ing, podcasting men and women.

There is reason for concern here. As we understand generational differences more clearly, we now see that the younger the generation, the less likely they are to participate in the life of a church community. The latest statistics show that 52% of builders (those born before 1946) attend church while only 36% of GenXers do. In a George Barna report, published in 2002, he reports that the number of women who do not attend church has risen from 18 to 30%, the number of Hispanics who do not attend church has risen from 19 to 33% and the number of people on the west coast who do not attend church has risen from 29 to 40%. Dawson McAlister, a national youth ministry specialist, says that 90% of kids active in high school youth ministries do not go to church by their sophomore year in college. One-third of those will never return. What does this mean for the future of the church?

While some will surely disagree with dire suggestions of this assessment, the fact remains that church attendance is in decline. Church budgets, mission effectiveness and social ministries are also in decline as people give money to causes and social movements rather than institutional maintenance. Millions of dollars pour in to help victims of Hurricane Katrina; pennies pour in for yet another church building campaign. Church is changing.

But another social trend is also interesting. In a recent news television report produced by ABC News and anchored by George Stephanopoulos, he reported that in 1960, 10% of the American population said that they would label themselves as lonely, with little or no significant connection to other people. Today in 2006, this number has climbed to 25% of Americans. More and more people find their relational fulfillment through internet interactions rather than face to face, intimate human relationships. This means that relational needs and trends are shifting in ways that we have never seen before. In many ways, our world is growing smaller, more interconnected as we reach out to people around the world through the internet. Yet we fail to reach into our own community for interpersonal relationships.

Today there is an opportunity for a new kind of church.

The changes facing the church are not, as some have suggested, the death of the Church. The Church that Jesus Christ founded and the Good News of the Christian Faith are just as relevant and transformational as they were 2,000 years ago. God’s message of love and grace, forgiveness and newness of life is needed now just as desperately as in years past. But the way we tell this story must change. No longer can churches sit back and wait for people to come to them; like the apostle Paul, we must take the church to the people. And our message cannot be “Come and let us teach you to worship like us” but rather “Let us learn together as we walk this journey of faith.”

The key to this message is a fundamental shift in how we understand “church.” While there is a clear decline in church attendance, there is actually an increase in spirituality. A 2003 Gallop poll indicates that a vast majority of Americans say that religion has an impact on every aspect of their lives. While people may be turned off of the church, they are still turned on to Jesus. Jesus still makes the cover of Newsweek and Time magazines. The Passion of the Christ netted more money that any movie had before in cinema history. So where is the disconnect?

People outside of the Church do not associate Jesus with the Church. To many non-church-goers, the church is a club for religious people where club members can celebrate their own traditions and be around people who share their way of thinking and view of the world. The church is “rooted tradition.” Jesus is a man of free flowing, selfless love. Jesus heals the sick, fights for the powerless, and cares for the poor. For those who have been spurned by the church, they experience it as a club that looks out for itself and its traditions more than its people.

If we are going to grow in the future, I believe that we must change the way we “do church” – the way that we talk about church, our faith and God. We must start paying attention to cultural trends, which often point to new ways that God is challenging the world, instead of retreating from them. We must stop saying “Ours is Church” and “Yours is not.” We must start creating opportunities to connect with people who do not know our hymns, appreciate our sanctuaries or understand our doctrines. We must start thinking outside of the box – the Church box. Reggie McNeal writes, “The point is not to adopt the culture and lose the message; the point is to understand the culture so we can build bridges to it for the sake of the gaining a hearing for the gospel of Jesus.”

To do that, we need a new model. Or perhaps we can rediscover an old one. People today in our post-modern world are no longer looking for Truth; they are looking for meaning. Research is showing us that a growing number of people are not leaving the institutional church because they have lost their faith – they are leaving the church to preserve their faith!

Ours is a message of radical inclusion and hospitality that offers a progressive theological perspective in an often black and white world. How do we connect with these disenfranchised people and draw them into the United Church of Christ?

COMMA CONNECTIONS!

McNeal, Reggie. The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 2003, pg. 1

Taylor, Barbara Brown. Leaving Church. San Francisco: Harper Publishing House, 2006. pg. 36

Stephanopoulos, George. ABC News program “A Country Divided: The State of Our Union” aired at 7pm on June 30, 2006.

McNeal, Reggie. The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 2003, pg. 11

McNeal, Reggie. The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 2003, pg. 51