Bob Edgar wants to rescue America from the religious right. In his new book, Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right, Edgar intends to reset the nation’s agenda when it comes to matters of Christian concern.

A former six-term Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Edgar now serves as the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. As such, he is one of the primary spokesmen for the religious left in America—symbolically presiding over the dwindling numbers of mainline Protestants in the nation.

“My purpose in writing this book is to awaken the conscience of average, ordinary common folks within the United States to do above-average, extraordinary, and uncommon things to insure a future for our fragile planet,” Edgar states. “I am especially interested in inspiring and challenging what I call ‘Middle Church,’ ‘Middle Synagogue,’ ‘Middle Mosque’—the many millions of faithful people who do not always connect their spiritual values with political issues and whose voices are, as a result, often drowned out by the far religious right.”

As it turns out, one does not have to be very conservative in order to be considered part of the “far religious right” as identified by Bob Edgar. Interestingly for one whose own organization pushes so many political agendas, he claims to speak for those “faithful people” who do not, at least always, “connect their spiritual values with political issues.”

As Edgar sees it, there are two different churches in the United States—one based on love and the other grounded in fear. As Edgar asserts, “fear, fundamentalism, and the FOX Broadcasting Company must not be allowed to set the agenda for our nation.”

Well then. As children, we are wisely advised by parents to learn the art of compromise. This is good advice for children playing in the sandbox. However, it is disastrous advice when it comes to matters of truth. Compromise works when truth is not at issue. But the very character of the National Council of Churches and the larger ecumenical movement is one of constant compromise at the expense of truth.

As the book begins, Edgar traces his own political involvement to the inspiration he received from the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Inspired by King’s example, Edgar wants to call America’s Christians to a middle way. “It is time for Middle Church—an umbrella term I use to refer to mainstream people of all faiths—to stand up to the far religious right and to embrace Christianity no less sincerely. The classic, historical Christianity practiced by Middle Church is far more authentic than the narrow religious expression of most radical right-wing religious leaders. We in Middle Church, Middle Synagogue, and Middle Mosque are not secularists who wish to banish God from the public square. We are people of faith whose traditions lead us to work for peace and care for the poor.”

Conservative Christians are certainly not above criticism. The evangelical movement is certainly capable of political misjudgment, spiritual triumphalism, and a truncated set of moral and theological concerns. Bob Edgar could have written a book offering an intelligent analysis of conservative Christianity and its cultural and political engagement. Unfortunately, this is not that book. It is not an intelligent analysis, and the intelligent reader will find the book absolutely perplexing at many points.

For example, Edgar could have offered a careful, exegetical, historical, and theological engagement with moral issues. Instead he offers irresponsible generalizations such as this: “The Bible mentions abortion not once, homosexuality only twice, and poverty or peace more than two thousand times. Yet somehow abortion and homosexuality have become the litmus test of faith in public life today.”

How can an intelligent reader, armed with even the slightest knowledge of the Bible and the Christian tradition, take such a statement seriously? The Bible does not mention abortion only in the sense that it does not make direct reference to the practice of surgical abortion as is common today. The Bible speaks clearly to the sanctity of human life and to the priority of protecting unborn life. Furthermore, to state that the Bible mentions homosexuality “only twice” indicates that Edgar has redefined homosexuality as something other than that which the Bible addresses in numerous passages.

There can be no doubt that the Bible’s consistent judgment is that homosexual acts are inherently immoral and sinful. The Christian church in all of its major branches has understood this for two thousand years. This has been a true ecumenical consensus until recent years when some more liberal churches in the West have abandoned the Christian tradition in order to endorse homosexual practice.

Thus, it is an act of intellectual dishonesty for Edgar to claim to speak for “classic historical Christianity.”

Just in case we might miss his point, Edgar offers this assessment of Scripture: “The far religious right is fond of condemning homosexuality because they say the Scripture is immutable and its words are literal.” Again, Edgar identifies the scriptural consensus that homosexuality is sinful as an example of the radical nature of the “far religious right” [italics his]. Once again, one need not be very conservative to end up in Edgar’s category of the far religious right.

As for his view of Scripture, “I do not personally believe God stops talking to us with the final word in the book of Revelation.” Edgar explains that, as a pastor, he had included readings in worship from the Old Testament, the New Testament and what he calls the “Now Testament,” by which he means readings from Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others.

When it comes to familiarity with the Bible and the Christian tradition, there is no excuse for Edgar not to be well versed. After all, he is a seminary graduate and was for a decade president of the Claremont School of Theology. Thus, the reader might be surprised when Edgar, criticizing the fact that evangelicals seem too concerned with the Rapture and the end of the world, states this: “The book of Revelation does speak of the Rapture, and the portrait it paints is in fact quite fierce. But it’s equally important to understand that the books of the New Testament are works of human beings.” In the span of two fairly short sentences, Edgar manages to suggest that the New Testament is to be read as a merely human book while moving the Bible’s text concerning the Rapture from 1 Thessalonians chapter four to the book of Revelation. Continuing to define his understanding of Scripture, Edgar suggests that “not every single word can be taken as literal historical fact.”

When it comes to global warming, however, Edgar is quite certain that the problem is real and can be resolved by human beings. Furthermore, he offers his conclusion that dealing with global warming would not “cause economic problems.” Edgar is quite certain that the Bible does not reveal an explicit command by God against homosexuality, but he is confident that God has a position on global warming.

Now, there is an urgent need at present for a truly thoughtful and comprehensive analysis of global warming and its theological significance. It would be fair to suggest that many evangelicals are simply dismissive of ecological concerns. Nevertheless, Edgar never makes his case for why we should, on his authority, assume that global warming should take priority over other concerns—especially those related to the sanctity of human life and the ordering of human sexuality.

Edgar dismisses the theory of Intelligent Design and the claim by “biblical literalists” that the earth is less than six thousand years old. “Let me just say here that I believe God is an ‘intelligent designer,’ and that’s why God ‘intelligently designed’ the theory of evolution.” That statement is cute, but it cannot be taken seriously. Readers with the slightest familiarity with the dominant theory of evolution held in the scientific community today will know that the very idea of an external design is incompatible with that theory. Cute statements are no substitute for serious thought.

The same is true when Edgar turns to moral issues—after all, the central concern of his book is to replace the agenda of conservative Christians with a different public agenda for Christianity. The “Middle Church” Edgar affirms must be absolutely certain about issues like peace, justice, poverty, racism, and ecology, but “must be prepared to agree to disagree about homosexuality, abortion, and stem cell research.”

In an amazing passage, Edgar asserts: “People of faith must be able to conduct a respectful and open conversation about all aspects of sexuality including homosexuality. God has a lot to say on all these topics, and if we skip the listening and rush straight to the judging—an enterprise in which we’re not supposed to be involved anyway—we can’t hope to make serious progress in our discussion.”

Statements like this must leave us wondering if this author actually means to be taken seriously. His book is filled with moral judgments—judgments about ecology, justice, racism, and a host of other issues. But when it comes to sexuality, Edgar offers the facile suggestion that moral judgment is “an enterprise in which we’re not supposed to be involved anyway.”

In other words, when Edgar makes moral judgments, he’s not being judgmental. But when others make moral judgments, they are being judgmental. The Bible does not say that we are not to make moral judgments, or that we are not to judge moral behavior. Indeed, the Bible makes absolutely no sense if that is the case. The Bible—in both Old and New Testaments—is filled with moral judgment and with advisement on how we are to make such judgments. Of course, the judgments we are to make concern behavior, not the heart. We are expressly forbidden to judge another’s heart. That distinction is missing from Edgar’s analysis.

As is always the case, the major issues of moral consequence are rooted in issues of more fundamental importance. When it comes to theology, Edgar demonstrates himself to be on the far left of the ecumenical movement. Consider this: “My God hopes for positive outcomes. My God does not play tricks or determine outcomes. My God has enough self-confidence to be less concerned with the language in which people pray than with the fullness with which people love one another. Most important, my God does not withhold love or acceptance from a Hindu child in India, a Buddhist child in Thailand, a Jewish child in Jerusalem, or a Muslim child in Ramallah.” All that is said with absolutely no reference to Jesus Christ, or the Gospel.

Just in case we missed his point, Edgar argues that, in his personal opinion, God does not “even ask us to convert those who espouse other faiths?” Why? “I believe God reveals his love to different people in different ways and through different vehicles.” This from the general secretary of an organization known as the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA.

Bob Edgar—and the movement he leads—has replaced the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a platform of political involvement. “I admit that I do not give much thought to the afterlife personally,” Edgar explains, “but it’s only because I am keeping plenty busy here on Earth and I trust God to sort out eternity.” On that last part we can all agree. God will “sort out eternity.” What separates Bob Edgar and biblical Christianity is the fact that God has told us how He is going to judge humanity—and the crucial issue in that judgment is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

When it comes to matters of public policy, evangelicals surely do not have all the answers. Furthermore, evangelicals are well served by a reminder that our moral agenda needs to be broader than the issues of the daily headlines.

Nevertheless, conservative Christians did not decide to make abortion, homosexuality, and stem cell research front-line issues. It is nothing less than intellectual dishonesty to suggest that evangelicals prompted the national debate on those issues. On all of these fronts, evangelicals are simply calling on the Christian church to stand by its historic convictions and moral wisdom.

We must always be willing and ready to read what our own critics have to say. This is especially true when the critic is fair, intelligent, and thoughtful. Unfortunately, Bob Edgar has written a book that fits none of those categories. Instead, his book appears to be nothing less than a parody of mainline Protestantism—a cartoon reflection of what the ecumenical movement really represents. Middle Church is a roadmap to nowhere except further decline in influence and relevance for liberal Protestantism.

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>>Why Are Conservative Churches Growing? (Mohler, 050519)

Judith Shulevitz wants to know why conservative churches are strong and growing. Writing in the May 12, 2005 edition of Slate, Shulevitz shares the confusion of many on the secular left in wondering why strict religious movements appear to be growing while more liberal movements decline.

In recent months, many observers have awakened to the fact that conservative Christianity is a major force in America. Driven by basically secular assumptions, most seem to assume that this phenomenon should be explained by sociological or psychological factors. As Shulevitz acknowledges, the kind of piety and conviction commonly found among evangelicals “is often dismissed as a social pathology.”

In her article, “The Power of the Mustard Seed,” Shulevitz considers groups beyond conservative Christianity. Nevertheless, the main thrust of her argument is that conservative churches draw strength from the very strictness of their beliefs and practices, whereas more liberal groups dissipate through lowered rates of involvement and diminished truth claims.

Drawing on a significant body of sociological analysis, Shulevitz suggests that what the economists call “rational choice theory” may be the best explanation for the strength of conservative churches. According to this economic theory, individuals act as “rational agents” who make decisions on the basis of self-interest. In other words, persons join conservative churches because they believe such membership to be in their best interests.

In setting forth her case, Shulevitz draws on research conducted by sociologist Laurence R. Iannaccone of Santa Clara University. Iannaccone published an influential essay, “Why Strict Churches Are Strong,” that was published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1994. Iannaccone was convinced that rational choice theory does explain the relative strength of conservative denominations and the corresponding weakness of more liberal churches. Iannaccone’s research was also a reconsideration of the theories of Dean Kelley, whose 1972 book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, set the stage for later debate.

Following Kelley’s lead, Iannaccone argued that “strictness” is the clearest indicator of congregational strength and potential for growth. He defines strictness in terms of “complete loyalty, unwavering belief, and rigid adherence to a distinctive lifestyle.” Thus, the churches that require members to hold definite doctrinal beliefs and to share common moral commitments are more likely to grow and remain strong than churches who have lower expectations in terms of both belief and behavior.

Refuting those researchers who argue that the growth of conservative churches is due to demographic factors, birth rates, and socioeconomic conditions, Iannaccone suggests that doctrinal and behavioral strictness “increases commitment, raises levels of participation, and enables a group to offer more benefits to current and potential members.” Thus, these groups are able to “enjoy a competitive advantage over their opposites (who suffer from less commitment, lower participation, and fewer perceived benefits).”

How does this work? Iannaccone explains that “Strict churches proclaim an exclusive truth--a closed, comprehensive and eternal doctrine. They demand adherence to a distinctive faith, morality, and lifestyle. They condemn deviants, shun dissenters, and repudiate the outside world.” In other words, the strictness of these congregations comes down to a set of common theological and behavioral expectations and commitments.

In a fascinating analysis, Iannaccone argues that the very strictness of these groups largely eliminates what economists and sociologists call the “free-rider” problem.

Free-riders are, according to this sociological analysis, those who wish to identify with a group without accepting any high level of demand. Conservative churches have few free-riders because the high levels of conviction and counter-cultural moral standards raise the cost of membership above what free-riders are willing to pay. More liberal churches, on the other hand, are more likely to accept as members those who both believe and behave in ways that would be unacceptable in more conservative churches. Iannaccone’s sociological analysis leads him to believe that liberal Protestantism--especially as represented in the so-called “mainline” denominations--suffers from a significant free-rider problem that has led to pervasive weakness.

Iannaccone’s rational choice theory analysis clearly contains a large element of truth. After all, it just makes sense that churches marked by higher expectations of behavior and more demanding beliefs are less likely to attract persons of mild to moderate commitment. In the context of postmodern America, members of conservative churches have found themselves out of step with the larger culture and, in sociological terms, to be paying a higher price for their commitments. Can a church be too strict? Iannaccone clearly believes so, and argues that churches given to extreme eccentricities can suffer from a backlash.

Kelley, Iannaccone, and Shulevitz want to explain the strength of conservative churches in largely sociological terms. Of the three, only Kelley seems to understand that deeper theological issues are at stake. After all, why would members of conservative churches be willing to pay such a high price for membership if there is no compelling reason to do so? This is where rational choice theory runs into a direct collision with theology.

A more comprehensive analysis has been offered by researchers Dean R. Hoge, Benton Johnson, and Donald A. Luidens, who conducted a major research project directed at churches affiliated with mainline Protestant denominations. Their work, Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers, acknowledges that the basic dynamic behind church growth and decline is theological rather than sociological or economic.

These researchers argue that the most important factor making churches strong is “the presence of a compelling teaching concerning the ultimate purpose and destiny of humankind.” Dean Kelley identified this “compelling teaching” as “meanings.” These meanings make demands upon believers, and these believers are far more likely to congregate together, rather than to join more liberal churches. Holding to strong beliefs, conservative Christians are less likely to accept weaker beliefs as being equally valid.

Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens are clear: “Our findings show that belief is the single best predictor of church participation, but it is orthodox Christian belief, and not the tenets of lay liberalism, that impels people to be involved in church.”

When these researchers speak of “lay liberalism,” they refer to a phenomenon they observed among mainline baby boomers, whose vision of Christianity involves very few definite beliefs or moral obligations. “Although lay liberalism has several different versions,” they explain, “its defining feature is the rejection of the claim that Christianity, or any other faith, is the only true religion. Lay liberals have no compelling truth, no ‘good news,’ to proclaim, and few of them share the views that they do have with their friends and acquaintances.”

Judith Shulevitz suggests that liberal denominations should look to this body of research and modify themselves so that their members will find deeper meaning and connection. Her answer is a recovery of ritual. Nevertheless, her concept of ritual has no specific theological content. As she argues, “the greatest religious leaders have understood [that] ritual is theater. You can use it to send any message you want.”

In other words, she missed the point entirely. Laurence Iannaccone’s rational choice theory can actually explain very little about conservative Christianity. Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens offer a much more substantial and accurate analysis. The fundamental issues are theological, not sociological. Evangelicals are willing to pay a high social cost for the Christian faith, precisely because we believe the Gospel to be true. Furthermore, Christians know better than to expect fulfillment in this world. True satisfaction will be realized only in the age to come, and a perspective focused on eternity transforms the questions of everyday life.

Just consider the apostle Paul. Writing to the Philippian Christians, Paul asserted, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” That, more than anything else, explains why churches that believe and teach the Gospel are growing, and why those who have abandoned the Gospel are dying.

_______________________________________________________

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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**Christianity Recedes in Europe—Is America Next? (Mohler, 050818)

“I don’t go to church, and I don’t know one person who does.” That statement, taken from Brian Kenny, a 39-year-old graduate student in Dublin, Ireland, launches readers of USA Today into a consideration of Christianity’s receding influence in Europe.

In “Religion Takes a Back Seat in Western Europe,” USA Today considers the rapid pace of secularization in Western Europe, and the social, moral, and political impact that has resulted from Europe’s loss of faith.

The newspaper obviously believes that something important is at stake in this analysis, for this article by Noelle Knox appeared on the front page of the August 11, 2005 edition of the paper. As it stands, the article offers considerable information and insight. Something remarkable and newsworthy has taken place in Western Europe over the last two decades. Once the very cradle of Christian civilization, Europe has embraced a secular future, and the residual memory of the Christian tradition is fading fast.

For at least half a century, researchers have been observing massive shifts in Western cultures. The increasingly secular shape of European civilization has been evident for some time, though a realization of this can sometimes come as an explosive insight. When Brian Kenny reported, “I don’t go to church, and I don’t know one person who does,” he understood that something had changed. “Fifteen years ago, I didn’t know one person who didn’t,” he reflected.

The statistics documenting European secularization are now impossible to ignore. Ireland, still one of the least secular nations in Western Europe, has seen church attendance fall by at least 25 percent over the last three decades. Ireland is predominantly Roman Catholic, of course, but the paper reports, “Not one priest will be ordained this year in Dublin.”

On the Protestant side, the picture is not much better. Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands, once the cradles of the Reformation, are now prime examples of Europe’s secular shape.

Throughout the European continent, Islam is the only religion growing in the number of adherents. According to the Center for the Study on Global Christianity, at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in suburban Boston, the decline in Christian influence “is most evident in France, Sweden and the Netherlands, where church attendance is less than ten percent in some areas.”

Why has this happened? Ronald Inglehart, Director of the World Values Survey in Sweden, suggests that Christianity has been a comfort to people in times of crisis. “For most of history, people have been on the borderline of survival,” he explains. “That’s changed dramatically. Survival is certain for almost everyone (in the West). So one of the reasons people are drawn to religion has eroded.”

In other words, Mr. Inglehart believes that religion fulfills a social function. Once that function is no longer needed, the entire structure of Christian belief becomes unnecessary.

This kind of reductionism is now common in the social sciences, where religious faith is seen in functional terms rather than in theological categories.

Others, looking at the same pattern of secularization, point to the impact of theological liberalism, the rise of a technological society, and the cultural shift towards autonomous individualism as the main factors behind Christianity’s decline.

