All is not well

Some points from The Present Future

• The collapse of the church of the church culture can be demonstrated in several ways. One is through demographics. The percentage of Americans who claim to go to church each week has hung in the 40 to 43 percent range for thirty years. But I ask you, do you really believe those numbers? I recently asked a group of pastors in a conference setting whether any of them living a community where 40 percent of the population shows up at church on Sunday. Only one raised his hand. A study conducted in the late 1990s suggested Americcans might be lying about their churchgoing habits to pollsters... A friend of mine in a Southern Bible Belt town called every church in his town after Easter in 2001 and reported only about 25 percent of the town attended church--on Easter.
• The further down you go in the generational food chain, the lower the percentage each succeeding generation reports going to church. The drop is from 52 percent of builders and seniors to only 36 percent of gen Xers. What does this spell for the church in the future? Armed with this information, of course, churches are launching an all out effort to reach gen Xers. I wish! Most churches have actually written them off, waiting for them to grow up and learn to like what the church has to offer.
• ...Dwanson McAllister, national youth ministry specialist, says that 90 percent of kids active in high school youth groups do no go to church by the time they are sophomores in college. One-third of these will never return. This rate of disconnection indicates a dilemma far more serious than mere youthful rebellion.
• A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost faith. They are leaving the church to preserve their faith.... David Barrett author of the World Christian Encyclopedia, estimates that there are about 112 million "churchless Christians" worldwide, about 5 percent of all adherent, but he projects that number will double in the next twenty years.
  

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