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"A New Day in the Church"

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
given April 29, 2007

Did you catch the front page headline of last Sunday’s News Journal? “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple... Where are all the people?” The subtitle of the article spelled out the dilemma facing the Christian Church in North America today: “Eighty percent of Americans profess belief in God, but the pews are emptying.”

The article pointed out that most of the 300,000 congregations in the U.S. are not growing, and mainline denominations - Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists and Lutherans - have all been declining in membership for a number of years. Several people quizzed me about the article, asking if it were accurate. It was accurate, but far too gentle. The decline in membership in mainline churches is severe.

To throw out a few numbers, I pulled up the latest statistics from the Presbyterian Church (USA). The research department produced a report last November that tracks mainline membership declines from 1994 - 2004. During that ten-year period, the Presbyterian Church (USA) lost 336,126 members, or 12% of our membership. The Methodists lost over 400,000 members, but lest we gloat, that denomination is considerably larger; it only represented 5% of its membership. The Lutherans lost 4% during the ten year period and the United Church of Christ lost 15%.

The membership decline in the mainline denominations is not a recent phenomenon and began well before 1994. In fact, mainline denominations have experienced membership declines every year for the past 30 years.

What is going on? Why are fewer people in the pews on Sunday mornings?

Vast changes occurring in our world during the past four decades have prompted the decline. Last Sunday’s newspaper article hinted at a few of the changes,

but this morning I want to present an expanded account. Here are ten reasons for the decline in church participation.

1. The “Bowling alone” syndrome. In 1995, Robert Putnam published an article pointing out that Americans are not joining organized groups as they once did. He used statistics to show that there is a decline in the number of bowling leagues while there is an increase in the number of people who are bowling. If his research had been limited to bowling, his report would not have even garnered a shrug. However, he used a mountain of evidence to demonstrate that Americans are not making a commitment to join others in a variety of civic arenas. He showed that membership is shrinking in fraternal and service organizations such as the Rotarians and Kiwanis, in political organizations such as the League of Women Voters, in parent-teacher organizations and religious organizations. “With stunning consistency, virtually every indicator of civic engagement shows this same pattern of decline - attending both public and political meetings, serving as an officer in a local club, joining unions, going on picnics, eating the evening meal with the whole family, going out to bars, playing cards, working on community projects” and the list goes on and on. (1) So, one change in our culture that is having a significant impact on the church is that people are simply not joining organizations or gathering with others as they once did, or committing to much of anything.

2. The distrust of institutions and authority. A shift began in the sixties. People went from having great confidence in the institutions of our country - the government, the schools, the business community, the church - to having great distrust of them. People used to admire leaders and respect them. Now, many people’s first thought is that leaders will disappoint you. They will run off with the money or circumvent the laws or end up in the wrong bedroom. Since the church has such high ideals - so lofty that it is impossible to hit the mark - it has become an easy target for criticism. And because much of the mainstream media like to show the church in the worst possible light, people outside the church could easily draw the conclusion that most clergy are peddlers of snake oil or sex. Even the Bible does not claim the authority it once did. Before many people make up their minds about a passage of Scripture, they first want to check it against what Oprah and Dr. Phil have to say.

3. A lower birth rate among people with higher educations. Young people who grow up in mainline denominations are among the best educated people in our country, and the more educated people are, the fewer babies they have. In addition, today’s young people are the latest marrying generation in U.S. history, as well as, the latest childbearing generation. The demographics are against us; in mainline denominations more people are dying than there are babies being born.

4. The growing secularism in our culture. Until about 40 years ago, the United States was a Christian nation. Businesses were closed on Sunday morning. Sports leagues rarely played on Sundays and when they did, it was limited to the afternoon. The Bible was read and prayers were said in the public schools and in public gatherings. However, a shift has taken place over the past few decades and the result is that many people have little sense of the sacred.

The result of this spreading secularism is that many of the chief messages of our culture are in opposition to religious beliefs. Our culture says that the most important thing in life is to be happy, and owning more possessions will satisfy your restlessness. Advertisers seek to alleviate our feelings of anxiety, insecurity and inadequacy by convincing us that we will feel a whole lot better if we will purchase an expensive, new toy. In addition, our culture has created entertainment addicts. More and more people say, “Don’t ask me to do anything. Just entertain me.”

