The end of the world as we know it [View all]

[SecularMotion]

Has anybody out there noticed that church attendance has been lower lately? The church budget is stretched thin because fewer people are giving? You can’t get a commitment out of people who are so busy they are already making summer plans -- for next summer? Welcome to the reality of church decline.

There has been quite a bit in the media lately about the trending decline of the institutional church and ongoing conversation about what strategy might ensure its sustainability. Countless observers of American religious life have noted that the church, all versions, is struggling. What they mean by decline is that fewer people are attending church, churches and denominational entities are getting organizationally smaller and there’s less money to go around.

This decline is not a suggestion or a guess but a fact. Even with the occasional mega church on the corner or some communities where these symptoms of decline don’t seem to be readily evident, they are there, just beneath the surface, or they are coming soon.

As a result, some church professionals are feeling a growing panic. What do we do with a church that looks different than it did, say, 50 years ago? It looks smaller and less popular. It has less influence on society as a whole. It seems to have lost its place at the center of most peoples’ lives. And we don’t know what to do.

http://www.abpnews.com/opinion/item/7648-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it#.UBLLMchWlAo