At the dawn of the 20th century, the vast majority of European citizens identified themselves as Christians. Even now, 75 percent of Europeans identify themselves as Christians. What is going on here? If three out of four Europeans claim to be Christians, how can Europe have become so pervasively secularized?

For some years, sociologists and observers of church life have suggested that younger persons are developing a pattern identified as “believing without belonging.” In other words, these researchers have suggested that low levels of church attendance may be offset by the fact that individuals still hold residual Christian beliefs. The more recent shape of secularized Europe indicates that the opposite must be true--that millions of Europeans must be “belonging without believing.” In other words, these persons identify themselves as Christians simply as a matter of family heritage or superficial identity. Evidently, their Christian identity is not based in deep levels of Christian belief, high levels of church participation, or traditional markers of Christian discipleship. In Sweden, the government reports that 85 percent of Swedes are church members, yet only eleven percent of women and seven percent of men attend church services.

The most documented evidence of Europe’s secularization comes in moral terms. As USA Today reports, the number of marriages is dropping throughout much of Europe. “There is virtually no social stigma for unmarried parents,” the paper explains. “More than half of the children in Sweden and Norway are born to unmarried mothers, according to the European Union.” In other nations, the statistics are similar.

Interestingly, the paper reports that one of the “most striking consequences” of Christianity’s decline in Europe has been fewer children. As Knox explains, “The birth rate throughout much of Western Europe has fallen so drastically that the population in many countries is shrinking . . . .” As Ronald Inglehart argues, “The biggest single consequence of the declining role of the church is the huge decline in fertility rates.”

The pattern doesn’t stop there, of course. USA Today also acknowledges that the decline of Christian belief in Europe “also has brought a change in attitudes and laws on issues such as divorce, abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.”

Without doubt, the decline in Christian belief and the massive transformation of European lifestyles and moral expectations go hand in hand. As a matter of fact, it may be impossible to determine just how these trends work together within the process of secularization. As Christian conviction declines, Christian morality gives way to the ethos of moral individualism, sexual libertinism, and eroding commitment to marriage, children, and family.

USA Today’s cover story on the decline of Christianity in Western Europe raises the question of America’s future. In many ways, America seems to be following the European example, though several years behind. Yet the pace of moral transformation in the United States may indicate that America is fast catching up with the European model of secularization.

All this should remind seriously-minded Christians to analyze survey data with caution. Even as the vast majority of Americans claim to be Christians, the indicators of social morality and commitment to marriage and children indicate that America may be moving closer to the European precedent.

The evidence is mounting, and the current shape of secular Europe should serve as a powerful warning. Without a robust commitment to Christian truth, Christian morality simply fades away.

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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**America’s Vanishing Protestant Majority—What Does it Mean? (Mohler, 050728)

Writing in 1927, French observer Andre Siegfried described Protestantism as America’s “only national religion.” To miss this, Siegfried advised, is “to view the country from a false angle.” Now, less than a century later, a major research report provides proof that Protestantism no longer represents a clear majority of Americans.

Researchers Tom W. Smith and Seokho Kim of the National Opinion Research Center [NORC] at the University of Chicago have released “The Vanishing Protestant Majority,” a report documenting the declining membership of Protestant churches in the nation.

The decline of American Protestantism will come as a shock to many observers, whose understanding of American religion was well summarized by sociologist Will Herberg in his classic 1955 study, Protestant-Catholic-Jew. Herberg characterized America at the midpoint of the twentieth century as a population settled into a tripartite religious identification made up of three great “denominations”--Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism. Celebrating this renegotiation of the American religious establishment, Herberg observed: “In net effect, Protestantism today no longer regards itself either as a religious movement sweeping the continent or as a national church representing the religious life of the people; Protestantism understands itself today primarily as one of the three religious communities in which twentieth century America has come to be divided. The ‘denominational’ system--the word ‘denomination’ here referring both to the religious community and to the denomination in its more restricted sense--has become part of the basic assumptions of Protestants about America, as it has become part of the basic assumptions of all Americans.”

According to the NORC study, Americans identifying themselves as “Protestant” fell from 63 percent to 52 percent between 1993 and 2002--a massive decline in less than one decade. According to the University of Chicago press release, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Protestant “has been falling and will likely fall below 50 percent by mid-decade and may be there already.”

The NORC study is based on a sizeable research sample, tested to be representative of the U.S. population. The study is not without methodological difficulties. For one thing, the definition of Protestantism used in the report includes “all post-Reformation Christian faiths.” Defining the issue sociologically rather than theologically, the analysts included members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints [Mormons] and other non-Christian groups in the Protestant sample. Some New Age devotees were also included under the Protestant classification.

Nevertheless, methodological issues aside, the group’s extensive research is sufficient to prove the validity of its central thesis--that Protestantism is declining relative to the total U.S. population.

The rapid decline of the nation’s Protestant majority is an issue of significant sociological interest--along with the percentage of Americans claiming no religious preference and the rise of non-traditional religions in American culture. The report offers interesting points of analysis, including the fundamental failure of most Protestant denominations to evangelize and assimilate their own youth and young adults, and the fact that the nation’s immigrant groups have not followed the older pattern of eventual identification with the nation’s Protestant majority. Denominations concerned about membership losses and evangelistic opportunity will note both developments with grave concern. Nevertheless, churches needing this report to awaken themselves to trends as obvious as these are probably beyond help already.

The loss of young adults is the trend with the most devastating long-term consequences. Researcher Tom W. Smith told The Chicago Sun-Times: “There is some evidence that a large portion of this problem is that a fair number of marginal Protestants are not really engaged in their faith and therefore didn’t pass it on to their kids. The mom and dad would say, for example, ‘Yeah, we’re Methodists,’ but they never went to church. They’d baptize their kids, and that’s about it.”

That statement goes a long way towards explaining the entire pattern of Protestant decline. Though these researchers were primarily concerned about the sociological factors that produced Protestant losses, the larger and more important issues are essentially theological. Among mainline Protestant denominations, theological liberalism has eroded the entire system of Christian doctrine, leading to the evaporation of faith and the secularization of those churches. Once the churches have been thoroughly secularized, what value remains in church membership and denominational identification?

Theological liberalism became evident in the mainline Protestant denominations by the early 1920s. Historian William R. Hutchison of the Harvard Divinity School has traced the erosion of mainline Protestant denominations throughout the twentieth century. Hutchison notes that the denominations affiliated with the liberal National Council of Churches have all experienced steady decline. Accommodating themselves to the spirit of the age, these churches embrace theological and moral relativism in an effort to remain “relevant” to a pluralistic culture.

Several years ago, sociologists Dean R. Hoge, Benton Johnson, and Donald A. Luidens described the result of this process as “lay liberalism” that constitutes the belief system held by Protestant baby boomers. This “lay liberalism” rejects orthodox Christian doctrines such as belief that faith in Christ is necessary for salvation, and renegotiates Christian moral principles in line with permissive sexuality.

In Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers, Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens explain that lay liberalism erases clear boundaries separating believers from unbelievers. Without a clear “faith boundary,” identification with Protestantism--and Christianity itself--becomes socially meaningless.

The Vanishing Boundaries study, along with the NORC report, acknowledges the continued growth of conservative Protestant groups, commonly designated as evangelical. These evangelical denominations and churches continue to grow, even as they maintain clear boundaries between belief and unbelief. The existence of these boundaries explains the strong sense of membership and the high rate of participation commonly found in evangelical congregations. As Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens observed: “Our findings show that belief is the single best predictor of church participation, but it is orthodox Christian belief, and not the tenets of lay liberalism, that impels people to be involved in church.”

This is just common sense, of course. But it is precisely the kind of common sense that is commonly ignored or discarded by those who would rather believe otherwise. The churches that are most insistent on being relevant are those most willing to sacrifice biblical truth and the structure of Christian doctrine in order to prove their commitment to cultural expectations. Eventually, these churches become so identified with the culture that all distinctiveness disappears.

The sacrifice of truth for a constantly changing concept of relevance leads necessarily to the relativizing of the Gospel itself, and the undermining of biblical authority. Once these are sacrificed, authentic Christianity is abandoned and all motivation for membership disappears. If beliefs do not matter, the churches themselves do not matter.

The NORC study is wake-up call for Christianity in America. The trend-line is clear: Without a firm grasp of the Gospel, a bold commitment to biblical authority, and a clear vision for evangelism, churches and denominations are destined for decline and eventual dissipation. It shouldn’t take a team of sociologists to teach us something we should already know.

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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US Religious Attendance in 2000

Denomination	Adherents in 2000	Congregations in 2000
Albanian Orthodox Diocese of America	395	2
Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection	1,864	115
American Baptist Association, The	280,973	1,867
American Baptist Churches in the USA	1,767,462	5,555
American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church	20,000	75
Amish; Other Groups	6,671	90
Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America	82,374	210
Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, North American Dioceses	35,118	18
Apostolic Christian Church of America, Inc.	23,980	84
Apostolic Christian Churches (Nazarean)	4,393	50
Armenian Apostolic Church / Catholicossate of Cilicia	46,354	38
Armenian Apostolic Church / Catholicossate of Etchmiadzin	91,513	89
Assemblies of God	2,561,998	11,880
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church	40,397	242
Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, The	32,098	234
Bahá'í	146,756	1,198
Baptist General Conference	238,920	866
Baptist Missionary Association of America	295,239	1,322
Beachy Amish Mennonite Churches	9,422	102
Brethren Church, The (Ashland, Ohio)	16,266	119
Brethren In Christ Church	25,512	216
Bruderhof Communities, Inc.	924	7
Buddhism		1,656
Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese of the USA	5,340	9
Calvary Chapel Fellowship Churches		728
Catholic Church	62,035,042	21,791
Christian and Missionary Alliance, The	331,106	1,878
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)	1,017,784	3,339
Christian Churches and Churches of Christ	1,439,253	5,471
Christian Reformed Church in North America	248,938	740
Christian Union	7,319	114
Church of God (Anderson, Indiana)	238,609	2,286
Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee)	974,198	5,612
Church of God General Conference	4,925	89
Church of God in Christ, Mennonite	15,337	100
Church of God of Prophecy	91,106	1,858
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The	4,224,026	11,515
Church of the Brethren	171,281	1,074
Church of the Nazarene	907,331	5,209
Churches of Christ	1,645,584	13,027
Churches of God, General Conference	42,204	336
Community of Christ	98,874	892
Congregational Christian Churches, Additional (not part of any national CCC body)	17,821	104
Conservative Baptist Association of America	224,306	1,191
Conservative Congregational Christian Conference	50,940	250
Conservative Mennonite Conference	14,865	104
Coptic Orthodox Church		55
Cumberland Presbyterian Church	77,686	706
Duck River and Kindred Baptists Associations	12,542	99
Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church	4,384	49
Enterprise Baptists Association	5,289	65
Episcopal Church	2,314,756	7,314
Evangelical Covenant Church, The	153,116	671
Evangelical Free Church of America, The	285,699	1,365
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America	5,113,418	10,739
Evangelical Mennonite Church	6,625	34
Evangelical Presbyterian Church	80,207	179
Fellowship of Evangelical Bible Churches	1,811	17
Free Methodist Church of North America	96,237	950
Friends (Quakers)	113,086	1,302
Fundamental Methodist Conference, Inc.	1,009	13
General Association of Regular Baptist Churches	245,636	1,422
General Six Principle Baptists	25	1
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America	427,659	518
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Vasiloupulis	30,148	38
Hindu		629
Holy Orthodox Church in North America	1,889	30
Hutterian Brethren	12,300	123
Independent Free Will Baptists Associations	24,107	264
Independent, Charismatic Churches	935,168	621
Independent, Non-Charismatic Churches	1,116,769	1,084
International Church of the Foursquare Gospel	347,367	1,844
International Churches of Christ	79,161	99
International Council of Community Churches	64,186	192
International Pentecostal Church of Christ	5,453	67
International Pentecostal Holiness Church	241,828	1,843
Interstate & Foreign Landmark Missionary Baptists Association	16,127	121
Jain		92
Jasper Baptist and Pleasant Valley Baptist Associations	7,078	31
Jewish Estimate	6,141,325	3,727
Landmark Missionary Baptists, Independent Associations and Unaffiliated Churches	5,682	59
Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod	2,521,062	6,077
Macedonian Orthodox Church: American Diocese	16,640	17
Malankara Archdiocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church in North America	4,336	24
Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, American Diocese of the	13,225	59
Mennonite Brethren Churches, U.S. Conference of	28,142	171
Mennonite Church USA	156,345	1,066
Mennonite; Other Groups	34,617	412
Midwest Congregational Christian Fellowship	1,705	29
Missionary Church, The	49,528	284
Moravian Church in America--Alaska Province	2,562	24
Moravian Church in America--Northern Province	25,872	93
Moravian Church in America--Southern Province	19,764	59
Muslim Estimate	1,559,294	1,209
National Association of Congregational Christian Churches	84,380	426
National Association of Free Will Baptists	254,170	2,466
National Primitive Baptist Convention, USA	66,452	547
Netherlands Reformed Congregations	4,442	15
New Hope Baptist Association	2,772	20
New Testament Association of Independent Baptist Churches and other Fundamental Baptist Associations/Fellowships	132,684	649
North American Baptist Conference	59,545	290
"Old" Missionary Baptists Associations	49,870	302
Old Order Amish Church	96,986	1,290
Old Order Mennonite	21,116	132
Old Order River Brethren	540	5
Original Free Will Baptists	46,211	237
Orthodox Church in America: Albanian Orthodox Archdiocese	5,775	12
Orthodox Church in America: Bulgarian Diocese	8,791	18
Orthodox Church in America: Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America	17,201	56
Orthodox Church in America: Territorial Dioceses	77,110	370
Orthodox Presbyterian Church, The	26,346	278
Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in USA		32
Pentecostal Church of God	101,921	1,173
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)	3,141,566	11,106
Presbyterian Church in America	315,293	1,441
Primitive Baptist Churches--Old Line		1,381
Primitive Baptists, Eastern District Association of	7,840	67
Primitive Methodist Church in the USA	4,796	79
Progressive Primitive Baptists	9,615	121
Protestant Reformed Churches in America	5,875	26
Reformed Baptist Churches		197
Reformed Church in America	335,677	896
Reformed Church in the United States	4,236	38
Reformed Mennonite Church	347	9
Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese in America and Canada	7,543	14
Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia		129
Salvation Army, The	415,060	1,332
Separate Baptists in Christ	10,674	94
Serbian Orthodox Church in the USA	55,807	75
Serbian Orthodox Church in the USA (New Gracanica Metropolitanate)		38
Seventh-day Adventist Church	923,046	4,507
Sikh		211
Southern Baptist Convention	19,881,467	41,514
Southwide Baptist Fellowship		501
Strict Baptists	33	3
Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch	13,845	23
Tao		38
Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists	65	4
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA	35,586	104
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations	182,698	999
United Church of Christ	1,698,918	5,863
United Methodist Church, The	10,350,629	35,721
United Reformed Churches in North America	11,449	49
Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches	23,440	206
Vineyard USA	155,170	529
Wayne Trail Missionary Baptist Association	2,756	13
Wesleyan Church, The	381,459	1,657
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod	405,078	1,277
Zoroastrian		35

==============================

While Most Americans Believe in God, Only 36% Attend a Religious Service Once a Month or More Often (Harris Poll, 031015)

Belief and attendance vary greatly among different segments of the population

by Humphrey Taylor

Americans are far more likely to believe in God and to attend religious services than people in most other developed countries – particularly countries in Europe where philosophers have written that “God is dead.” However this new Harris Poll finds that underneath a broad consensus, belief in God varies quite widely among different segments of the American public. And most people attend a religious service less often than once a month.

These are some of the results of a survey by Harris Interactive® based on a nationwide sample of 2,306 adults surveyed online between September 16 and 23, 2003.

Belief in God and Attendance of Religious Services

This survey found that 79% of Americans believe there is a God, and that 66% are absolutely certain this is true. Only 9% do not believe in God, while a further 12% are not sure.

While most people (55%) attend a religious service a few times a year or more often, only a minority of the public (36%) attends a religious service once a month or more often, with about a quarter (26%) attending every week.

Reducing “Social Desirability” Bias

These numbers – for belief in God and for attendance at churches, synagogues and mosques – are lower than those reported in many other surveys, we believe, because of the methods we use to measure them more accurately.

One of the problems with surveys where people are interviewed by people, whether face-to-face or by telephone, is that they may not tell the truth to an interviewer, if the truth is embarrassing or if another answer is more “socially desirable.” This “social desirability” bias means that many surveys underreport the number of people who are homosexual, who don’t bathe or clean their teeth, who drink alcohol, or whose children are not immunized, for example. Socially desirable behavior, such as giving to charity, voting in elections and going to church are usually over reported.

Because our online surveys, such as this one, do not involve talking to interviewers, we regularly record lower levels of behavior (and belief) on topics where there is a “socially desirable” answer. We believe that the lower levels of belief in God, and the lower levels of church-going found in this survey are more accurate than the higher levels reported in telephone and in-person surveys.

Differences in the Replies of Catholics, Protestants and Jews

Protestants (90%) are more likely than Roman Catholics (79%) and much more likely than Jews (48%) to believe in God. Religious affiliation here includes many people raised as members of a religion or religious group, regardless of what they practice or believe now.

Protestants (47%) are also more likely than Catholics (35%) to attend church once a month or more often. Only 16% of Jews go to synagogues once a month or more often.

Other differences

Belief in God is higher in the Midwest (82%) and in the South (82%) than in the East (75%) and the West (75%). It tends to increase with age from 71% of those aged 25 to 29 to more than 80% for the three age groups of people over 40, including 83% of those aged 65 and over.

Women are more likely than men to believe in God (84% versus 73%). African Americans (91%) are more likely to believe in God than Hispanics (81%) and whites (78%). Republicans (87%) are more likely to believe in God than Democrats (78%) and Independents (75%). Those with no college education (82%) are more likely to believe in God than those with postgraduate education (73%).

Church attendance (every month or more often) is higher in the Midwest (45%) and the South (40%) than in the East (30%) and the West (27%). It is lowest among people aged 25 to 29 (24%) and highest among those aged 65 and over (43%). And it is higher among women (41%) than among men (31%).

Humphrey Taylor is the chairman of The Harris Poll®, Harris Interactive.

TABLE 1

BELIEF IN GOD AND CERTAINTY OF BELIEF

“Are you . . . ?”

