According to a recent survey, the percentage of Christians is continuing to decline even as the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation climbs. So even as the number of imimigrants from Central and Latin America who are predominately R.C. increases, professing Christians are still declinging. "Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey."
What should this be telling us as the Church in U.S.?
1 comment:
This should be telling us two things (I believe)
1. Our churches are not effective at "evangelism," largely because many do not practice evangelism. The vast majority of evangelicals and especially mainline Protestants and Catholics that I know really don't care all that much about unsaved folks. Where there is no evangelism there is of course very little conversion growth.
2. Our churches are not effective at "discipleship." An entire generation of Gen Xers and Gen Y have been raised by Boomers and Busters and those two generations have (largely) walked away from the church. Ineffective discipleship. Clearly it was not conveyed what it truly means to be a sold out follower of Jesus. Furthermore, current "discipleship" efforts in churches often boil down to information, not transformation. Of course there's no compelling reason to remain in the church!
Thoughts?
REV
Post a Comment