5. Sacrifice is out, self-indulgence is in. Commercials counsel us to pamper ourselves and to satisfy all personal desires. The government tells us that we can go to war and no one, except for the soldiers, is required to make a sacrifice. Our culture encourages us to ask: What’s in it for me? Our faith says to deny ourselves and follow Christ. Our culture prompts us to ask: How am I going to benefit? Our faith teaches us to look beyond ourselves to the needs of others. Our culture wants us to think in terms of how we can get rich at the expense of others. Our faith teaches that it is better to give than to receive. Many fail to appreciate the value of sacrifice.

6. More competition on Sunday morning. As a result of the diminished sense of the sacred and an over-emphasis on self-satisfaction, an endless number of alternatives compete for our attention on Sunday morning. In the past, there was a distinct difference between Saturday and Sunday. Now that stores are open and sports teams play on Sunday morning, some people see virtually no distinction between Saturday and Sunday. A couple of decades ago, evangelicals claimed that mainline churches became too liberal and the members that quit coming joined more evangelical denominations. However, several studies showed that people who leave mainline churches generally don’t go to other denominations. They go to the golf course or the garden or the theatre. The church faces more competition for people’s attention than ever before.

7. People have less free time than previous generations. The creation of suburbs has lengthened the amount of time people commute to work. The increase in the number of working couples means that more of the weekend must be used for catching up on housework and errands that could not be accomplished during the weekdays. Competition in the workplace and the proliferation of email have resulted in longer working hours. With less free time on our hands, many people use Sunday morning for the things they have not had time to accomplish during the week.

8. Affluence. Many mainline Protestants have enough income to leave town for the weekend. Some own second homes that they use to get away from the stress of the week or simply to opt for a change of scenery. People travel more than they did in previous generations. Many aren’t in church because they aren’t in town. And as their affluence enables them to be away more often, they break the habit of being in worship on Sunday morning.

9. The scientific worldview. The Christian faith was born in a prescientific era when people had a very limited understanding of the world and its processes. They held primitive ideas about physics and biology. Their understanding of the world shaped their view of God and how God interacts with life on this planet. However, over the past three centuries, science has altered our picture of the world. The theories of evolution, indeterminism and relativity now shape our view of the way things are and that view conflicts with the view of the world that was held when the Scriptures were written. This makes the Scriptures more challenging to interpret and erodes a literal understanding of them. If people do not grasp that religious truth is not always tied to historical fact, they become skeptical about faith claims.

To make matters worse, science currently defines what is real by what can be measured through the five senses. Thus science eliminates the possibility of a spiritual being because it cannot be measured by seeing, touching, smelling, hearing or tasting.

10. Changing theological views. Religious beliefs have been undergoing profound changes for the past 50 years. For centuries, everyone could declare with confidence the words of the Apostles’ Creed. Today an increasing number of people cross their fingers when they affirm ancient declarations of faith. When our view of the world changed, our view of God was transformed. In addition, with the spread of democracy and the rise of reason, theologians no longer take as sacred the doctrines that are handed down from the past. People wrestle with the Scriptures and their experiences of life, and God’s Spirit blows through our lives like a fresh breeze revealing new understandings of earlier doctrines. What followed was that slavery has been denounced and women have become ordained and the world is no longer envisioned as a closed system that God has predetermined. This new climate that has made room for changing theological views liberated us from questionable doctrines of the past, but the changes also undermined some previously held beliefs making many people feel as if they were losing their faith. Some people have wandered off because they no longer believe what they used to believe, and they do not understand that faith is not static, but rather, is always evolving as we deepen our understanding of God and the world.

These are ten reasons for the decline in church participation. With so many global and cultural factors tugging on people to leave the church, some wonder why so many people still come to church at all and why there seems to be an increasing number of people finding their way back to the church after years of absence. It is because religion speaks to that part of our being that our culture often neglects or offends.

The church is where we dig beneath the superficial and discover meaning and fulfillment.

It is where we learn to connect with God, to connect with one another and the world beyond our doors. The church is where we learn to see God at work in the world and where we hear God’s call to embody compassion. The church is where we garner the courage to stand for justice and where we are challenged to do the demanding, yet ultimately rewarding work of peacemaking.

We live in complex and chaotic times; ours is a restless age. Thus, it becomes critical for us to tell the world that the church provides a foundation on which to stand, guidance for the way forward and the hope that our faithful actions can make a positive difference in people’s lives.

After giving you ten reasons for the decline in church participation, you may feel as if there is little that can be done to halt the slide. I hope you will be here next week, when we talk about the things we need to do to be a growing church.

NOTES

1. Mark Chaves, “Are we ‘bowling alone’ - and does is matter?” in Christian Century, July 19-26, 2000, p.754.

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