Base: All Adults

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION	Total	Catholic	Protestant	Jewish	Atheist/ Agnostic
	%	%	%	%	%
Believe in God (NET)	79	79	90	48	15
Absolutely certain that there is a God	66	63	81	24	4
Somewhat certain that there is a God	12	16	9	24	11
Believe there is no God (NET)	9	8	4	19	52
Somewhat certain that there is no God	5	4	2	13	28
Absolutely certain that there is no God	4	4	2	5	23
Not sure whether or not there is a God	12	13	6	33	33

TABLE 2

DEMOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN BELIEF IN GOD

Base: All Adults

Region		Believe in God (Absolutely or Somewhat Certain)	Absolutely Certain
All Adults	%	79	66
East	%	75	59
Midwest	%	82	71
South	%	82	72
West	%	75	61
Age
18 – 24	%	73	57
25 – 29	%	71	55
30 – 39	%	76	62
40 – 49	%	81	69
50 – 64	%	82	74
65 +	%	83	72
Sex
Male	%	73	60
Female	%	84	72
Race/Ethnicity
White	%	78	64
African American	%	91	82
Hispanic	%	81	66
Party I.D.
Republican	%	87	76
Democrat	%	78	65
Independent	%	75	63
Education
High school or less	%	82	72
Some college	%	77	64
College graduate	%	78	63
Post graduate	%	73	53

TABLE 3

FREQUENCY OF ATTENDING RELIGIOUS SERVICES – BY RELIGION AND RACE

“Do you attend religious services?”

Base: All Adults

Religious Affiliation

Race/Ethnicity

	Total	Catholic	Protestant	Jewish	White	African American	Hispanic
	%	%	%	%	%	%	%
Every week or more often/Once or twice a month (NET)	36	35	47	16	35	41	37
Every week or more often	26	26	33	5	25	30	23
Once or twice a month	11	9	15	11	10	11	14
A few times a year/Once a year (NET)	23	29	24	42	23	25	28
A few times a year	19	26	20	34	19	24	24
Once a year	4	4	4	8	4	1	4
Less often/Never (NET)	28	35	28	42	29	29	25
Less often	16	19	17	13	16	15	15
Never	13	17	11	29	13	13	10
Not sure	*	*	1	*	*	*	1
Not a member of a religion	12	-	-	-	13	4	10

TABLE 4

FREQUENCY OF ATTENDING RELIGIOUS SERVICES – BY REGION AND SEX

“Do you attend religious services?”

Base: All Adults

Region

Sex

	Total	East	Midwest	South	West	Male	Female
	%	%	%	%	%	%	%
Every week or more often/Once or twice a month (NET)	36	30	45	40	27	31	41
Every week or more often	26	22	29	30	19	22	29
Once or twice a month	11	7	16	10	8	9	12
A few times a year/Once a year (NET)	23	28	19	20	25	24	22
A few times a year	19	23	16	18	22	20	19
Once a year	4	5	3	3	3	4	3
Less often/Never (NET)	28	34	21	27	31	30	26
Less often	16	17	11	18	15	16	15
Never	13	16	10	9	17	14	12
Not sure	*	*	1	*	*	1	*
Not a member of a religion	12	8	12	13	16	14	11

TABLE 5

FREQUENCY OF ATTENDING RELIGIOUS SERVICES – BY AGE

“Do you attend religious services?”

Total	Age	18 – 24	25 – 29	30 – 39	40 – 49	50 – 64	65 +
	%	%	%	%	%	%	%
Every week or more often/Once or twice a month (NET)	36	37	24	36	33	38	43
Every week or more often	26	29	16	24	19	28	35
Once or twice a month	11	8	8	12	15	10	7
A few times a year/Once a year (NET)	23	19	28	23	22	24	25
A few times a year	19	15	24	20	19	21	20
Once a year	4	5	5	3	3	3	4
Less often/Never (NET)	28	24	32	25	33	29	27
Less often	16	15	17	14	15	18	15
Never	13	9	16	11	19	11	12
Not sure	*	*	*	*	1	*	*
Not a member of a religion	12	19	16	16	10	9	6

==============================

Most Americans Believe in God but There Is No Consensus on His/Her Gender, Form or Degree of Control Over Events (Harris Poll, 031016)

by Humphrey Taylor

Most Americans agree that there is a God, but their perceptions of who God is and how much God controls events on Earth vary greatly. There is no consensus on God’s gender, form or role on Earth:

* A plurality (42%) of all adults (but only 37% of men) thinks God is male, but only 1% thinks God is female. Almost half of all adults believe that God is neither male nor female (38%) or that God is both (11%).

* Only 9% think of God as being like a human being with a face, body, arms, legs and eyes. Almost half (48%) think of God as a spirit or power that can take on human form, while 27% think of God as a spirit or power who does not take a human form.

* Less than a third (29%) of the public believes that God controls what happens on Earth. Half (50%) believes God observes but does not control events on Earth, while 6% believe God neither observes nor controls earthly events.

* A slender (53%) majority believes that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God, but 32% think they worship different gods.

These are some of the results of a survey by Harris Interactive based on a nationwide sample of 2,306 adults surveyed online between September 16 and 23, 2003. Other results from this Harris Poll were released yesterday.

The poll finds interesting differences between members of different religions. Pluralities of Catholics (46%) and Protestants (49%) think of God as male. A large majority of Jews (69%) see God as neither male nor female.

A plurality of Catholics (49%) and a majority of Protestants (56%) think of God as a spirit or power that can take on human form but is not inherently human. A plurality of Jews (42%) thinks of God as a spirit or power that does not take on human form.

Protestants (38%) are also more likely than Catholics (21%) and Jews (9%) to believe that God controls what happens on Earth. They are also less likely (51%) than Jews (64%) or Catholics (58%) to believe that Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God.

Humphrey Taylor is the chairman of The Harris Poll®, Harris Interactive.

TABLE 3

HOW MUCH CONTROL DOES GOD ON WHAT HAPPENS ON EARTH?

“Do you think God . . . ?”

Base: All Adults

Religious Affiliation	Total	Catholic	Protestant	Jewish
	%	%	%	%
Controls what happens on Earth	29	21	38	9
Observes but does not control what happens on Earth	50	63	49	37
Neither observes not controls what happens on Earth	6	4	4	20
Does not believe in God	15	12	8	25

TABLE 4

DO JEWS, CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS WORSHIP THE SAME GOD?

“Do you think that the Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God or not?”

Base: All Adults

Religious Affiliation	Total	Catholic	Protestant	Jewish
	%	%	%	%
All worship the same God	53	58	51	64
Do not worship the same God	32	26	35	25
Not sure	15	16	14	11

==============================

UK Church Survey Shows Reasons Behind Falling Attendance (Christian Post, 050308)

A new survey indicates that the reason for the decline in UK Church attendance has more to do with a lack of sincerity in preaching, and an inability to defend Christianity at the pulpit than a lack of faith.

A year-long survey of 14,000 UK churchgoers from many different denominations has revealed that overwhelmingly, attendants want churches to “robustly defend moral values with conviction and courage and cease being ‘silent’ and ‘lukewarm’ in the face of moral and social collapse.’

There are many who answered the survey, “who feel that their views are not being heard or represented,” said Lord Bromley Betchworth in an introduction to the report. “They are appalled that the moral values and trasured beliefs are being stood on their head and want churches to play a leading role in standing up for these things.”

The survey asked simple open ended questions and many answers were given in the form of letters. The huge response reflected a growing frustration and anger felt by many at the direction of society in general. One respondent said, “Thank you for the chance to express our beliefs without fear.”

A great majority of the responses, 91% wrote a similar theme, saying that one of the main reasons for the exit of so many was that apologetics, the reasoned defense of Christianity was not being taught. “It’s a myth today that people of this country have rejected Christianity; they simply haven’t been told enough about it to either accept or reject it,” wrote one person.

Experiencing Holiness was something that the respondents also felt was also missing. The respondents didn’t feel that the they needed to live a morally demanding life because of readily available forgiveness. With the attitude that “God loves me anyway,” those surveyed said many didn’t feel compelled to repent of their behavior.

With 70% of the respondents being over the age of 30, there was also a desire to return to traditional liturgy. Many also expressing a desire for more “real conviction and sincerity” in the service.

The sermon, considered the “meat in the sandwich” of the service was spoiled according to some. One person wrote “On Sunday I listened to a sermon on the subject of Elijah being fed by the ravens. The sermon was good in explaining what happened, but failed to point out why this should be significant to me in my everyday walk with Jesus.”

Another said, “We want sermons on Biblical topics which help us live as faithful Christians in the 21st century.”

Some also felt authentic fellowship was lacking as well as a “visionary and prophetic” teaching which “provided reassurance and comfort for the faithful by explaining the purpose of the second coming of Christ.” They felt they needed churches that challenged immorality, taught repentance and highlighted Biblical prophecies to be fulfilled before Christ’s return.

The survey was called, “Let the People Speak”. The chairman of the Ecumenical Survey Committee is the Rev. Jonathan Willans.

The entire report can be found online at: www.churchsurvey.co.uk

==============================

A New Exodus? Americans are Exiting Liberal Churches (Christian Post, 050608)

“We have figured out your problem. You’re the only one here who believes in God.” That statement, addressed to a young seminarian, introduces Dave Shiflett’s new book, Exodus: Why Americans are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity. The book is an important contribution, and Shiflett offers compelling evidence that liberal Christianity is fast imploding upon itself.

Shiflett, an established reporter and author, has written for The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Investors’ Business Daily, among other major media. He is also author of Christianity on Trial and is a member of the White House Writers Group.

Shiflett’s instincts as a reporter led him to see a big story behind the membership decline in liberal denominations. At the same time, Shiflett detected the bigger picture--the decline of liberal churches as compared to growth among the conservatives. Like any good reporter, he knew he was onto a big story.

“Americans are vacating progressive pews and flocking to churches that offer more traditional versions of Christianity,” Shiflett asserts. This author is not subtle, and he gets right to the point: “Most people go to church to get something they cannot get elsewhere. This consuming public--people who already believe, or who are attempting to believe, who want their children to believe--go to church to learn about the mysterious Truth on which the Christian religion is built. They want the Good News, not the minister’s political views or intellectual coaching. The latter creates sprawling vacancies in the pews. Indeed, those empty pews can be considered the earthly reward for abandoning heaven, traditionally understood.”

Taken alone, the statistics tell much of the story. Shiflett takes his reader through some of the most salient statistical trends and wonders aloud why liberal churches and denominations seem steadfastly determined to follow a path that will lead to their own destruction. Shiflett also has a unique eye for comparative statistics, indicating, for example, that “there may now be twice as many lesbians in the United States as Episcopalians.”

Citing a study published in 2000 by the Glenmary Research Center, Shiflett reports that the Presbyterian Church USA declined by 11.6 percent over the previous decade, while the United Methodist Church lost “only” 6.7 percent and the Episcopal Church lost 5.3 percent. The United Church of Christ was abandoned by 14.8 percent of its members, while the American Baptist Churches USA were reduced by 5.7 percent.

On the other side of the theological divide, most conservative denominations are growing. The conservative Presbyterian Church in America [PCA] grew 42.4 percent in the same decade that the more liberal Presbyterian denomination lost 11.6 percent of its members. Other conservative denominations experiencing significant growth included the Christian Missionary Alliance (21.8 percent), the Evangelical Free Church (57.2 percent), the Assemblies of God (18.5 percent), and the Southern Baptist Convention (five percent).

As quoted in Exodus, Glenmary director Ken Sanchagrin told the New York Times that he was “astounded to see that by and large the growing churches are those that we ordinarily call conservative. And when I looked at those that were declining, most were moderate or liberal churches. And the more liberal the denomination, by most people’s definition, the more they were losing.”

Any informed observer of American religious life would know that these trends are not new--not by a long shot. The more liberal Protestant denominations have been losing members by the thousands since the 1960s, with the Episcopal Church USA having lost fully one half of its members over the period.

In a sense, the travail of the Episcopal Church USA is the leading focus of Shiflett’s book. Indeed, Shiflett states his intention to begin “with the train wreck known as the Episcopal Church USA.” As he tells it, “One Tuesday in latter-day Christendom, the sun rose in the east, the sky became a pleasant blue, and the Episcopal Church USA elected a gay man as bishop for a small New Hampshire diocese.” How could this happen? The ordination of a non-celibate homosexual man as a bishop of the Episcopal Church flew directly in the face of the clear teachings of Scripture and the official doctrinal positions of the church. No matter--the Episcopal Church USA was determined to normalize homosexuality, even as they have normalized divorce and remarriage. As Shiflett explains, “It is commonly understood that the election of the Reverend Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest, to be bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire was undertaken in clear opposition to traditional church teaching and Scripture. What is often left unsaid is that this is hardly the first time tradition has been trounced. The Reverend Gene Robinson’s sexual life was an issue and was accommodated, just as the Episcopal Church earlier found a way to embrace bishops who believe that Jesus is no more divine, at least in a supernatural sense, than Bette Midler.”

What makes Shiflett’s book unique is the personal narratives he has collected and analyzed. Exodus is not a book of mere statistics and research. To the contrary, Shiflett crossed America, interviewing both conservatives and liberals in order to understand what is happening within American Christianity. Shiflett’s interviews reveal fascinating insights into the underlying realities and the personal dimensions of theological conflict. Exodus is written in a very direct style, with Shiflett providing readers anecdotes and analysis of his personal interaction with those he interviewed.

One of Shiflett’s interviewees was the Reverend Bruce Gray, Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia. In an interesting comment, Shiflett recalls that this was the very church where Patrick Henry gave his famous speech in 1775--the speech in which Henry cried: “Give me liberty, or give me death!” As Shiflett notes, “The Episcopal Church, by freeing itself from many of its traditional beliefs, sometimes appears to be well on its way to achieving both.” Revered Gray supports the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, and he told Shiflett that the biblical condemnations of homosexuality had been considered by thoughtful people who had decided that the texts do not mean what they appear to mean. He cited his own bishop, who had issued an episcopal letter arguing, “Many people believe any homosexual activity is purely prohibited by Scripture . . . . But other Christians who take Scripture seriously believe that the Biblical writers were not addressing the realities of people with a permanent homosexual orientation living in faithful, monogamous relationships, and that the relevant scriptural support for those relationships is similar to the expectations of faithfulness Scripture places on marriage.” That is patent nonsense, of course, but this is what passes for theological argument among those pushing the homosexual agenda.

In order to understand why so many Episcopalians are leaving, Shiflett visited Hugo Blankenship, Jr., son of the Reverend Hugo Blankenship, who had served as the church’s Bishop of Cuba. Blankenship is a traditionalist, who explained that his father must be “spinning in his grave” in light of developments in his beloved Episcopal Church. As Shiflett sees it, the church that Bishop Hugo Blankenship had served and loved is gone. In its place is a church that preaches a message Shiflett summarizes as this: “God is love, God’s love is inclusive, God acts in justice to see that everyone is included, we therefore ought to be co-actors and co-creators with God to make the world over in the way he wishes.”

Shiflett also surveys the growing list of “celebrity heretics” whose accepted presence in liberal denominations serves as proof positive of the fact that these groups will tolerate virtually anything in terms of belief. Shiflett discusses the infamous (and now retired) Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, John Shelby Spong. “When placed in a wider context, Spong is simply another character from what might be called America’s religious freak show.” Yet, the most important insight to draw from Spong’s heresies is the fact that he has been accepted without censure by his church. As Shiflett explains, Spong’s views, “while harshly criticized in some quarters as being far beyond the pale, are present not only throughout the mainline but throughout Protestantism, even in churches that are assumed to maintain traditional theological rigor.”

In Shiflett’s turn of a phrase, these liberal theologians believe in a “Wee deity,” a vapid and ineffectual god who is not much of a threat and is largely up for individual interpretation.

On the other side of the divide, Shiflett spent time with conservative Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, Southern Baptists, and the larger evangelical community. In considering Southern Baptists, Shiflett largely drew upon interviews he conducted with me and with Richard Land, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Shiflett understands recent Southern Baptist history, and he takes his readers through the denomination’s “conservative resurgence” that defied the conventional wisdom that denominations can never be pulled back in a more conservative direction.

More importantly, Shiflett understands that doctrinal beliefs are the crucial variable determining whether churches and denominations grow or decline. He deals with the statistical data honestly, even as he points to the larger context and the underlying factors at work.

Shiflett’s opening story about the seminarian who was confronted by his peers underlines the importance of theological seminaries as agents for either the perpetuation or the destruction of the faith.

In this case, seminarian Andy Ferguson, who had questioned the anti-supernaturalistic claims of his seminary professors, was confronted by a fellow seminary student who said, “We’ve been talking about you. We know you’re having a rough time, and we’ve finally figured out what your problem is . . . . You’re the only one here who believes in God.” Andy Ferguson decided that his fellow student was right. “They believed in things like the redemptive power of the universe, but I was the last one there who wanted to defend the biblical God--the God who makes claims on us, who said we should do some things and not do others, and who put each one of us here for a purpose.”

In the end, Andy Ferguson left the liberal seminary, converted to Catholicism, and went into the business world. He told Dave Shiflett that liberal Protestantism is doomed. “Mainline Protestantism will reach a certain point where it will appeal only to Wiccans, vegetarians, sandal-wearers, and people who play the recorder. No one will feel at home there if they believe in God.”

Exodus is a book that is simultaneously brave and honest. Refreshingly, he eschews mere sociological analysis and points to the more foundational issue--truth. No doubt, this book will be appreciated in some quarters and hated in others, but it is not likely to be ignored.

____________________________________________________

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

==============================

Yearbook Shows Mainline Churches Slip while Pentecostal Churches Sprout (Christian Post, 050401)

America’s mainline churches suffered a decline in membership while Pentecostal and historic African American churches grew in numbers over the past year, according to the recently released National Council of Churches’ 2005 “Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches.”

The yearbook, one of only a few thorough references of all Christian churches – including Catholic, Orthodox, Pentecostal and Protestant – available on the market, gauges the general growth trends of single denominations and Christianity as a whole.

According to this year’s statistics, the Catholic Church remained the largest faith group in the U.S. with 67,259,768 members and a growth rate last year of 1.28 percent. The second largest denomination in the U.S. is still the Southern Baptist Convention with 16,439,603 members and a growth rate of 1.18 percent. The United Methodist Church is third largest with a reported membership of 8,251,175 and a growth rate of .002 percent.

