The coming evangelical collapse?

Monday was a big news day re the status of the church in North America – here’s what went down:

1) The ARIS survey results title American Religious Identification Survey 2008 was widely reported. The full report is available here.

2) The Barna Group released results of a recent survey titled Changes in Worldview Among Christians over the Past 13 Years – it was not widely reported. A printable version of the findings is here – the key nugget: “less than one-half of one percent of adults in the Mosaic generation – i.e., those aged 18 to 23 – have a biblical worldview, compared to about one out of every nine older adults.”

3) But to top it all off the Christian Science Monitor published a very provocative article titled The Coming Evangelical Collapse (print edition to be available later in the week). If you are already uncomfortable from reading other posts on this blog you may want to skip this one (as if the title wasn’t warning enough). But for those who want to read the author’s thoughts in greater detail check out the unabridged version – a three part series posted the end of January 2009 here, here and here (or a printable version of all 3 available here).

Missional leadership

Alan Roxburgh is leading a series of webinars that coordinate with his book The Missional Leader.  The book is an excellent resource providing some very practical guidance for leaders in post-Christendom.  Christianity Today reviewed the book shortly after it was published in 2006.  The following comments are from that review: 

“The book first describes this new term ‘missional.’ Leaders no longer view themselves as heads of a hierarchy, and church members no longer look only to the “professional” Christians to get the job done of reaching and caring for their communities. Missional leaders are more interested in cultivating community than controlling outcomes through programs and buildings. Such congregations are beginning to breathe in the same air and dream incredible dreams because they are learning to allow God’s Word and his Spirit to lead them rather than agendas, budgets, and traditions. People who would never have dreamed of taking leadership roles are discovering purpose in the community of believers.

“Essentially, in this model, the leader is a facilitator skilled at bringing out the deeper issues among the community. Rather than providing solutions, he asks good questions and embraces, rather than resolves, tension. The missional leader seeks to cultivate the congregation’s imaginative power rather than attempting to shape it into a pre-determined form.

“…For all its idealism, The Missional Leader paints a realistic picture at least of what life could look like among churches willing to enter the chaos and make lasting change little by little.”

Early last year Chad Hall illustrated how The Missional Leader was “playing out” in several churches in a Leadership Journal article (pdf available here).  

The webinars Alan Roxburgh is hosting are available here.  The next one is scheduled for February 16.  The first webinar was recorded and recently made available to the participants – I’ve posted it below (the Powerpoint can be accessed and printed from here):

The end of Christendom – a good thing

 

 

 

George Barna posted today the results of his latest research regarding the state of Christianity in America.  He titled his findings “Christianity Is No Longer Americans’ Default Faith” – summarizing his findings that “half of all adults now contend that Christianity is just one of many options that Americans choose from and that a huge majority of adults pick and choose what they believe rather than adopt a church or denomination’s slate of beliefs.”  Here are some of the insights Barna draws from the research:

• “The Christian faith is less of a life perspective that challenges the supremacy of individualism as it is a faith being defined through individualism.
• … Americans are embracing an unpredictable and contradictory body of beliefs… Millions also contend that they will experience eternal salvation because they confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior, but also believe that a person can do enough good works to earn eternal salvation.
• In the past, when most people determined their theological and moral points of view, the alternatives from which they chose were exclusively of Christian options… Today, Americans are more likely to pit a variety of non-Christian options against various Christian-based views. This has resulted in an abundance of unique worldviews based on personal combinations of theology drawn from a smattering of world religions…
• Faith, of whatever variety, is increasingly viral rather than pedagogical. With people spending less time reading the Bible, and becoming less engaged in activities that deepen their biblical literacy, faith views are more often adopted on the basis of dialogue, self-reflection, and observation than teaching.”

Barna’s survey results are no surprise but serve to underline our present reality that we need to be living in this culture as missionaries – not pharisees. 

Christendom has been waining in the west for several decades but the church has been slow to see it – and even slower to process the implications.  One exception to that is Malcolm Muggeridge who gave a series of popular lectures on the subject at the University of Waterloo (Ontario) in 1978 (published in 1980 in a book titled The End of Christendom).   Muggeridge’s perspective was that Christendom is not compatible with Christianity and, as such, the end of Christendom will allow for the church to triumph.  He saw the twentieth century as a parallel to what St. Augustine encountered when faced with the collapse of Rome: the inevitable transience of historical civilizations in contrast to which the eternity that comes to light through Christianity shines out all the more clearly, as he envisions anew Augustine’s distinction between the ephemeral City of Man and the everlasting City of God.

