Signs of hope in the midst of Church decline
The good news is not that we can avoid this death. The good news is that this death will not be final.
The Church is in a catastrophe. I could quote the statistics, but if you’re paying attention, you don’t need them. You know that church attendance is in a historic downturn unlike any other time in Western history, that our sacred spaces are being converted into luxury condos, and that our denominations (seemingly across the board) are rending themselves into ever smaller and more isolated factions.
This is the big one, folks, the turning of the tide and the end of an age. We aren’t going to recover from this decline. We will continue to lose our influence and institutions, our buildings and our denominations, until God’s pruning of the Church is complete.
If it feels like an especially difficult time to be Christian, it might be helpful to know that it is. The decline we are facing isn’t just because of church hurt or ecclesial missteps. We are living in a moment of cataclysmic change, in which the internet, secularism, individualism, social media and a dozen other factors have combined to create a catastrophe unlike any we’ve seen in Western civilization . . . and the Church just was not ready for it. Churches can hardly get our potlucks scheduled; you think we were capable of taking on tech billionaires and algorithmic overlords? When the enemy came we were busy fighting one another, and as a result we have been weakened to the point of death.
The good news is not that we can avoid this death. The good news is that this death will not be final.
Jesus says every branch that does not produce life will be cut off and thrown into the fire, and so it has been for the church in North America. Our branches have been sick with all sorts of disease – some too heavy to be supported by weak root systems, others which have simply run their course and no longer produce fruit. Whatever the reasons for this divine pruning, we don’t need to despair. It is necessary and it will be temporary.
What grows next will have deeper roots, stronger branches and will produce more fruit than we can possibly imagine. I don’t know if the Church as she’s existed will be alive in 50 years, but I know there will be a Church in a hundred years, and if we saw what she looked like we’d be very excited and more than a little jealous.
We are in a catastrophe, but by the grace of God it will be a eucatastrophe.