Other churches that have continued to grow in 2004 are the Assemblies of God, 2,729,562 members and a growth rate of 1.57 percent; the Episcopal Church, 2,320,221 members and a growth rate of .57 percent; and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 1,432,795 members and a growth rate of .14 percent.

According to Rev. Dr. Eileen W. Lindner who edited the yearbook for the eighth year, the growth in those denominations can be attributed to the evangelistic mindsets of those groups.

“If you look at the churches that grew the most, they intentionally reach out to bring people in,” explained Dr. Linder, who serves as the NCC Deputy General Secretary for Research and Planning.

Dr. Linder also noted that the churches are more “fitting” to “what people are looking for” in contemporary America, partly due to their urban settings.

On the flipside, the mainline denominations that once dominated the nation’s faith-market continued to lose members – some at alarming rates.

According to the yearbook, the churches that lost members are: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 4,984,925 members, down 1.05 percent; the Presbyterian Church (USA), 3,241,309 members, down 4.87 percent; The Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), 2,488,936 members, down .95 percent); American Baptist Churches in the USA, 1,433,075 members, down 3.45 percent; and the United Church of Christ, 1,296,652 members, down 2.58 percent.

With the exception of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, the mainline churches are known to have moderate to liberal views on theological and social issues.

However, Dr. Linder explained that these churches generally did not lose members over theological issues but rather to old age.

“The make-up of these churches is much older,” said Linder to the Christian Post on Thursday. “So more than these churches losing members to other [denominations], they lost their members to eternity.”

This may also explain why the membership in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches has been rising.

“Younger people tend to shop for churches more,” said Linder. “And they are attracted to the Pentecostal churches” – which she said are sprouting in urban areas.

The 2005 Yearbook, now in its 73rd year, reports on 217 national church bodies with 150 million members in the U.S. Reports include brief church histories and contact information for church leaders. The yearbook also analyzes the financial data from 63 churches representing almost 50 million members and more than $32 billion.

While the statistics are self-reported, there are safety nets established by the NCC data stream that prevent “cooked” numbers, according to Dr. Linder.

The Yearbook is published by Abingdon Press in Nashville, Tenn., and is available for $50 at www.electronicchurch.org. Included in the cost is a subscription to the “Yearbook Online,” which features regularly updated searchable data.

The following is the list of the top 25 Denominations/Communions as listed by the Yearbook:

1. The Catholic Church - 67,259,768

2. Southern Baptist Convention - 16,439,603

3. The United Methodist Church - 8,251,175

4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - 5,503,192

5. The Church of God in Christ - 5,449, 875

6. National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. - 5,000,000

7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America - 4,984,925

8. National Baptist Convention of America, Inc. - 3,500,000

9. Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) - 3,241,309

10. Assemblies of God - 2,729,562

11. African Methodist Episcopal Church - 2,500,000

12. National Missionary Baptist Convention of America - 2,500,000

13. Progressive National Baptist Convention - 2,500,000

14. The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS) - 2,488,936

15. Episcopal Church - 2,320,221

16. Churches of Christ - 1,500,000

17. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America - 1,500,000

18. Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc. - 1,500,000

19. American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. - 1,433,075

20. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church - 1,432,795

21. United Church of Christ - 1,296,652

22. Baptist Bible Fellowship International - 1,200,000

23. Christian Churches and Churches of Christ - 1,071,616

24. Jehovah’s Witnesses - 1,041,030

25. The Orthodox Church in America - 1,000,000

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Membership Declines in the United Methodist Church (Christian Post, 050713)

The worship roll has been growing but membership has still been declining in the United Methodist Church. According to tentative statistics compiled by the denomination’s communications team, church membership declined by more than 71,000 in 2004 despite the addition of 15,000 United Methodists to the rolls.

The figures are based on unaudited reports by the church’s 63 regional conferences. These conferences – or districts – held annual meetings throughout May and June, and during it presented individual membership statistics.

The United Methodist News Service, which compiled the figures, reported that membership loss in these conferences ranged from 79 people to 6,581 people. Together, there were at least 17,518 members lost in the U.S.

The decline in membership marks a longstanding trend within historic mainline Protestant churches. For the last three decades, millions flooded out of these mainline churches, including the Presbyterian Church U.S.A, the American Baptist Churches, and the United Church of Christ. On average, mainline churches have lost about 10 percent of their members every five years.

Compared to those churches, the United Methodists are somewhat lucky – 71,000 is not even a one percentage point decline for the 8.2 million-member denomination.

The rate of membership decline slowed during the late 1990’s for the United Methodists, but increased again in the first two years of the 21st century. Last year, the church lost 69,000 members.

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What’s the Count? (Christian Post, 050926)

I should know better, and even do know better, than to pass on brief comment about religious statistics. Demographers and statisticians come in many forms from many schools with many methods, and they question and correct each other and those of us who cite any of them. Still, with fingers crossed and aware of methodological complexity, I cautiously pass on important examples.

This week it is C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler’s “How Many Americans Attend Worship Each Week? An Alternative Approach to Measurement” (Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, September 2005). Hadaway is a veteran Yankee researcher, serving Episcopalians from New York, and Marler is a Sunbelter at Samford University in Alabama. Hadaway especially has long been suspicious of the numbers of polled Americans claiming to have attended worship that week. He has devised a variety of ways of checking on their responses. I can’t detail the “alternative approach” here, but must move straight to findings and extrapolations.

The two authors do their best to estimate the number of churches and other houses of worship, converting careful local samplings to national totals. They estimate that there are 331,000 congregations distributed over the United States. Then they tally poll results and estimate average attendance by groups. Now we rush to Hadaway and Marler’s conclusions.

According to the researchers’ findings, if last week was typical, 9,023,693 “Mainline Protestants” were to be found in 82,183 congregations, averaging 110 at each -- or 19.4 percent of their constituent population over age five. Roman Catholics? At 19,544 parishes, with average attendance of 854, there were 16,680,804, or 25.4 percent of the constituent population. Orthodox and other Catholics numbered 471,128 in 2,431 churches, with a high rate of 35.9 percent of the constituency at worship. “Other Christians” in 36,450 places were represented by 97.9 people on average, or 3,568,455 at worship, 25.2 percent of the constituency. Non-Christians: 18.2 percent of the constituency in 11,720 congregations, with 138.75 worshippers average, totaling 1,625,564. And the biggie: “Conservative/Evangelicals” in 178,672 places, again 25.4 percent of the constituency, or 22,233,944 worshippers.

Had enough? Totals: At those 331,000 congregations, on average there were 161.9 in attendance, or 20.4 percent of their constituencies, totaling 53,603,588. I wonder how many marathon runners, soccer players, golfers, newspaper readers, and sleepers-in formed alternative and competing congregations.

The significance of their measurement, say the authors, is that “only around 21 percent of the American population attend religious services during a typical week -- a figure that is exactly half of the most often reported Gallup poll total of 42 percent.” There is no reason to say “yes” instead of “no” when Gallup and other pollsters ask if we worshipped last week. Yet people do. The authors speculate why there is a drop in attendance, if there is, but that is a subject for a different day.

For today the conclusion is this: These statistical “sightings” find about half as many people actually at worship as say they were, or think they were. Still, 53,603,588 Americans at voluntary events during weekend hours is an impressive figure. Show it to your European relatives, and they’ll be awed.

References:

For more information about the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, go to http://las.alfred.edu/~soc/SSSR/jssr.html. C. Kirk Hadaway may be reached at khadaway@episcopalchurch.org, and Penny Long Marler may be reached at plmarler@samford.edu.

_____________________________________________________________

Martin E. Marty’s biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

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Protestant groups put their faith in advertising (Washington Times, 051020)

[Kwing Hung: they can get all liberal ones if they wish.]

Mainline Protestant denominations, whose numbers have plummeted in recent decades, are resorting to catchy ad campaigns and creating a brand identity to establish themselves in the public consciousness.

So far, they have been successful. The 1.3-million-member United Church of Christ, America’s most liberal Protestant denomination, saw the amount of yearly hits on its Web site (www.ucc.org) quintuple from 950,000 to 5 million after a 30-second TV ad last year that showed two muscular male bouncers blocking a church entrance.

“Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we,” flashed a text across the screen. Reaction to the $1.5 million campaign so pleased denominational officials that the UCC plans to premiere a second edgy ad on a similar theme: The UCC includes people who might be denied entrance to most other churches.

These include interracial couples, homosexuals, prisoners, and parents with autistic children, said Ron Buford, who oversees the “God is Still Speaking” campaign that produced both ads.

“What we didn’t expect were the people who said, ‘I didn’t believe God’s grace was available to me. Now it is,’?” he said.

In 1972, the UCC was the first mainline denomination to ordain an openly homosexual pastor.

It had planned to start the second ad on Dec. 1. However, because of a $700,000 funding shortfall related to hurricane relief, the ad campaign has been deferred to February.

Ad branding is one of the newer wrinkles in the religion marketplace, especially for mainline Protestant groups looking for new adherents.

Although evangelical Christian groups have boomed since the 1960s, mainline Protestant denominations have hemorrhaged members because of differences over women’s ordination, issues surrounding homosexuality, biblical interpretations and the importance of evangelism.

After the UCC unearthed, through market research, an undercurrent of alienation among unchurched Americans toward church in general, it began playing up themes of inclusivity and acceptance.

“I consider ourselves evangelical, too,” Mr. Buford said, “but for a different market segment.”

[Kwing Hung: haha, totally ridiculous!!]

But the TV ad with the bouncer, which had connotations of the church welcoming homosexuals and same-sex couples, was rejected last year by ABC, NBC and CBS networks.

The rejections, however, provided an avalanche of welcome publicity for the denomination, which expects a similar fallout this year, because ABC and CBS have rejected the second ad. “CBS told us it was too controversial,” Mr. Buford said. ABC said it runs no religious ads, he added.

But NBC and 14 cable networks ran spots from a $20 million campaign by the United Methodist Church from 2001 to 2004. In 160 test churches, first-time attendance rose 14 percent in the denomination and overall worship attendance rose by 6 percent.

On Aug. 29, the 8.2-million-member UMC began a monthlong $2 million ad campaign as the first installment of a $25 million plan for cable TV and newspaper ads, and Times Square billboard ads through 2008.

“The mainline denominations wanted to provide a unique identity and establish our public visibility across the nation,” said the Rev. Larry Hollon, general secretary of United Methodist Communications. “We looked at whether people join a denomination or whether they affiliate with people of similar values who are searching for a relationship with God.

“We found they join with people who express ‘open hearts, open minds, open doors,’ the UMC’s brand promise,” he said.

The Episcopal Diocese of Washington is spending $9,000 for the theater ads that appear several times before the start of a movie. Images direct viewers to WeWelcomeYou.org, a diocesan Web site that includes information on various churches, links to their sites, articles about worshipping in an Episcopal church and a short on-line movie about the diocese.

One ad shows a man wearing a dunce cap in a curled-up position atop a question mark beneath a headline: “Because Having Questions is not a Sin.”

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‘Megachurches’ draw big crowds (Reuters, 051122)

CHICAGO (Reuters) - On a recent Sunday at Willow Creek Community Church, a Christian rock band joined by dancing children powered up in the cavernous main hall, their images ablaze on several gigantic screens.

Thousands of worshipers from the main floor to the balcony and mezzanine levels were on their feet rocking to a powerful sound system. Outside cars filled a parking lot fit for a shopping mall. Inside some people drifted into small Bible study groups or a bookstore and Internet cafe for lattes, cappuccinos and seats by a fireplace.

This church near Chicago and others like it number their congregations in the thousands on any given Sunday in stadium-size sanctuaries; but in the end a major appeal of America’s megachurches may be the chance to get small.

Institutions like California’s Saddleback Church, Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois and Houston’s Lakewood Church, each drawing 20,000 or more on a weekend, offer not just a vast, shared attraction but a path that tries to link individuals on a faith-sustaining one-to-one level beyond the crowd, observers and worshipers said.

Rick Warren, founder of California’s Saddleback Church and author of the best-selling book “The Purpose-Driven Life,” told a seminar held earlier this year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that about 20 churches in America have more than 10,000 in weekend attendance.

“These churches can do a ton of things that smaller churches can’t,” said Nancy Ammerman, professor of the sociology of religion at the Boston University School of Theology.

“They have the resources to produce a professional-quality production every weekend, with music (often specially composed for the occasion and backed by a professional ensemble) and video and lighting and computer graphics and a preacher who knows how to work a crowd,” she said.

But they also support “dozens or even hundreds of specialized opportunities for people to get involved in doing things with a small group of others. If you want someone to talk to who really understands what it is like to parent an autistic child, you may find a whole support group in a megachurch,” she added.

MORE CHOICE

“Or if you really love stock car racing, but hate being surrounded by drunken rowdies, you can go with a busload of your church friends. I wouldn’t say that there are fewer rules in most of these churches. Most of them really expect people to get involved in ways that can have a profound impact on their lives. It’s just that there are so many paths into involvement that a smaller church just can’t match,” Ammerman said.

That’s part of what Richard and Nancy Sauser of Schaumburg, Ill., said they found at Willow Creek where they have been members for more than 10 years. They attend regularly with their daughters, ages 5 and 7. The 30-year-old church draws 20,000 weekend worshipers.

“Anything they put their minds to, they can pretty much do,” he said, marveling at the power inherent in size. But he added, “Willow Creek has the resources to effectively execute on multiple facets of church life,” through more than 100 different ministries.

Sauser said he does not attend Willow Creek for its size but for the teaching and the ministry.

When the thousands at Willow Creek break into smaller groups for Bible study, the men’s ministry, the special needs ministry and the adult ministry, a lot of life change occurs. “In the small groups, that is where it really gets good,” Sauser said.

When the crowds head for Willow Creek’s parking lot, attendants in orange vests direct processions of cars into smoothly paved parking lots ahead of the 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. services. Inside, the throng moves through the hallways and up and down escalators and stairs, welcomed by smiling greeters.

Some drop off children at Sunday school.

On the first floor Danielle Jackola of Hoffman Estates, Illinois, a mother of two who recently moved to the area from California, has come in search of a church. After listening to dynamic lead pastor Gene Appel speak on family and passing the baton of faith from one generation to the next, she liked the message -- and the entertainment.

“I had never been to something like that. I think that is one of the ways of getting your numbers up ... to get the message across but to keep it fun and upbeat. And more contemporary to get more young families involved,” she said a few days later -- after deciding to join the church.

SEARCH FOR MEANING

Scott Thuma, a sociologist of religion at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, said his research indicates there are at least 1,200 U.S. Protestant churches which claim more than 2,000 weekly attendees.

Megachurches are addressing the needs of Americans who are disinterested in “traditional church” yet want to deepen a sense of meaning in their lives. Classes and volunteer ministry opportunities lead to a deeper commitment, he said.

“They have opened worship to the seeker and the unsaved rather than reserving Sunday worship for the saved and sanctified,” Thuma added.

The three largest churches are Saddleback, Willow Creek and Houston’s Lakewood. But Warren said the world has far larger churches, pointing to mammoth Christian congregations in Nigeria, South Korea and elsewhere.

Warren said U.S. Protestants have returned to the 19th century roots of the evangelical movement, emphasizing social issues such as caring for the sick, the poor and the powerless, and not just concentrating on personal salvation.

“The small group structure is the structure of renewal in every facet of Christianity, including Catholicism,” Warren told the Pew forum. He said his church has 9,200 lay ministers leading more than 200 different ministries all over southern California with 2,600 small groups in 83 cities.

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Megachurch Myths Dispelled in New Report (Christian Post, 060203)

Researchers found that there are nearly twice as many known megachurches now than there were just five years ago, raising the number of U.S.-based megachurches to at least 1,200.

According to Megachurches Today 2005, a joint project released today by Hartford Seminary and the Leadership Network, there are about 1,210 Protestant Churches in the United States with an average weekly attendance of over 2,000.

“That is nearly double the number of megachurches that existed five years ago,” said Warren Bird, Director of Research at Leadership Network.

When the project began last year, Hartford Seminary and the Network had separate databases of about 900 megachurches each. Researchers soon found that only about half of the listed megachurches overlapped, significantly raising the known number of large churches in the United States.

By contacting the more than 1,800 churches on their list, researchers also found various characteristics of megachurches and how such institutions came to grow. The wide-ranging survey asked information on staff salary, sanctuary size, location, population demographics, and denominational affiliation.

According to the findings, widely held beliefs about such churches “could not be farther from the truth.”

“I am absolutely convinced that megachurches have blossomed, at least in part, because they have responded creatively to the new needs and interests of people in a new cultural reality,” said Scott Thumma, Professor of Sociology of Religion at Hartford Seminary, who led the project. “There is much to learn from megachurches—and it isn’t all about being big.”

In a series of “myths” and “realities,” researchers listed and corrected the common misunderstandings about megachurches, including the belief that “all megachurches are alike.”

“They differ in growth rates, size and emphasis,” the researchers wrote. Along those lines, researchers found that not all megachurches over-emphasize money, and that not all of them are good at being big. “Some clearly understand how to function as a large institution, but others flounder – and some even struggle and decline,” they wrote.

Researchers also noted that the megachurch trend is continuing to grow, with many denominationally-affiliated churches rapidly growing over time.

“The increased numbers of megachurches we found is shocking, and it seems there are many more on the way,” they wrote. “We see no indication of this trend slowing.”

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Megachurches Not All About Being Big (Christian Post, 060204)

Sunday worship services at First Baptist Church of Glenarden (FBCG) are seeing an overflow of attendants in its present facility in Landover, Md. Currently, 7,000 members constitute the congregation and the church is making way for more.

FBCG is breaking ground on an 83-acre plot of land in the Largo and Kettering community in Maryland for an entirely new facility both catering to the growing congregation and widening its doors to welcome newcomers. Five years in the making, the new church site includes a 4,000-seat worship center, educational, banquet and administrative support areas, a chapel, and more than 2,000 parking spaces.

“It’s much needed,” said FBCG Senior Pastor John K. Jenkins Sr. about the expansion.

A new breakthrough study released Friday revealed that all U.S.-based megachurches are not alike and are not solely defined by their enormity.

“There is much to learn from megachurches - and it isn’t all about being big,” said researchers in Megachurches Today 2005 – a joint project by Hartford Seminary and the Leadership Network.

Last summer, one of the largest megachurches in the nation, Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, celebrated the opening of its new facility - the former Compaq Center that was home to professional sports teams including the Houston Comets, Houston Aeros, and Houston Rockets – complete with a 16,000-seat sanctuary.