Apologetics in post-modernity

One of the statements made by Andy Stanley at the Catalyst Conference this fall keeps ringing in my head: “If you are over 45 years old, you aren’t going to have any good ideas. It’s your job to recognize the good ideas.” I take a statement like this as a challenge not another nail in the coffin for those of us in this age group. The challenge is to not submit to the comfort of just “doing church” but to press forward – learn new things and engage in new ways.

Well, Andy Stanley’s statement rang again today when I read a series of questions that John H. Armstrong used in a graudate class in apologetics he taught last month at Wheaton College. I think these are the type of questions that can really help us move toward engagement – they provide a good map about what we need to be learning and applying. John Armstrong credits these questions to Newbigin’s book Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship:

1. What are the questions that the postmodern person asks that were not asked 25 years ago?

2. What specific influence does Hinduism have upon the “new-age” movement in the West?

3. How can we speak about apologetics in a way that makes it accessible to ordinary people?

4. How do we approach the issue of evil with unbelievers?

5. Does conservative and fundamentalist Christianity actually pose a major problem for serious apologetics in today’s world and if so how do we deal with this problem?

6. Do Marxism and radical Islam have anything in common and if so how do we address these problems?

7. How do we respond to the “So What?” responses of many postmodern hearers?

8. Does our commitment to seeking justice and mercy in society act as a form of apologetics and if so how can we do this better?

9. How do we change every sphere of society?

10. In what ways is the Christian faith “public truth” as Newbigin cogently argues?

11. Is the community of Christ our greatest apologetic and if so what does unity and John 17 have to do with this in actual practice?

Missing the point

“The point is.. all the effort to fix the church misses the point. You can build the perfect church-and they still won’t come. People are not looking for a great church… The age in which institutional religion holds appeal is passing away.

“Church leaders seem unable to grasp this simple implication of the new world-people outside the church think church is for church people, not for them.”

-Reggie McNeal

Fishing in Christendom

Karios

 
Karios is a Greek word that means “when all things come together” and the identifier for a network of neighborhood churches in the Los Angeles area.  Their web page is worth a visit to get a flavor for what this new church is all about. They are part of Great Commission Ministries, an affiliation of missional churches – many of which serve university campuses (including a new church plant at FSU). Yes, this is cutting edge but not without solid backing (with guys like Rick Warren, Howard Hendricks, John Maxwell and Luder Whitlock on their Council of Reference).

In particular I thought their vision statement was well written and provides an excellent example of what a church in our post-Christendom culture should be about: 

As a community we are
          gathering a variety of wounded people together
                    crying out to our Creator
                              “breathe new life into us.”
                                        so we can see broken communities…
                              becoming communities of faith
                    bringing the reality of God’s reign
          neighborhood by neighborhood

Friday is for videos

Michael Frost is an Australian teacher, writer and church leader, and one of Australia’s leading communicators and evangelists. He is the Director of the Centre for Evangelism and Glocal Mission at Morling Baptist Seminary in Sydney, Australia.  He has authored numerous books including Seeing God in the Ordinary (©Hendrickson, 2000), The Shaping of Things to Come with Alan Hirsch (©Hendrickson, 2003) and Exiles (©Hendrickson, 2006).

In August 2007 Michael spoke at the Presbyterian Global Fellowship (PGF) conference along with John Ortberg (the 2008 conference speakers included Rick Warren and Alan Hirsch).  Who is PGF? – you can check out their web page but I think what they say at the beginning of their “Covenant 2008” describes what they are about quite well: 

“The mainline church is in crisis. We have turned
our eyes inward and have lost the central focus of
the New Testament church: its apostolic calling to
bear witness to Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.
We live in a time when our own culture is a mission
field, and we acknowledge that maintaining old
institutions and systems leads neither to renewal
nor to faithfulness in God’s mission.

The mandate of the Gospel and the needs of
the world are urgent.

We confess that the living and reigning
Lord Jesus Christ alone is the hope of the world.

