Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Church Attendance and Evangelism
Justin Taylor reprints an '05 post looking through and behind church attendance statistics. It is not a pretty picture. The essential contention is that taken as a whole, church attendance is down dramatically, and continuing in that direction.
Taking the statistical picture as a whole what this says is that any church claiming "success" is doing so at the expense of some other church and NOT through true evangelical outreach.
In the 1950's Jim Rayburn found a parallel picture. Churches simply were not reaching young people and he found it impossible to get them to do what they needed to do to actually reach young people. And so Young Life was born. The para-church stepped in to do what the church was not.
The parallel should be obvious, the church is not doing real evangelism, it appears to be up to the para-church. Actually I think it has been that way for a long time. The churches that are "growing" are doing so in many respects because of their resemblance to para-church ministry.
But Christianity is so much more than just outreach. I cannot help but think it is time to quit doing outreach and start doing development. Maybe we need to grow disciples and not attendance. Not just hire staff and say we are doing it, but really doing it.
Maybe, just maybe we need to risk. Instead of keeping the pews packed and the plates full, by whatever means necessary, we need to do what we are clearly called to do, and let the chips fall where they may -- which is just another way of saying, "rely on God for our next meal."
Related Tags: attendance, statistics, church, evangelism, development, growth
Taking the statistical picture as a whole what this says is that any church claiming "success" is doing so at the expense of some other church and NOT through true evangelical outreach.
In the 1950's Jim Rayburn found a parallel picture. Churches simply were not reaching young people and he found it impossible to get them to do what they needed to do to actually reach young people. And so Young Life was born. The para-church stepped in to do what the church was not.
The parallel should be obvious, the church is not doing real evangelism, it appears to be up to the para-church. Actually I think it has been that way for a long time. The churches that are "growing" are doing so in many respects because of their resemblance to para-church ministry.
But Christianity is so much more than just outreach. I cannot help but think it is time to quit doing outreach and start doing development. Maybe we need to grow disciples and not attendance. Not just hire staff and say we are doing it, but really doing it.
Maybe, just maybe we need to risk. Instead of keeping the pews packed and the plates full, by whatever means necessary, we need to do what we are clearly called to do, and let the chips fall where they may -- which is just another way of saying, "rely on God for our next meal."
Related Tags: attendance, statistics, church, evangelism, development, growth