Other megachurches such as Saddleback Church in Lakeforest, Calif., however, prefer a bit more moderate-sized services with a less overwhelming crowd. Its current worship center seats 3,200 but serves tens of thousands of attendants with six identical services held each weekend. Founder and Lead Pastor Rick Warren encourages new and large buildings to be utilized as a multi-purpose facility rather than leaving the church empty and dormant most of the week.

FBCG plans to open its doors for more than just its five worship services on Sunday. Jenkins commented on the numerous services megachurches can provide to the community.

He listed social activities, feeding the needy, educating the youth through school and daycare, training for skills development and parenting classes as just some of the huge benefits such churches as his could bring.

Scott Thumma, Professor of Sociology of Religion at Hartford Seminary, who led the Megachurches Today project, credited the growth of large congregations to their creative response to the “new needs and interests of people in a new cultural reality.”

Catering to the needs of the people is largely stressed at FBCG. Jenkins pointed out FBCG’s multi-functions as it is “heavily involved in the community.” And they plan to “remain in that posture,” he said, when they move into their new worship home.

“This is the culmination of a lot of work and a lot of prayer. It provides us with the opportunity to really help a lot of people. I’m excited about that potential,” he added.

First Baptist Church of Glenarden is slated to move into the $40 million facility, located six miles away from its current worship place, in September 2006.

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Aborting Churches: Unholy death warrants. (National Review Online, 060210)

Just in time for the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade last month, the Episcopal Church earlier this month reaffirmed its membership in an abortion-rights coalition.

During its January 9-12 meeting in Des Moines, the executive council of the Episcopal Church voted to clarify and affirm its membership in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC).

RCRC, formerly known as the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, was founded in 1973 with funding from the Playboy Foundation (and later from the Ford Foundation), to organize religious supporters of legalized abortion. RCRC is absolutist in its rejection of any restriction on abortion, defending the legality of partial-birth abortion, and opposing parental-notification laws, as well as other sensible restrictions.

Agencies of the Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ, Reform Judaism, and Conservative Judaism all belong to RCRC. So too does “Catholics for a Free Choice.” RCRC was founded in the wake of Roe v. Wade to counteract Roman Catholic opposition to the Supreme Court ruling. [KH: a good list of liberal churches]

The author of the Episcopal motion, representing the Diocese of Washington, D.C., noted that the executive council’s vote simply reiterated the denomination’s stance on abortion, which he said has been an “unequivocal opposition to any federal or state legislation that would interfere with a woman’s right to make a decision on terminating a pregnancy.” This was reported in the Living Church magazine http://www.livingchurch.org/publishertlc/viewarticle.asp?ID=1649.

RCRC boasts that its ecclesial alliance for abortion rights is both wide and “mainstream.” It describes abortion rights as integral to “religious liberty.” RCRC head Carlton Veazey notes on its website that RCRC founders thought their struggle would last only a decade. “In fact the struggle is far from over,” he regrets. “It has changed and intensified, and the stakes are growing.”

Veazey refers to a “sense of doom” as the U.S. Senate moves toward confirmation of Samuel Alito. RCRC has already called the Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval of Alito a “dangerous setback for individual privacy and women’s reproductive health.” According to Veazey, in a column for Beliefnet.com, Alito has “shown an appalling lack of understanding for life’s complexities and the circumstances that some women must endure.”

Feelings of angst at RCRC are quite deep. Veazey, who is ordained in the National Baptist Convention [KH: liberal obviously], writes:

After four years of unprecedented access, far-right Christian fundamentalists are deeply embedded in government structures. The nation is not yet a theocracy, if mullah-run Iran or Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is the standard. But we are on the brink of a de facto Christian state, and we should be very frightened for the future of religious freedom and diversity.

Despite the claims of “mainstream” on the issue of abortion, RCRC’s members are in fact an increasingly isolated minority among America’s churches. The vast majority of America’s over 160 million church members belong to Roman Catholic or evangelical churches that disapprove of abortion. Denominations totaling less than 20 million belong to RCRC. And the membership of those denominations is, in fact, deeply divided and ambivalent on the question of abortion.

These RCRC churches, in their official abortion statements (http://www.livingchurch.org/publishertlc/viewarticle.asp?ID=1649 ) squishily express discomfort with abortion while still defending its unrestricted legality. “We do not wish to see laws enacted that would attach criminal penalties to those who seek abortions or to appropriately qualified and licenses persons who perform abortions in medically approved facilities,” the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) declares.

The United Methodist Church unequivocally asserts, “We support the legal to abortion as established by the 1973 Supreme Court decisions.”

Episcopalians warn that “legislation concerning abortions will not address the root of the problem” and insist that any legislation must “see that individual conscience is respected.”

The United Church of Christ “upholds the right of men and women to have access to adequately funded family-planning services and to safe, legal abortions as one option among others.”

The end result of all their statements is that the official lobby offices of these denominations, on their own and acting through RCRC, oppose all proposed restrictions on abortion. In April 2004, they all endorsed and participated in the “March for Women’s Lives” in Washington, D.C., organized by the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood.

In all their unctuous demonstration-marching and statement-making, the pro-abortion-rights church community has not considered the effect of their advocacy on their own demographic health.

Conservatives have often chided the mainline Protestant denominations for their dramatic membership losses, faulting the controversial liberal political advocacy of their churches’ officials. No doubt there is truth in this. Most mainline Protestants are still conservative leaning, despite the chronic leftism of their church hierarchies. Many react in frustration by leaving.

But the demographic implosion may also have other, deeper contributing factors. One out of every six Americans belonged to a mainline denomination 40 years ago. Today it is one out of every 15. Writing for The American Journal of Sociology several years ago, Catholic priest (and romance potboiler author) Andrew Greeley, with two other sociologists, asserted that mainline Protestant decline is actually created by decades of declining birthrates in comparison to those for conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Though Greeley et al. did not address it directly, mainline Protestant hierarchs long championed legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade, culminating in their founding of RCRC in 1973. Undoubtedly this had some impact on abortion rates among their own flocks. The lower birth rate among mainline Protestants can probably be explained, at least partly, by some level of increased moral ease with and resort to abortion (the “Roe Effect”). [KH: same effect on red and blue states and it explains why population in red states increases faster.]

So perhaps unrestricted abortion is fueling the decline of the very same churches who have most championed it. The irony is a sad one.

— Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee (UMAction) of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

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New Survey Highlights Accelerating Decline of Canada Anglicans (Christian Post, 060213)

The Anglican Church of Canada has experienced a huge decline over the past 40 years, according to a new independent survey.

Over the period of 1961 to 2001 the Canadian region of the worldwide Anglican Church has lost 53 percent of its members, with numbers declining from 1.36 million to just 642,000.

An even more worrying sign for the worldwide Church is that the survey suggests that the decline is accelerating. In the period between 1981 and 1991, church membership decreased by 13 percent. However, between 1991 and 2001 the numbers reduced by a greater proportion portion of 20 percent.

Retired marketing expert Keith McKerracher carried out the report, according to the Church of England newspaper, which has been passed on to the House of Bishops.

After the report was released, McKerracher explained, “My point to the bishops was: Hey listen, guys, we’re declining much faster than any other church. We’re losing 12,836 Anglicans a year. That’s 2 percent a year. If you draw a line on the graph, there’ll only be one person left in the Canadian Anglican church by 2061.”

The decline has coincided with the liberalization of the Church’s views over the past four decades – something that has also been witnessed in the Episcopal Church (U.S.A.). Ted Byfield, a long-time observer of Canadian culture, who has published a weekly news magazine in Canada for 30 years and now serves as general editor of The Christians, a 12-volume history of Christianity, has suggested that this liberalization of the Church is the core reason for the decline, reports Dutch Christian newspaper Reformatorisch Dagblad.

McKerracher, however, also said that he did not believe that the Anglican leaders in Canada would respond in any significant way to the findings. He stated, “The church is in real crisis. They can’t carry on like it’s business as usual. They talk things to death. And my impression is that the bishops are not going to go around telling priests to shape up.”

The Church of England newspaper was also told by Canadian Archbishop Andrew Hutchison that the report was a “wake-up call” and that he hoped that a new emphasis on social justice and ecumenical cooperation would halt the decline. [KH: what garbage! Only orthodox doctrine and practice will save.]

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Majority of Unchurched Claim Christian Faith, Says Barna Survey (Christian Post, 060321)

A new Barna survey found that 76 million adults in America do not attend church although more than half of the unchurched say they are Christian.

Having more than two decades of studies on the unchurched population, the Barna Group surveyed 1,003 adults from across the nation for the latest study and found that 34 percent of the adult population has not attended any type of church service or activity, other than a special event such as a funeral or wedding, during the past six months. And nearly one-quarter say that a person’s faith in God is meant to be developed mainly through involvement in a local church.

Denominationally, Catholics made up the largest share of unchurched adults with 29 percent and Baptists followed with 18 percent.

Although unchurched, 77 percent say they are either absolutely or moderately committed to the Christian faith and millions of them engage in spiritual activity during a typical week. Nearly two-thirds pray to God, one-fifth read from the Bible, and five percent participate in a small group for Bible study, prayer or Christian fellowship.

Among the adults disassociated with a conventional church, 66 percent agree that their religious faith is very important in their life today, 50 percent agree that the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches, 51 percent believe that Jesus Christ sinned while he lived on earth, 61 percent say their single, most important purpose in life is to love God with all their heart, mind, strength and soul, 55 percent argue that they are totally committed to having a deeper relationship with God and will do whatever it takes to get and maintain that relationship, and 66 percent say they are completely committed to making the world, and other people’s lives, better.

While millions have not attended a church service, some have attended house church meetings. The study also noted that 21 percent are born again Christians and four percent possess a biblical worldview. Geographically, the highest numbers of unchurched adults are in the Northeast and West. People group-wise, more than half of Asians and liberals say they have not attended church.

The study, which was published on Monday, comes a few weeks ahead of one of the Christians’ biggest celebrations – Easter.

“Every year, many previously unchurched people return to a church for one or more Easter season services. More often than not, this is the result of one of two motivations: the compelling invitation of a close friend who accompanies them to the service, or a personal crisis that compels them to seek God more fervently,” said the research institute founder, George Barna. “Impersonal marketing efforts generally have limited impact in persuading the unchurched to break their normal Sunday morning habits.”

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The Dying American Church (Christian Post, 060418)

I am by nature an optimist. I have seen the hand of God too often in my life to live in a state of despair and defeatism. But the state of evangelism in the American Church is such that I do have my moments when I wonder if the Church is headed down the path of many European congregations: decline and death.

The facts of a 2004 research project I led are sobering. It takes 86 church members in America one year to reach a person for Christ. Now I realize that such statistical studies are imperfect, and I make no claims of omniscience, especially in matters such as the regenerate population. But if the research is even close to accurate, the reality is that the Church is not reproducing herself. In just one or two generations, Christianity could be so marginalized that it will be deemed irrelevant by most observers.

Why has the American Church become evangelistically anemic? The research points to several possible factors.

First, the Church and many of the Christians who serve in the churches have become doctrinally ineffective. Repentance is often avoided as a key truth of the gospel. Hell is rarely mentioned, despite its abundance of references in Scripture. And regenerate church membership and church discipline are sometimes perceived as relics of an old and irrelevant era. When these and other key issues are avoided or even watered down, the Church loses her power, and the gospel is no longer the gospel.

Second, church leaders are becoming less evangelistic. A survey of pastors I led in 2005 surprised the research team. Over one-half (53 percent) of pastors have made no evangelistic efforts at all in the past six months. They have not shared the gospel. They have not attempted to engage a lost and unchurched person at any level. They have become busy doing many things, but they have chosen through their lack of actions to be disobedient to Acts 1:8, Matthew 28:19, and many other clear passages of evangelistic mandates.

Third, Christians in churches often get caught up in the minor issues and fail to become passionate about the major issue of evangelism. I served as pastor of a church that spent two hours in a business meeting debating over a 5 percent differential in the cost of two similar pieces of furniture. I wish I had seen such passion for the lost and the unchurched in our community.

The numerical evidence seems clear. The American Church is dying. We are not reproducing Christians. American Church growth is typically the transfer of members from one congregation to another, rather than the conversion of the lost. I guess I could blame the churches, her leaders, and stubborn church members. But I must confess that I too often fall short in my own evangelistic zeal. Sometimes I get so busy that I fail to do the main thing.

Perhaps the first step for all of us is the confession of our own sins of disobedience, our own failures to take the evangelistic mandate seriously. Perhaps if we determine that the problem begins with me, then we can be a part of the solution.

Will you join me in a personal evangelistic renewal? The results of our evangelistic efforts are in the hands of a Sovereign God. But we can be His instruments for this renewal. Perhaps then the American Church will see new life and new hope. Such is my prayer. I hope it is yours.

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Dr. Thom Rainer is president of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist.

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Church a way of life in Dixie (Washington Times, 060428)

Southern folks seem to have a monopoly on that good old time religion.

The South contains eight of the top 10 states with the most frequent churchgoers in the nation, according to a Gallup Poll analysis of more than 68,000 interviews conducted in the past two years.

“That’s no surprise,” said Southern historian Eugene Genovese. “Before the Civil War, it’d be hard to say the South was churchgoing, but certainly in the 20th century, churchgoing has remained much stronger here, as has Christian orthodoxy.”

It is a close race in the South.

With 58 percent saying they attend religious services once a week or almost every week, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina residents are tied in first place — followed by Mississippi at 57 percent, Arkansas and Utah tied at 55 percent, North Carolina and Nebraska tied at 53 percent and Tennessee and Georgia tied at 52 percent.

The national average is 42 percent. There is a wide range between the highest and lowest numbers, however — a difference of 34 percentage points between the top three and bottom two states.

“There’s a way in which churchgoing is woven into the fabric of life,” said Wilfred McClay, an evangelical Anglican and a humanities professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “When you move down here, one of the first things people ask is ‘Where do you go to church?’ In parts of the South, you still feel you’re in a kind of Christendom.

“Plus the red state/blue state divide is not as pronounced here. There are blue-state people here who are strong churchgoers. This is a world where the normative assumptions are Christian and evangelical.”

Of the Southern states, Virginia has the second lowest reported church attendance rate (44 percent), which is still above the national average, according to Gallup analyst Frank Newport.

Such findings are supported elsewhere. Church and churchgoing is at the very heart of the traditional South.

“Those visiting or moving to the South, especially the more traditional rural areas, would do well to respect the religious traditions of the area,” notes the text of “Southern Culture,” oit.vgcc.edu/hum122/TOC2.htm, which contains facts and history compiled by historians from the Vance-Granville Community College in Henderson, N.C.

“Sunday mornings are for going to church, not mowing the lawn, going shopping (the stores won’t be open anyway), or buying liquor or beer ... If someone in the grocery line finds out you’re new in town and asks you to his/her church, go ahead and say yes, and enjoy the experience. Southern hospitality surely shows itself best in the willingness of the people to share what is most important to them: their faith,” the site notes.

Mr. Genovese, a Catholic living in Atlanta, noted Roman Catholicism “is growing by leaps and bounds in Georgia. That’s mostly immigration but that does include conversions. The Catholic Church in Georgia has quadrupled since we came to Atlanta 20 years ago.”

“Plus, the recruitment of priests in Georgia is very strong. The young priests here tend to be more traditional.”

Sunday morning may not be so popular up North, though.

“At the other end of the spectrum, the data makes it clear that reported church attendance is lowest in New England states — New Hampshire (24 percent), Vermont (24 percent), Rhode Island (28 percent), Massachusetts (31 percent) and Maine (31 percent.) The only slight exception is the New England state of Connecticut (37 percent),” Mr. Newport added.

Nebraska led the Midwestern states in weekly or almost weekly church attendance (53 percent). Among the most populous states, Texas led at 49 percent, followed by Illinois (42 percent), Florida (39 percent), New York (33 percent) and California (32 percent).

The District of Columbia stood at 33 percent.

A small minority of Americans simply don’t go to church. Overall, only 16 percent of the respondents nationwide said they “never” attend.

The analysis found that 31 percent said they went to church once a week, 11 percent almost every week, 13 percent once a month, 27 percent “seldom” and 2 percent did not answer the question.

The poll of 68,031 adults was conducted from January 2004 through March 2006 in the 48 contiguous states, with a margin of error of plus or minus one percentage point.

Recent academic research reveals some potential benefits of church.

In a wide ranging analysis of 1990 census data, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jon Gruber found last year that frequent churchgoers have an average 9 percent higher income than those who sit home on Sunday. He also found less chance of being on welfare and divorced among the group.

A University of Pittsburgh study of actuarial death rates released April 3 found that weekly church attendance can increase life expectancy up to three years.

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Develop a Plan to Assimilate Members (Christian Post, 060505)

Pastor, you may have a large crowd of attendees on Sunday morning – and still not have a congregation. The fact is that the Crowd must become a church. They must be assimilated. Assimilation is simply the task of moving people from an awareness of your church, to attendance at your church, and then to active membership in your church. The Community talks about “that church,” the Crowd talks about “this church,” but the Congregation talks about “our church.” Members have a sense of ownership. They are contributors, not just consumers.

What you’re battling, in this culture, is America’s rampant individualism. You rarely find “Lone Ranger” Christians in other countries. But America is full of “floating believers” – Christians who hop from one church to another without any identity, accountability, or commitment. They have not been taught that the Christian life involves more than just believing – it also includes belonging. We grow in Christ by being in relationship to other Christians.

Since the incorporation of new members into your church fellowship does not happen automatically, you have to develop a system and structure to assimilate and keep the people you reach. At Saddleback, our system is comprised of two parts.

The first part of our assimilation system is a set of questions we ask ourselves:

1. What does God expect from members of his church?

2. What do we expect from our members right now?

3. What kind of people already make up our congregation?

4. How will that change in the next five to 10 years?

5. What do our members value?

6. What are new members’ greatest needs?

7. What are our long-term members’ greatest needs?

8. How can we make membership more meaningful?

9. How can we ensure that members feel loved and cared for?

10. What do we owe our members?

11. What resources or services could we offer our members?

12. How could we add value to what we already offer?

Because your congregation has a unique history, culture, and growth rate, these questions are important. The answers will determine the assimilation plan that’s best for your situation.

But you’re not the only one with questions. Prospective members have their own set! Before people commit to joining your church, they want to know the answers to five unspoken questions:

1. Do I fit here?

This is a question of acceptance. This question is best answered by establishing affinity groups within your church so that people with similar ages, interests, problems, or backgrounds can find and relate to each other. Everyone needs a niche, and small groups play a crucial role in meeting this need. You must show people that you have a place for them.