We believe that the Father sent the Son into the
world out of love (John 3:16) and that the church is
not an end in itself but a gift given to the world in
order that all may believe (John 17:21).

We believe Christ is calling us to recommit
ourselves to the authority of Holy Scripture and to
the faithful summaries of biblical teaching found in
the historic Reformed confessions.

We believe Christ is calling us, as covenantal
people, to be transformed by his indwelling
Holy Spirit and to be empowered by the Spirit
for faithful witness.

We believe Christ is calling us to move beyond
confidence in our own capacity and culture to a
new interdependence with others in the global
Body of Christ.

We believe Christ is calling for significant
transformation of our congregations, both in who
we are and what we do, as we engage in God’s
missional purpose for the church.

We believe it is time to gather anew around
God’s mission to the world…”

What Michael Frost has to say in the following discussion is very important explanation of missional and how our ecclesiology needs to be realigned:

“The King isn’t waiting on us”

Reggie McNeal is a well respected guy from the Southern Baptist tradition.  He holds an MDiv and PhD from Southwestern Theological Seminary and has a couple decades of experience leading in the local church.  In addition to teaching at Fuller Theological Seminary he does a lot of traveling and speaking primarily to churches and denominational gatherings in assocation with Leadership Network (he will be speaking at the Catalyst Conference this fall).

Reggie’s message is best for those of us who have spent more than a few years in the institutional church in North America.  He addresses our need to rethink ministry with a real focus on the kingdom of God – to shift from looking at the kingdom through church lenses to the church through kingdom lenses.

The following audio is from his talk at the Reformed Church In America’s leadership conference earlier this year.  If you would prefer a video format it is available here:

download mp4

“American Christianity is entering the most exciting era in our lifetime”

If you live in Dallas and picked up the Star-Telgram you may have read Christine Wicker’s story in the Editorial sction of the paper on Sunday, August 17th, titled: Religion: American evangelicals, once considered monolithic, are fragmenting.  Her article syntheses the research we have all been reading from the Pew Foundation, Willow Creek and George Barna.  She paints a pretty negative image of evangelicalism and her style is pretty cutting – but the reality is her assessment aligns with the data that all the major indicators (conversions, baptisms, membership, retention, participation, giving, attendance, religious literacy and impact on culture) are on the decline.

What I find encouraging and energizing about her article, however, is her conclusion about what these negatives may be indicators of – that “American Christianity is entering the most exciting era in our lifetime,” a “new awakening” or even another reformation.  The challenge is that such a preferable future will require much change – and change is rarely a friend of comfort which we have come to love so dearly: 

“That loud crack heard throughout the evangelical world when national research showed that more than half of American evangelicals believe people of other religions can go to heaven wasn’t thunder from an angry God.

This crack came from the rock upon which the modern American evangelical movement sits. It was splitting right down the middle.

There is both rejoicing and lamentation.

I am among those rejoicing.

The universalist/evangelical finding, which came from the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, was one more sign that American Christianity is entering the most exciting era in our lifetime. Some people believe a new awakening is at hand. Others believe a reformation is in the making. No one knows how long it will take or how far it will go.

What’s clear is that people in the pews are taking back their faith, wresting it from leaders who helped sell the idea that only the most fundamentalist brands of Christian belief could succeed and that their words alone represented that belief.”

Skipping a few paragraphs she continues:

“They’re admitting what their own studies show – that evangelicals almost never convert a native-born American who wasn’t raised in a church. That most evangelical growth comes from stealing the sheep from other denominations. And that they’ve stolen about all they can.

They’re also admitting that most evangelicals won’t evangelize. And if they did, it wouldn’t get them anywhere because the usual methods don’t work. They don’t work first because they usually rest on the idea that Christians are the only ones saved. In today’s religiously equalitarian culture, that assertion causes evangelicals to seem distastefully holier-than-thou.

Conversion tactics also focus on telling people the Good News as though no one else knows it. But most everyone has heard it. Again and again. The trouble is that they aren’t convinced. They aren’t scared of hell. They aren’t hoping for heaven. And Christians haven’t been good at giving anyone better reasons than that for following Jesus. They have reasons. They just aren’t telling them. They need to.“

Christine Wicker has also recently published a book titled The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church that expands on her editorial.