2. Does anyone want to know me?

This is the question of friendship. You can answer this question by creating opportunities for people to develop relationships within your congregation. There is an unlimited number of ways you can do this, but it takes planning. Remember, people are not looking for a friendly church as much as they are looking for friends. People deserve individual attention.

3. Am I needed?

This is the question of value. People want to make contribution with their lives. They want their lives to count. They want to feel that they matter. When you can show people that they can make a difference with their gifts and talents by joining your church, they will want to be involved. Position your church as a creative place that needs the expression of all sorts of talents and abilities, not just singers, ushers, and Sunday school teachers.

4. What is the advantage of joining?

This is the question of benefit. You must be able to clearly and concisely explain the reasons and benefits of membership. Explain the biblical, practical, and personal reasons for membership.

5. What is required of members?

This is the question of expectations. You must be able to explain the responsibilities of membership as clearly as you state the benefits of it. People have a right to know what is expected of them before they join.

These five, unspoken questions lead to the second part of our assimilation system – C.L.A.S.S 101.

You need a way to address those unspoken questions and share the vision of your church. At Saddleback, the way we do this is through a required membership class, which we call C.L.A.S.S. 101.

In my opinion, the membership class is the most important class in your church and should be taught by the senior pastor if possible. A strong membership class will build a strong congregation. A weak membership class will build a weak congregation. But keep in mind that a “strong” class doesn’t necessarily mean a “long” class. C.L.A.S.S. 101 is only four hours long and is taught all on one day, but it produces a high level of commitment in our membership. Those who choose to join our church know exactly what will be expected of them as members. The strength of a membership class is determined by its content and call for commitment, not its length.

Some churches have a membership class, but they cover the wrong material in it. They fill the class with material on spiritual growth or basic doctrine. These subjects are vitally important, but they are more appropriately covered in your new believer’s class and Christian doctrine class – separate from your membership class. Your membership class should answer the following questions:

- What is a church?

- What are the purposes of the church?

- What are the benefits of being a member?

- What are the requirements for membership?

- What are the responsibilities of membership?

- What is the vision and strategy of this church?

- How is the church organized?

- How can I get involved in ministry?

- What do I do next now that I am a member?

Here are a few tips for your membership class:

• If your church targets the unchurched, you need to include a clear explanation of salvation in your membership class because you will have many people who want to join your church who aren’t even believers yet! We always explain that trusting Christ is the first requirement for membership and we have people saved in every membership class.

• Keep your membership class interesting and interactive by using video clips, a notebook with fill-in curriculum, small group interaction, and a good meal together. Be sure to include a lot of stories that personalize the history, values, and direction of your church. At Saddleback, we even include a quiz at the end of each class, testing the new members on how well they can state the purposes of our church and other important concepts.

• If possible, offer three versions of your membership class: a children’s version for older elementary kids, a youth version for junior high and high school, and the adult membership class.

• Make completion of your membership class a requirement for membership. People who are uninterested or unwilling to learn your church’s purposes, strategy, and the meaning of membership are failing to demonstrate the kind of commitment that membership implies. If they don’t even care enough to understand the responsibilities of membership they cannot be expected to fulfill them after joining – and should not be allowed to join. There are plenty of other congregations to join that offer a meaningless membership.

Membership is an act of commitment. The way you motivate people to make that commitment is to show them value-for-value the benefits they will gain in return. When people understand and value membership, they will get excited about it – and what was once just a crowd will turn into a church.

This article is adapted from Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Church.

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Rick Warren is the founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., one of America’s largest and best-known churches.

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What to Do When Your Church Hits a Plateau (Christian Post, 060614)

I hear it frequently: “My church has hit a plateau. What can I do to get it moving again?”

While this can be a common crisis, it’s not unfixable. There are several things you can do to help your church move beyond its growth block.

First, though, it’s important to understand that the longer your church has been plateaued, the longer it’s going to take to get it going again. There is tremendous power in momentum. At NASA, most of the energy – the jet fuel – in a rocket engine is used up in the first several hundred yards. It takes all that fuel just to get the thing off the launch pad. Once it’s in orbit, it takes very little power to keep a rocket going. But you still have to get the thing going, and that initial push takes a lot of time and energy up front.

If your church has been plateaued for six months, it might take six months to get it going again. If it’s been plateaued a year, it might take a year. If it’s been plateaued for 20 years, you’ve got to set in for the duration!

I’m saying some people are going to have to die or leave. Moses had to wander around the desert for 40 years while God killed off a million people before he let them go into the Promised Land. That may be brutally blunt, but it’s true. There may be people in your church who love God sincerely, but who will never, ever change.

I often tell the pastors of existing churches to remember the illustration of an oil tanker. It takes about 14 miles for an oil tanker to make a U-turn. That’s like a lot of churches.

For a church to turn around it may take many, many minute degrees of change and a long time to make a complete turn around. I personally believe you have to be called to a church like that.

People ask, “Is it easier to start new churches, or is it easier to take existing churches and turn them around?” My answer is this: “It’s always easier to have babies than to raise the dead.” However, God is in the business of raising the dead! He’s a pro at resurrections, but it just might take some time.

So what do you do with a church that has plateaued? I believe you need to do three things:

First, as we’ve just discussed, understand that it will take time. As pastor of an existing church that needs to be turned around, you must pray for an extra amount of patience. People change very slowly. They are resistant to change because they recognize that life as they’ve known it will cease to exist. So the very nature of the primary group is to fight change. It can take time to win them over.

Second, you love everybody, but you move with the movers. Pastor everybody, hold everybody’s hand, don’t show partiality, and continue to care for everybody. But you move with the movers.

Jesus spent the maximum amount of time with those who would bear the maximum amount of responsibility. Even though he fed the 5,000, he spent most of his time with the 12. Even with the 12, he had the inner circle with Peter, James, and, John. Paul, in the book of Galatians, calls Peter, James, and John “pillars of the church” because they were the ones who would bear the maximum responsibility.

In every church there are the “E. F. Huttons: “When they speak, everybody listens!” Often they have no elected position. But they are the legitimizers in that church. In a small church, you need to find out who are the E. F. Huttons.

How do you know if they are the E. F. Huttons? They’re often the people who are teased the most. It’s an interesting little phenomenon. When they tell a joke everybody laughs. When there’s a decision to be made and somebody says something, everyone looks to see how the legitimizer is going to react.

You need to be perceptive of these people in your church. Find out who the legitimizers are; the ones who are willing to go for change. Find these people and start pouring your life into them. Build your vision in them. Love everybody but move with the movers.

Third, be prepared for conflict. It’s going to come. Everybody wants a church to grow to a point. When it first starts growing, people will say, “Wow! Look at all these new young couples coming in! They can help pay the bills!”

But when the newcomers start throwing off the traditional balance, outweighing the old timers, then you’ve got problems. Tension grows, and the battle cry becomes, “We’re losing our church!” That’s a care/control issue. It’s a conflict between the pioneers and the homesteaders. Who was there first, who came later, and who’s going to win out?

In every church there are people who were there before you, and there are people who came after you. Then there are people there who are younger than you and there are people there who are older than you.

As a pastor, which of these groups can you most easily lead? Generally, it will be those who are younger and those who came after. Which is the hardest group to lead? Generally, it will be those who are older and those who were there before you. As a church begins to grow, tension comes suddenly.

You must feel called in your spirit to lead a church through change because change is never comfortable. It is almost always uncomfortable. Be assured of your calling, be prepared for the long haul, be ready for conflict, and move with the movers – and you’ll slowly begin to turn the ship around.

This article is adapted from Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Church.

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Rick Warren is the founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.

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The Church in 2011: Catching the Age Wave (Christian Post, 060711)

When I see the number 2011, I think of some distant future that is too far away to generate much concern. But 2011 is less than five years away, and significant demographic trends are taking place. These trends are profound, but I fear that the American church is not ready or even aware of the changing landscape.

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Nearly one-third of all Americans living today were born between 1946 and 1964. This baby boom is sandwiched between the small generations of the Depression and the Vietnam eras. The boomer generation has repeatedly shaped much of American life, including church life.

Concurrent with the aging of the baby boomers is a longevity boom. In 1900, life expectancy was 47 years. By 2011 the life expectancy of adults will approach 80 years. A huge and long-living older generation will be residing in our communities. How will the church respond?

In just five short years, the oldest boomer will be 65 years old, and the midpoint boomer will be 56. These are not your typical mature adults, and churches that respond as they always have will miss a great evangelistic opportunity.

What are some emerging thoughts and facts about this generation? Look at the following pertinent issues:

• About two-thirds of the 76 million boomers are unchurched, which means they attend church no more than twice a year.

• Our early research indicates that many of these boomers are becoming profoundly nostalgic. Among the unchurched boomers, we found that a significant number would return to church if it resembled the church of their childhood.

• Typically, gospel receptivity wanes as a person ages. But the boomers may defy this trend. Indeed, early indicators tell us that gospel receptivity may actually be on the rise among the members of this huge generation.

• The senior boomers will have the largest accumulated wealth of any group in America’s history.

• This age wave will include tens of millions of men and women who want to make a difference in their older years. They have pursued many paths to happiness, and the unchurched boomers tell us that none have proved satisfactory.

• These older adults will respond poorly to most forms of senior adult ministries in churches today. They will walk away from churches that focus on travel and entertainment as the primary “ministries” to senior adults.

• The age wave adults will desire more than an occasional mission trip as a means to make a difference. They want to invest themselves in something that is meaningful and longer-term.

• These new senior adults will not perceive themselves to be older adults, and any organization that communicates to them that they are old will quickly lose the allegiance of this generation.

• The age wave generation is increasingly desirous of studying deep biblical truths, even among the unchurched boomers.

In my travels to churches and in my discussions with church leaders, I often ask what their churches are doing to prepare for this age wave, especially since the impact will be felt in as few as five years. Most leaders admit that they have not even thought about the issue, much less strategically planned to reach this older generation.

We estimate that this older generation could shape organizations around the nation and the world for the next 25 to 30 years. Most secular groups are giving serious thought and expending millions of dollars to reach this new type of senior adult. But it seems that the American church is one of the least prepared for this age wave of any of the organizations today.

Most cutting-edge ministries in the church for the past 40 years have been aimed at reaching the younger generations. Indeed, churches should continue to reach young people with the gospel. But few churches have given much thought or resources to reaching older generations. And if something does not change in our churches, this age wave will pass by with millions never connecting with the church, and with millions never responding to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What is your church doing to prepare to catch the age wave? The answer to that question may very well impact the eternity of millions of aging boomer Americans.

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Dr. Thom Rainer is president of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist.

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Africans Look to Revive Christianity in the West (Christian Post, 060808)

LONDON – While Christianity blossomed in Africa in the 1800s through Western missionaries, Africans are now bringing a revival of mission back after being powerfully transformed.

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With church-going on the wane in Europe, Africa’s vibrant Protestant churches are sending an array of missionaries to the West to win souls and revitalize shrinking congregations – an ironic twist on the 19th century drive by Western missionaries to convert Africans.

According to African missionaries, Western churches are too timid when it comes to religion.

“The church in the UK has become shy about faith,” said Kenyan minister Patrick Mukholi, employed by the U.K.-based Anglican Church Mission Society.

“Maybe as African missionaries we can encourage them to be more exuberant about knowing God,” said the priest, who worked in Mombasa before moving to England, which he had never visited before.

African churchmen first started moving to Europe and the United States in the 1970s to minister to immigrants mostly from their own countries.

But in the 1980s, African evangelicals – including some Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans and Methodists – decided to take a more systematic approach toward reaching what they saw as an increasingly Godless West.

“We couldn’t just throw up our hands and see these churches turned into nightclubs or mosques,” Tokunboh Adeyemo, former general secretary of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Dudley Pate, a Nairobi-based Zimbabwean who works for British organization African Inland Mission, says African churches are obeying the biblical command to spread their faith that is too often ignored by modern Western churches.

“The African church is taking seriously Christ’s command that it takes the Gospel to all nations.

Political correctness and complacency has stifled that in the West,” he told Reuters.

African missionaries – some backed by their own churches and some recruited by Western organizations – boast of some success in Europe.

Nigerian pastor Sunday Adelaja pioneered the independent Embassy of God church in Ukraine, delivering rousing sermons and dancing in the aisles to some 25,000 mostly white members, making it one of Europe’s biggest churches.

And Nigeria’s Redeemed Church of God, which aims to build a congregation within five minutes’ drive or walk from anywhere in the world, has a branch in almost 40 European countries.

One of Europe’s biggest Evangelical churches, in eastern France, was started by Africans and draws thousands every week.

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Study: Faith in America Unchanged Five Years after 9/11 (Christian Post, 060828)

NEW YORK – As the nation comes to the remembrance of the 9/11 tragedy five years ago, a study released today is revealing how Americans have not risen with more spiritual fervor as many Christian leaders had expected.

Drawing from surveys conducted before the attacks and after, The Barna Group found that the faith of Americans is virtually indistinguishable today compared to pre-attack conditions. Although church attendance spiked on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks, numbers had leveled back to those of pre-attack days in a matter of months and have not changed ever since.

Half of all Americans said their faith helped them cope with the shock and uncertainty in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. At the same time, Americans were also less likely to believe God is the perfect, all powerful Creator who rules the world. Data from October 2001 further showed that Americans were less likely to feel a responsibility to share their faith, less willing to reject the notion that good works can earn salvation and more likely to believe that the devil is merely a symbol of evil.

In the past five years, the proportion of adults who identify themselves as Christians, evangelicals, non-evangelical born again Christians, notional Christians, atheists and agnostics, and non-Christians has not changed. The latest study also revealed that Americans’ intensity of commitment to their faith, whether being “absolutely committed,” “deeply spiritual” or not, has remained the same.

“Many Christian leaders predicted that terrorism on U.S. soil would catalyze a spiritual awakening in the country,” said David Kinnaman, director of the Barna study, in the report. “The first few weeks were promising. But people quickly returned to their standard, faith-as-usual lives: within a month, most of their spiritual fervor was gone. Within 90 days, surprisingly few people were pursuing important questions about faith and spirituality. Now, five years removed from that fateful day, spiritually speaking, it’s as if nothing significant ever happened. People used faith like a giant band-aid – it helped people deal with the ugliness of the event but it offered little in the way of deep healing and it was discarded after a brief period of use.”

In other matters, 63 percent of Americans said they are “concerned about terrorist attacks.” Americans have also registered heightened concern about the “moral condition of the nation” and “the future.” However, even before the attacks, three-quarters of the people said they were concerned about the future and the nation’s moral direction.

Kinnaman gave churches and faith communities a warning note in regards to preparation for such events as the 9/11 attacks. Research from 2002 had indicated that only one out of five Americans said their church or religious center did an “excellent job” addressing the attacks, terrorism, and security issues.

“Most leaders – religious and otherwise – were completely caught off guard in 2001,” said Kinnaman. “Without intentional planning, most churches were satisfied merely to provide a safe haven for people to come together and seek comfort, but few congregations lead people to a serious and prolonged period of self-reflection and personal change. However, with significant disasters like hurricane Katrina and the threat of future terrorist attacks, there is no excuse for being unprepared the ‘next’ time.”

Preparation constitutes not only having a sermon handy but also pragmatic planning, Kinnaman stated.

“The job of spiritual leaders is not just to help people cope with tragedy but to break through their spiritual hard-headedness and orient them towards God’s deeper purposes for their life.”

The data in the latest Barna survey was based on interviews with more than 8,600 adults from across the nation in nine separate surveys.

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Lakewood Tops List of Fastest-Growing U.S. Churches (Christian Post, 060901)

Lakewood Church in Houston is the fastest-growing U.S. church, according to Outreach Magazine’s 2006 church growth study.

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In 2005, Lakewood, led by Joel Osteen, gained a total of 12,000 members. The annual report listed the top 100 fastest growing churches in America, including 52 new churches and 48 returning from last year’s list.

Texas was the most represented state with 19 churches featured in the top 100. Lakewood jumped from the third to the top spot this year and was followed by Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas which gained 5,018 people in the past year. New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga.; Salem Baptist Church in Chicago, Ill.; and Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Fla., were placed in the top five, respectively. Second to Texas were California, Florida and Georgia, each having eight churches represented.

Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., with bestselling author Rick Warren took a plunge down from number five to number thirty-nine. New membership gains in the past year dropped by nearly 1,500 people to 1,149. Willow Creek Community Church, the most influential church in America, according to The Church Report, rose from the 30th rank to the eighth with a gain of 2,900 in 2005. The Potter’s House with Bishop T.D. Jakes was listed at number 25. The Dallas megachurch did not place in the top 100 last year.

Churches from 30 different states were represented as the fastest-growing churches in the nation this year, many of which were Southern Baptist (27). Other denominations represented were the Independent, Independent charismatic, Christian Church/Churches of Christ and Assemblies of God churches.

The report noted that 40 churches appear on both the top 100 largest and fastest-growing lists. Also, the majority of the churches were white, followed by African America, multi-ethnic and Asian (Korean).

On another note, one out of ten of the 1,000-plus U.S. megachurches are less than 10 years old.

Outreach’s annual report uses self-reported data. The reports are provided by Dr. John N. Vaughan, president and founder of Church Growth Today, who specializes in research related to megachurches both domestically and globally.

For a complete list, visit www.outreachmagazine.com.

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Most Americans Say Religion’s Influence on Nation is Falling (Christian Post, 060829)

The majority of Americans say religion’s influence on the country is declining and most view this trend as a bad thing. The latest Pew Research survey measured the controversial relationship between religion and politics.

The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found 59 percent of Americans continue to say that religion’s influence on American life is decreasing and half say the decline is a bad thing. American opinion on religion’s influence on the government, however, is divided with 42 percent saying it is increasing and 45 percent saying it is falling. And most of those who said it was on the rise view it as a bad thing.

Although religion’s influence may be on the decline, 67 percent characterize the U.S. as a Christian nation. Divided among people groups, more whites than blacks hold this view and people ages 50 and older are more likely to express this view than are younger people.

Another major finding was that 69 percent of Americans say that liberals have gone too far in keeping religion out of schools and government. Yet the percentage of people who say Christian conservatives have gone too far in imposing religious values on the country rose from 45 to 49 percent in the past year.

The Democratic Party continues to face a serious “God problem,” according to the report, with just 26 percent saying the party is friendly to religion. However, the proportion of Americans who say the Republican Party is friendly to religion, while much larger, has fallen from 55 percent to 47 percent in the past year, with a particularly sharp decline coming among white evangelical Protestants (14 percent).

Views of the white evangelical group were reported to be sharply distinct from that of other religious groups and the rest of the public. Six in ten white evangelical Protestants say that the Bible should be the guiding principle in making laws when it conflicts with the will of the people. In contrast, most secular and even Catholic and white mainline Protestants rejected such a view.

In other matters, 62 percent of white evangelicals say the Bible is the actual Word of God, to be taken literally while only 35 percent of the public including 17 percent of white mainline Protestants share this literal view of the Scriptures. Still, most believe the Bible is God’s Word, but not everything in it is literally true.

The most popular policy issue addressed in the churches is hunger and poverty followed by abortion, the situation in Iraq and laws regarding homosexuals. Regarding politics, 51 percent say churches should express their views on social and political questions while 46 percent believe they should keep out of such matters.

In general, the public remains more positive than negative about the Christian conservative movement with 44 percent saying they have a favorable view and 36 percent saying their view is unfavorable.

The national survey was conducted July 6-19 among 2,003 adults.

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Survey: Reasons Why People Leave the Church (Christian Post, 061012)

Why do people leave the church? A new study by LifeWay Research found reasons, some inevitable, why some people stopped attending church.

Labeled as the “formerly churched,” 59% of those who left the church did so because of “changes in life situation.” This was the dominant reason found in the survey conducted to better understand why people leave the church.

More specifically, LifeWay Research Director Brad Waggoner pointed out two life-situation reasons why adults stop attending church. According to the study, 19% of the formerly churched “simply got too busy to attend church,” and 17% said “family/home responsibilities prevented church attendance.”

Other reasons explained were moving too far from the church, work situation and divorce or separation.

Another common reason adults leave the church is “disenchantment with pastor/church.” The study reported 37% of adults cited this as a reason for no longer attending. Some of the factors contributing to disenchantment included the behavior of church members. LifeWay reported that 17% said church members “seemed hypocritical” and “were judgmental of others,” and 12% said “the church was run by a clique that discouraged involvement.”

“While some may use disenchantment issues as a smokescreen to hide behind, the large percent of the formerly churched who struggle with disenchantment deserve some honest attention,” Waggoner commented, according to LifeWay.

Still, 80% of the formerly churched do not have a strong belief in God, which the study indicated may account for their higher priorities of work and family over church. Also, among the top 10 reasons adults leave the church, only two were related to spiritual causes, the report highlighted, with 14% saying the church was not helping them develop spiritually and another 14% saying they stopped believing in organized religion.

The church, however, may have prevented some losses if it showed more care, stated the study.

“The responsibility and influence of the church varies across the different reasons for withdrawal,” said Waggoner. “One clear influence is the expectations that churches have of attendees as they come into the life of the church.”

He went further to explain that many churches are afraid of asking too much of the churchgoers, fearing they would leave.

Yet the study suggested for more discipleship and commitment from church attendants along with a greater show of care. The study found that 16% of those who left the church said nobody contacted them after they left and another 16% said nobody seemed to care that they left.

“In the end, it’s important for church leaders to not only assume responsibility for those who seek to join their churches, but also for those who attempt to leave,” said Waggoner. “Be vigilant at both the front door and the back door of the church.”

Other study findings showed that 24% consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious;” 42% said they are “Christian, but not particularly devout;” 19% said they are “a devout Christian with a strong belief in God;” 10% confessed to wavering on Christianity; and 6% said they were wavering on belief in God.

LifeWay Research launched four new projects this fall to include churches and ministries beyond the Southern Baptists and results are expected through December of this year. A second part of the study on the formerly churched will be released next week to find how churches can win back those who left. This study was conducted on 469 adults who regularly attended a Protestant church as an adult in the past but stopped doing so.

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Survey: How to Bring Back Formerly Churched (Christian Post, 061020)

In a “surprising” survey response from formerly churched adults, LifeWay Research found that more than more than two-thirds of them are open to the idea of returning to the pews on a regular basis.

LifeWay released the second part of its study on the formerly churched to cite reasons why adults left the church in the first place and ways churches can get them back.

In response to the large percentage of people showing possibility of resuming church attendance, Scott McConnell, associate director of LifeWay Research, said, “We were delighted to see such a large percentage of the formerly churched willing to consider church again in the future. This was particularly surprising because the average formerly churched adult has not attended regularly for 14 years.”

The majority of the formerly churched adults (62 percent) said they are open to the idea of attending church regularly again, but not actively looking. For others, 28 percent said they are unlikely to consider regularly attending church in the foreseeable future; six percent said they would prefer to resume attending regularly in the same church they had attended; and four percent said they are actively looking for a different church to attend regularly.

“The small portion who are ‘unlikely to consider’ returning should be encouraging when you think about the three out of four who are willing to give it another try,” noted McConnell, according to LifeWay.

The study went further to find what situation prompts people to resume regular church attendance. According to the results, 58 percent said they simply felt that it was time to return to the church; 41 percent said a friend or acquaintance invited them; 35 percent said they would return if they knew there were people there like them; 31 percent felt that God was calling them to visit the church; 25 percent said they would resume if their children asked them to go with them to church; and another 25 percent they would go if an adult family member invited them.

For the large majority who were self-motivated to return to church, the most common motivation that 46 percent of the surveyed adults said was to bring them closer to God.

“Many members are vulnerable to attrition because of either a nonexistent or immature faith,” said Brad Waggoner, director of LifeWay Research, in a released statement. “When individuals begin to seek out membership, they should be guided through a process whereby they are clearly taught the gospel and then, following salvation, grounded in strong biblical truth. Far fewer people would drop out of church if their spiritual foundation was deep and strong. The church also must be sensitive to this combination of a less developed but genuine desire for faith as they approach the formerly churched about returning.”

The second common motivation for going back to the church was building relationships in a Christian community with 32 percent wanting to be around those with similar values, 31 percent wanting to make friends, and 30 percent wanting to make a difference of help others in their community.

McConnell warned, “Too often churches wait for people to be spiritually mature to engage them in service when many projects or tasks are ideal entry or re-entry points for people on their faith journey.”

LifeWay suggested ways churches can bring people back into the pews.

Waggoner said that the findings “indicate that churches should seek out those who have lapsed as well as take steps to reduce further departures by meeting members’ needs for a welcoming and spiritually fulfilling church environment.”

He also recognized the significance of affinity with adults wanting to relate with similar people in the church.

“Affinity will never happen at a significant level without the church fostering a culture of concern, fellowship and involvement,” said Waggoner. “The openness of the majority of the formerly churched to rejoin the flock is reason enough for the church to seek them out. That means having an effective outreach strategy for identifying, praying for and contacting formerly churched adults to shepherd them back to the fold.”

Not only church members, but friends, family members and the work of the Holy Spirit are also major factors in bringing people back to the church, Waggoner added.

The survey was conducted in the summer of 2006 on 469 formerly churched adults. This was the second half of a two-part study that sought to better understand why people leave the church and find ways to bring them back.

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Survey: Why Some Churches Thrive and Others Decline (Christian Post, 070105)

[KH: Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership and Faith Communities Today are formed by a group of churches, predominantly mainline (very few evangelical) and include Jews and Muslims. The conclusions are suspect.]

Why do some congregations in America grow and others decline? A recent survey measured several key factors on what’s causing churches to thrive and others to remain stunted.

Congregations that are willing to change to meet new challenges experience greater growth than those less up to the challenge. According to the Faith Communities Today 2005 survey, 46% of congregations that said they “strongly agree” with willing to change experienced the highest level of attendance growth. Among those that said they “somewhat agree,” 37% are growing strongly. And among those who disagree on any level, only 15% have the highest level of attendance growth.

Geographic communities also affect congregational growth. Congregations located in newer suburbs are more likely to experience growth than congregations in any other type of location. The second best area for growth is in the downtown or central city of metropolitan areas. Those in rural areas and small towns are least likely to grow.

The composition of the congregation plays a major role in church growth as well. Congregations that are most likely to grow are younger ones, consisting of those founded from 1975 to the present. The survey revealed that the older the congregation is, the least likely it is to experience growth. Additionally, the more older adults a congregation has, the more unlikely it is to grow. And a larger proportion of younger adults also lead to growth opportunities.

“The mere presence of older adults is not problematic in and of itself,” the report stated. “But a congregation where a large proportion of the members are older tends to have a cluster of characteristics that inhibit growth.”

Such characteristics include no children being born to members, a lack of a clear sense of mission and purpose and a lack of vibrant worship or involvement in recruitment.

Another composition makeup affecting growth is racial diversity. Congregations that are multiracial are most likely to have experienced strong growth in worship attendance. Congregations least likely to grow are predominantly white, non-Hispanic ones.

The survey further found that a higher proportion of women in the congregation is associated with decline rather than growth in the church. Congregations that are able to attract larger proportions of men are more likely to grow.

Declining attendance numbers among mainline denominations is nothing new. But the study noted a surprising finding – a lack of growth among Catholic congregations despite continued increases in the overall Catholic population.

While some say theological differences account for the declining attendance in mainline churches compared to evangelical churches, the survey found that there is very little relationship between growth and theological orientation.

Less conservative churches are also most likely to grow. [KH: contrary to all other surveys, obviously affected by the support from mainline churches.]

“More important than theological orientation is the religious character of the congregation and clarity of mission and purpose,” the survey highlighted. “Growing churches are clear about why they exist and about what they are to be doing.”

Spiritual vitality is also key to growth with 45% of congregations that “strongly agree” with being spiritually vital and alive experiencing growth compared to 15% who “strongly disagree to unsure.”

Additionally, the character of worship largely affects growth. Congregations that describe their worship as “joyful” is more likely to experience substantial growth. At the same time, those that described their worship as “reverent” were more likely to decline. And churches that more often use drums in their worship services have experienced substantial growth from 2000 to 2005. That also applied to the use of electric guitars.

Furthermore, the study found that institutional change including change in worship services is necessary for a congregation to adapt to a changing environment.

Other factors for substantial growth are developing recruitment plans, church members actively involved in recruiting new members, maintaining a website, having support groups, conducting follow-up with visitors, and being in excellent financial shape.

Results from the survey are based on 884 randomly sampled congregations of all faith traditions in the United States. The survey is the latest in the series of trend-tracking national surveys of U.S. congregations sponsored by the Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership.

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More Americans Join Orthodox Churches (Christian Post, 070112)

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) - Greg Mencotti worried he would never find a spiritual home. The Sunday school teacher grew up Roman Catholic, lost his faith and became an atheist. Eventually, he returned to Christianity, this time as a born-again Christian, spending years worshipping in a Methodist congregation. Still, he felt his search wasn’t over.

That led him to the Holy Spirit Antiochian Orthodox Church in Huntington, a denomination with Mideast roots that, like all Orthodox groups, traces its origins to the earliest days of Christianity.

Today, Mencotti is one of about 250 million Orthodox believers worldwide — and among a significant number of newcomers attracted to this ancient way of worship. The trend is especially notable since so few in the United States know about the Orthodox churches here.

“I was like most Americans,” said Mencotti, who was urged by his wife to explore Orthodox worship. “I didn’t understand anything about Orthodoxy.”

Orthodoxy was born from the Great Schism of 1054, when feuds over papal authority and differences in the liturgy split Christianity into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox halves.

In the United States, Orthodox Christians are a fraction of religious believers, numbering about 1.2 million, according to estimates by Orthodox researchers.

In the past, their growth had been largely fueled by immigration, with churches forming mainly along ethnic lines. Some converts came to Orthodoxy through marriage to a church member.

But now about one-third of all U.S. Orthodox priests are converts — and that number is likely to grow, according to Alexei D. Krindatch, research director at the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, Calif. A 2006 survey of the four Orthodox seminaries in the country found that about 43% of seminarians are converts, Krindatch said.

There are no exact figures on the rate of conversion across the 22 separate U.S. Orthodox jurisdictions. But when Mencotti began attending Orthodox worship, the church was packed with converts, including the church’s pastor, the Rev. John Dixon.

The Rev. John Matusiak, pastor of St. Joseph Church in Wheaton, Ill., part of the Orthodox Church in America, said his parish has grown from 20 people in the early 1990s to more than 600 today, with the overwhelming majority of new members younger than 40.

Krindatch’s research found that one-third of the more than 200 U.S. parishes in the Antiochian Orthodox Church were founded after 1990.

Matusiak said growth is especially apparent in suburbs and commuter towns. “People in Wheaton weren’t flocking to Orthodoxy, because there was never a church here,” Matusiak said.

Many converts credit the beauty of the liturgy and the durability of the theology, which can be a comfort to those seeking shelter from divisive battles over biblical interpretation in other Christian traditions.

Dixon, who was raised an Old Regular Baptist, an austere faith of the Southern Appalachians, said his conversion grew from his studies about the origins of Christianity as an undergraduate at Marshall University. The turning point came when he first attended services at an Orthodox church.

“As soon as I came in that day,” he says, “I knew I was home.”

Convert-fueled growth, though, has its challenges.

Like converts in all faiths, the newly Orthodox bring a zeal that can be unsettling for those born into the church, who tend to be more easygoing in their religious observance. Parishes run the risk of dividing between new and lifelong parishioners, Krindatch says.

“Converts to Orthodoxy form their own little quasi-seminary and it’s almost a closed group,” says the Rev. Joseph Huneycutt, associate pastor of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Houston, who was raised Southern Baptist then became Orthodox.

And some worry about converts’ impact on the churches. They are entering the parishes at a time when many lay activists across Orthodox denominations are pushing church leaders to let go of ethnic divisions and pool resources so they can better evangelize in the United States.

Huneycutt, author of “One Flew Over the Onion Dome,” a book about conversion, and the editor of OrthoDixie, a blog about Orthodoxy in the South, said he was drawn to the faith by the beauty of its rituals and its teachings.

On his first visit, he said the church was filled with the smell of incense and the sound of the chanted Divine Liturgy. The altar was largely concealed by the iconostasis, a large screen or wall hung with icons of Christ, Mary, angels and Apostles. And worshippers received Communion from a chalice and spoon.

“I had become convinced that the Eucharist was the center of Christian worship — ancient Christian worship,” Huneycutt says. “Once I had reached that point in my personal walk with Christ, there was no going back.”

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Is Protestant England on its last legs? (Times Online, 050512)

In case you hadn’t noticed, with the demise of the Pope has come another death, that of Protestant England.

Oh, so you hadn’t realised? Your church is still standing, your services continuing on their weekly round, your vicar still paid his or her stipend. Well, maybe we shouldn’t inquire too closely into that last one.

But I can’t be the only Anglican to have become profoundly irritated by pundits who’ve interpreted the response to the death of the last Pope and election of a new one as a sign that our own church is on its last puff of smoke. To paraphrase the old obituary joke: “So the Church of England is dead? I didn’t realise it was still alive.”

What really got me was a writer in my own newspaper, who concluded not only that the Church of England had effectively become “just a weak version of Rome’s strong spiritual medicine”. He had the cheek to conclude that the same fate had befallen journalists of the Protestant persuasion.

He cited the reverence of the press to the RC church. “One can instantly think of a large handful of Catholic columnists,” he wrote. “Can you name a single one who is noticeably Anglican?”

Well yes, Theo Hobson, actually I can. Me.

OK, so I am not technically a columnist, unless you count At Your Service, a weekly service review. But I have been writing about religion for The Times for 15 years. And I did write lots of comment on the Pope, much of it highly critical. And if I failed to point out my membership of our national church in each one, that was more due to journalistic etiquette than any sense of belonging to a doomed institution that is about to snuff it.

But there is a far more important point to be made here than my slighted desire to be recognised by my peers. For a few days after the death of Pope John Paul II, it was as if our world had been translated to a parallel universe, with the BBC transubstantiated into Vatican Radio. One can’t help admiring the fortune of the Beeb, having the chance to fit all its required religious affairs programming for the year into the space of a few short days. More significantly, what all this showed was nothing like the death of our national church, less still of the Protestant heritage to which it belongs. Quite the reverse.

The homage paid by Protestants, from Rowan Williams downwards, to the late Pope and the advent of his successor illustrates the welcome death of an insidious anti-Catholicism that for centuries has poisoned ecumenism and nourished sectarianism, with all its attendant evils. Further, it displays a newly confident and adult Protestantism, a form of Christianity that can properly admire, respect and even love the mother Church that gave it birth, having finally come through the adolescent period of hate-driven rebellion that drove the initial separation.

It shows the extent to which our church has become a thriving, risk-taking and questioning body that is too busy with its business of saving souls to be overly worried by the new Pope’s assertion, in his previous incarnation as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that it is not, in fact, a “proper” church.

It shows a church that is prepared to look, as we shall see in the new document on Mary due to be published next Monday (16th) by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, at reclaiming some of the religious symbolism it jettisoned at the Reformation.

It shows a tradition that is ready, not to be subsumed once more by the Church it rejected 400 years ago, but to work alongside her, as a child might work alongside its parent, or even the Son beside his Father.

In a world so desperately in need of the Holy Spirit, the recent elevation of all things Catholic on to the front pages of our newspapers is something to be celebrated, not bewailed.

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Young People Leaving Hypocrisy, Not Traditional Church (Christian Post, 070220)

Riverside Baptist Church in Denver, Colo., is defined as a megachurch; the worship style, a blend of traditional and contemporary worship; and the attire, formal and informal, according to a church directory.

Senior Pastor Jim Shaddix describes his church as “somewhat contemporary.” It has a robed choir and a praise team, hymnals and Brooklyn Tabernacle songs, and a big screen. One elderly lady believes the church needs to incorporate more hymnals into their worship services while the twentysomethings want to ditch the choir and the robes. “What is a pastor to do?” Shaddix posed at a recent Southern Baptist conference.

“We generalize this trend as simply a choice between the traditional and contemporary,” he noted.

But Shaddix does not see it in that light. Young people, he believes, are not opposed to hymns. In fact, they sing revisions of hymnals sung by contemporary artists such as Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman. And they are not opposed to the organ, or else many of them would walk out of ball games. Pastors clad in a suit and tie are also not a turnoff to the younger generation who watch late night show hosts Jay Leno and David Letterman run their monologues in a suit and tie.

Beyond the form of traditional churches and worship styles, young people, who are labeled as the future of the church, are opposed to the “fabricated Christian culture” within the traditional churches.

“They’re opposed to the lifeless and heartless way we often sing those hymns,” Shaddix said at the second Baptist Identity Conference in Jackson, Tenn.

Many young adults are leaving the traditional churches they may have grown up in and searching for alternative forms, including the popular emerging church movement. Shaddix said such alternative forms are more appealing to “the marginally churched within our own camps” than the unchurched population.

In 1980, the Southern Baptist Convention baptized more than 100,000 18- to 30-year-olds. Twenty five years later, the figure dropped to slightly more than 60,000, according to Shaddix. And only 31 percent of twentysomethings attend any kind of Christian church although more than half of them attended church weekly when they were in high school, he further noted.

“If that statistic holds up, our young Baptist friend who was an active churchgoer as a teenager won’t be a member of anybody’s church by his 30th birthday.”

If young believers are not dropping out of an organized church altogether, they are being “captured by philosophies” like the emerging church, said Shaddix.

Making a bold statement that some Baptist church leaders agree with, Shaddix said that “both of those venues - no church at all or the emerging church - champion for a belief in nothing.”

On a general note, Shaddix pointed out that the postmodern church movements downplay and depreciate sound theology, and that they will be short-lived as they are built on passing styles and forms, making “perceived relevance impossible to keep up with.”

Young people are not necessarily running to something, the Southern Baptist pastor highlighted. They are running away from something.

And the standard answer church leaders would give to the question of what they are running from is the church form, the worship style, the traditional denominational affiliation - the tangible. But Shaddix believes the young believers are running from “lifeless Christianity.”

“They’re so turned off by it that they’re running to nothing,” he said.

This generation of young people “can see through” the emotionless expression during worship and the frequent listing of prayer requests but the little time allotted in services for actual prayer.

“They can see through our hypocrisy,” said Shaddix.

This generation has the gift of discerning authenticity in the church, Shaddix plainly stated. And this generation wants to do missions, not just study and give to missions.

In 10 years, the churches that these young people form will be churches that are built on a biblical model and focused on the Great Commission; are desperate for God for revival, for the transformation of culture, for the evangelization of the lost; make sacrificial callings to prayer that take priority over sleeping and eating; have a spirit that makes them accepting of all people and creates intimacy with God; and are always preparing financially to take the gospel to other places. Shaddix cited this future picture of churches from Richard Ross who leads True Love Waits.

The churches of the future are not focused on musical styles or denominational involvement.

Shaddix thus exhorted his fellow Southern Baptists to give their young brethren such an authentic church. If they don’t find it, they won’t stay, he said.

“The traditional church will survive and thrive if its people have a change of heart about their God.”

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U.S. Christians Ignorant of Europe’s Spiritual State, Says Mission Group Spokesman (Christian Post, 070408)

American Christians mistakenly believe that Europe has the same perception of the Church and Christian faith as in the United States, said a Europe mission group spokesman.

“It is questionable whether Europeans ever had a fundamental grasp of the grace of Jesus Christ,” said Bill Bennett, director of communications for Greater Europe Mission, to The Christian Post in a recent interview.

Bennett explained that the church to Europeans is seen as an economic and political power representing the religion of the rich world. Europeans have a more formal, ritualistic view of Christianity partially because in its history, a person’s landlord decided whether he would be Catholic or Protestant rather than any personal conviction.

“In America we assume that they have the same church that we have but our church experience is vastly different than that of Europe,” emphasized Bennett. “They didn’t come to believe in Christ and then start coming to church like we do.”

He added, “We in the United States project our Christianity to Europe which is not accurate because their history is different than ours.”

As many know, Christianity is declining in Europe to the extent that it has been described as the “least evangelized spot on earth” when looking at all of Europe’s population.

Less than four percent of the total population in Europe is evangelical and in most European countries the percentage falls to less than one percent.

In Europe, it is not unusual for a person to describe themself as a Catholic-Atheist, or someone born and raised in a Catholic family but who does not personally believe in God. Typically, the person would be baptized, married, and have their funeral held in a church, but would not be able to explain the meaning of Easter.

Bennett’s description is reflected in a recent Easter survey conducted in England - a country typically seen as a Christian nation. The survey found that one out of every six people in England aged 16-24 did not know the meaning of Good Friday and about 10 percent of participants did not know that Easter Sunday commemorated the resurrection of Jesus.

European governments have been partially blamed for the decline of Christianity, being accused of restricting religious activities and hindering the expansion of faith groups. For example, in the democratic country of France, a church requesting permit to expand its church building or buy property may never receive permission, according to Bennett.

“It is a stronghold of the enemy…. You just feel the spiritual oppression,” he commented.

Bennett also highlighted that other parts of the world have recognized the need to do missions in Europe except the United States. Last year during Urbana, Christian leaders from third world countries, especially in Africa, said they were going back to Europe because they see the need there, noted the GEM spokesman.

“So they see Europe as a mission field but in the United States we still lack awareness about Europe,” concluded Bennett.

Greater Europe Mission works alongside natives in Europe and North Africa to share the Gospel and plant churches in their homeland. There are currently 300 missionaries serving with GEM in 28 countries in Greater Europe.

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U.S. Christians Ignorant of Europe’s Spiritual State, Says Mission Group Spokesman (Christian Post, 070408)

American Christians mistakenly believe that Europe has the same perception of the Church and Christian faith as in the United States, said a Europe mission group spokesman.

He added, “We in the United States project our Christianity to Europe which is not accurate because their history is different than ours.”

As many know, Christianity is declining in Europe to the extent that it has been described as the “least evangelized spot on earth” when looking at all of Europe’s population.

Less than four percent of the total population in Europe is evangelical and in most European countries the percentage falls to less than one percent.

“It is a stronghold of the enemy…. You just feel the spiritual oppression,” he commented.

“So they see Europe as a mission field but in the United States we still lack awareness about Europe,” concluded Bennett.

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Evangelicals Thrive in England as Other Churches Struggle (Christian Post, 070423)

CAMBRIDGE, England (AP) - It’s Sunday in England, and across the country many traditional stone churches are struggling to fill their pews.

But not C3, the Cambridge Community Church, one of the country’s many evangelical groups. Its mostly white, middle-class congregants crowd a rented school auditorium with their arms outstretched to the heavens and their hands fervently clapping to evangelical sermons.

“I don’t need an old church with stained glass windows where a few people show up out of obligation, not inspiration,” said Ruth Chandler, a former member of the Church of England.

In England’s last census, 72 percent of people identified themselves as Christian. Many are Anglicans affiliated with the Church of England, which was created by royal proclamation during the 16th century after King Henry VIII — who married six times — broke ties with the Roman Catholic Church in a dispute over divorce.

But the Church of England has said that less than 10 percent of its members are regular churchgoers. By contrast, evangelicals make up about 40 percent of all the nation’s regular churchgoers, according to Peter Brierely, head of Christian Research, a London-based think tank.

Among the thriving conservative Christian churches in London are rich, mostly white Anglican congregations in the evangelical wing of the denomination — including Holy Trinity in Knightsbridge. Years ago, the parish developed an outreach course for newcomers called Alpha, which explains the basics of Christianity, that has been so successful it is now used for evangelism worldwide.

Another is the independent Kingsway International Christian Center, a predominantly black congregation. Its rousing services often fill a 4,000-seat auditorium built inside an old factory in a bleak industrial area. More evangelical churches can be found across the country, from small rural villages to university towns such as Cambridge.

Part of the evangelical growth is due to immigration.

Since 2001, Africa has supplied the single largest pool of new British citizens. Nearly a third of the 160,000 immigrants granted British citizenship in 2005 came from the continent, according to official statistics. Many of the new arrivals bring with them the spirit-filled Pentecostal worship style that has drawn millions of Africans to Christian churches across the continent in the last several decades.

Evangelical churches — both black and white — also intensely evangelize in a way that other British Christians don’t.

Some run inspirational radio and TV stations. At worship, the inspirational services are filled with popular-style music and videos aimed at the younger generation.

In a country famous for its reserve and self-effacement, it’s a sight to see at churches such as C3. Each service includes a rock ‘n’ roll band, a dancing and singing choir, a DVD screen with inspirational videos, and short, lively sermons by a husband and wife team of pastors. A separate service is held for children in a “kid zone.”

The strong evangelical presence became apparent during the recent debate over a new law in Britain on gay rights.

Without a debate, the House of Commons passed the Equality Act Sexual Orientation Regulations 2007 (SORs), which require full equality for gay men and lesbians and outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Christians fiercely opposed the law, saying it would require their adoption agencies to accept applications from gay couples, make it illegal for Christian hoteliers to turn away gays, and force religious schools to hire gays.

The Rev. Joel Edwards, head of the Evangelical Alliance, an umbrella group that claims 1 million members in Britain, said in an interview that the issue is pushing “evangelicalism into a new mode of active citizenship, which I welcome.”

As in the United States, British religious groups are barred from allying themselves with, or funding, a political party or a specific candidate in an election. But organizations such as the Evangelical Alliance issue position papers to their followers on issues such as gay rights. Theologically conservative Christians believe gay relationships violate Scripture.

“The erosion of Christian values increasingly reflected in our legislation is an indication that Britain has lost its Christian soul,” wrote Edwards, a British immigrant from Jamaica. “In this post-Christendom Britain, we cannot afford to neglect prayerful and spirit-led strategies for long-term change, for this is much work to be done.”

This new activism is occurring in a country with a strong tradition of secularism, even though the Church of England is Britain’s official church.

Disputes have erupted involving several of the evangelical student groups that operate on many university campuses, with an estimated 15,000-20,000 active members in England, Scotland and Wales.

At Exeter University in southwest England, the student guild suspended an evangelical group and had its bank account frozen because it was asking all its members to sign a statement of belief in Jesus as savior. Conservative Christians have challenged the legality of that decision under the Human Rights Act, which bars public bodies from violating a person’s freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The High Court is expected to hear the case soon.

Matthew Ashimolow, pastor of East London’s Kingsway International Christian Center, said he hopes issues such as gay rights fire up evangelicals in England to speak up about their religious beliefs louder than ever before. Ashimolow began his career as a preacher in his home country of Nigeria.

“Suddenly laws are being changed that are totally Christian unfriendly,” he said, “and the church has begun to see that it needs to wake up.”

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Top 100 Largest, Fastest-Growing Churches (Christian Post, 071003)

With the number of megachurches in America growing at an increasingly rapid rate, the largest of them all now have a new label: “gigachurches.”

Topping this year’s largest churches in the country is Lakewood Church in Houston, with an attendance of 47,000, according to Outreach Magazine’s annual 100 list of America’s largest and fastest-growing churches. While Lakewood remains on top, 36 of the top 100 draw 10,000-plus people each week (gigachurches). The rest have a weekly attendance of 6,000-plus.

Meanwhile, megachurches (2,000-plus attendees) now number an estimated 1,300. While that’s only 0.4 percent of all U.S. Protestant churches, megachurches are growing rapidly as they pioneer new approaches largely to engage the unchurched population.

“At a time when an estimated 70 percent to 80 percent of U.S. churches are either in plateau or decline, I am encouraged to discover a number of healthy congregations on the Outreach 100 lists that are bucking the negative tendencies prevalent in so many U.S. churches,” said Dr. Ed Stetzer, director of research and missiologist in residence for LifeWay Research. Outreach partnered with Stetzer for the first time for this year’s top 100 which was based on new methodology that factored in both numerical and percentage growth in attendees..

This year’s fastest growing church is Hispanic megachurch Iglesia Cristiana Segardores de Vida in Hollywood, Fla. Within the last year alone, the church grew by 2,800 attendees and now claims almost 6,000. The 100 churches on the fastest-growing list grew four times faster than churches on the largest list.

A key growth trend, or megatrend, is multi-site technology. Currently, seven of the top 10 fastest-growing churches are multi-site churches in which churches have set up extension sites on multiple campuses across the city, state or country. In 1990, there were only 10 multi-site Protestant churches in the United States. Today, 25 percent of all megachurches have more than one site and 16 percent of all Protestant churches in the United States are seriously considering adding a site within the next two years, according to LifeWay Research.

Stetzer doesn’t consider multi-sites a trend anymore, but rather as “the new normal.”

And the multi-site phenomenon continues to morph and transition as churches find new forms of expression to run church activities in many locations.

LifeChurch.tv (No. 40 Fastest-Growing, No. 5 Largest), stationed in Edmond, Okla., has launched sites across borders to Arizona, Texas, Florida and New York, as well as on the Internet.

North Coast Church in Vista, Calif., uses its multiple campuses to engage different cultural segments and reach different generations with a range of worship experiences – from traditional (hymns) to postmodern (sub-woofers, candles).

Other multi-sites have chosen to create smaller, more intimate faith communities at their satellite locations, either offering services of only 200 people or even smaller to a house church.

Another type of megachurch Stetzer noted includes churches using their platform for political action in new ways.

While Christian churches have long been perceived as monolithically right wing, more megachurches today are tackling issues not historically connected with those of the Religious Right.

Hispanic churches have risen to the frontlines of the immigration reform battle, black churches are voicing themselves on social action, and others are championing issues such as eradicating global poverty and creation care.

Ethnic diversity is also a noted megatrend as Hispanic and Asian congregations continue to increase in the United States. While the growth of the Hispanic population and churches is already evident, Stetzer predicts more Asian congregations will appear on the Outreach 100 list in the future.

More megachurches today are also returning to the foundational ethic of multiplication through discipleship. That’s a turn from the emphasis on personal self-help and church growth methods that have been seen in the megachurch phenomenon.

As experts have concluded, Stetzer sees no slowing or halt to the megachurch phenomenon as long as pastors continue to seek new ways to reach and transform their communities for Christ.

Top 10 Largest U.S. Churches

1. Lakewood Church, Houston Texas – Joel Osteen (47,000)

2. Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, Ill. – Bill Hybels (23,500)

3. Second Baptist Church, Houston – Ed Young Sr. (23,198)

4. Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, Calif. – Rick Warren (22,000)

5. LifeChurch.tv, Edmond, Okla. – Craig Groeschel (19,907)

6. Southeast Christian Church, Louisville, Ky. – Dave Stone (18,013)

7. North Point Church, Alpharetta, Ga. – Andy Stanley (17,700)

8. Thomas Road Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Va. – Jonathan Falwell (17.445)

9. Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – Bob Coy (17,000)

10. The Potter’s House, Dallas – T.D. Jakes (17,000)

Top 10 Fastest-Growing U.S. Churches

1. Iglesia Cristiana Segadores de Vida, Hollywood, Fla. – Ruddy and Maria Gracia (3,050, 109 percent growth)

2. Calvary Community Church, Phoenix, Ariz. – Mark Martin (2,344, 26 percent growth)

3. Elevation Church, Charlotte, N.C., Steven Furtick (1,965, 444 percent growth)

4. New Life Church, Conway, Ark. – Rick Bezet (2,000, 108 percent growth)

5. Valley Bible Fellowship, Bakersfield, Calif. – Ron Vietti (3,600, 52 percent growth)

6. Fellowship Church, Grapevine, Texas – Ed Young Jr. (3,000, 30 percent growth).

7. Thomas Road Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Va. – Jonathan Falwell (4,750, 37 percent growth)

8. The ROC (Richmond Outreach Center), Richmond, Va. – Geronimo Aguilar (2,100, 100 percent growth)

9. Redemption World Outreach Center, Greenville, S.C. – Ron and Hope Carpenter (2,000, 31 percent growth)

10. Champions Centre, Tacoma, Wash. – Kevin and Sheila Gerald (1,500, 30 percent growth)

More than 20,000 Protestant churches were contacted for the Outreach 100 lists, which includes churches that opted to participate in the study and data that each church provided. The lists are published in Outreach magazine’s annual Outreach 100 Special Issue.

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English Churches Expect Higher Worshiper Turnout this Christmas (Christian Post, 071217)

Church of England cathedrals are getting ready to welcome more than 140,000 people through their doors for this year’s run of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services.

Hopes are high for an excellent turnout, following a 7.5 percent rise in worshipers between 2005 and 2006. Last year, cathedrals were filled close to capacity as 130,000 worshipers – a 37 percent increase since 2000 – flocked to services during the 24-hour Christmas period.

The cathedrals of Canterbury, London, Norwich, St. Albans and York each expect more than 5,000 adults, children and young people to join them for worship on Christmas Eve or Day this year, and deans and chapters are holding extra services and putting out even more seats this year to ensure that they meet the high demand.

The Rev. Lynda Barley, Head of Research and Statistics for the Church of England, commented on the findings: “Rumors of the demise of Christmas as a Christian celebration are baseless. It won’t be the experience of the thousands upon thousands who will be attending Christmas services this week.

“There will be standing-room only at many cathedrals and churches, as the dormant desire to recapture a sense of the wonder of the Nativity, to share with others in singing and praying, and to glimpse something of the spiritual meaning of the Christmas story draws people from across communities towards churches across the country.”

The predictions for 2007 are based on figures released Monday by the Church of England from a survey of three cathedrals conducted over nine services last year by the Church of England in York Minster, Southwark Cathedral and Derby Cathedral.

The survey findings also suggest that Christians are using the cathedral services as a way of encouraging their friends to attend church, with more than a third of respondents saying they heard about the cathedral service from a friend. A quarter of those surveyed also said they had attended the service together with friends or neighbors.

The survey “demonstrates the magnetic draw of cathedrals at Christmas time for those who rarely attend church”, the Church of England said, after half of the Christmas worshipers admitted in the survey to attending church less than once every three months.

While one in four surveyed had been to a cathedral over the year to attend a service, more than half of the Christmas congregations said they had visited a cathedral for another reason, such as sightseeing or quiet reflection.

Today’s statistics “will be the star on top of the tree for cathedral deans and their congregations” which have enjoyed a run of success over the last seven years, the Church of England added.

Since the turn of the millennium, cathedral attendance throughout the year has risen by 17 percent – a rate of three percent each year.

Throughout 2006, the average weekly attendance in cathedrals included 24,800 adults and 6,800 children and young people. All services across the Church of England parishes attract about 1.2 million a week.

Figures earlier in the year showed that Easter Eve and Easter Sunday cathedral services also drew a higher turnout in 2006 of 52,400 – an increase of nine percent since 2000.

“The significant attraction of special occasions and major festivals is a welcome sign of the wider success of the year-round ministry of cathedrals,” said Barley. “Many people feel an innate connection with their local cathedral as a symbol of the spiritual life of their community.

“The anonymity that can be maintained when worshiping with hundreds of other people within these historic buildings can act as a further pull for some people in deciding how to mark this special season of the year.”

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