Sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler reported in their 2005 Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion that “over the past 30 to 40 years, denominations had increasingly reported a decline in their numbers“.
In the past 9 months there’s been a lot of talk about the accelerated decline of church attendance.
A large part of this in these days is due to the Covid-19 pandemic that has affected churches worldwide. We are living in a world of uncertainty and with the threat of further lockdowns being imposed on us at the drop of a hat if community transmission of the virus is picked up, some churches are actually growing.
Now this may all sound paradoxical – How is the church growing, or going to grow when it looks like it is in decline? Another way to look at it – Is God at work pruning the vine? Is God calling us to disturb the present so that we can have a more effective future?
The thing is hope is not lost, Jesus has already advised us that “He will build His church and the church will reign triumphant” refer to Matthew 16:18 (The Voice).
Carey Nieuwhof has identified 7 Things That Will Drive Future Church Growth:
- Personal Invitation
- Refusing to Settle for the Mediocre
- An Open Door Online and a Great In-House Experience
- Genuine Relationship
- Deep Engagement
- Clarity
- Risk and Experimentation
In another post he identifies that “most Christians who are not returning to church are not leaving Christianity. They’re not even leaving your church. They’re just not coming back to the building, and perhaps they won’t even after there’s a vaccine and the pandemic is a distant memory.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has been an accelerator and now that the effects of the pandemic have stretched on for a number of months, with no real resolution in sight as far as a vaccine – regular attenders will more than likely become less regular and irregular attenders may well become even less frequent attenders.
The reality is this is just a sign of a shifting culture and it will necessitate a paradigm shift for the church as it grapples with its methodology. (I touched on this a couple of months ago when posting two articles about Reimagining the Methodology – Part 1 and Part 2).
Another person I have been following online of late is Doug Paul, who has spent more than 6 months working with a cultural anthropologist to put together something that he thinks will not only be interesting, but wonderfully useful as we enter into the third decade of the millennium. (And only proved more true by the COVID-19 pandemic.)
He has written a free ebook: 10 Church Predictions for the Next 10 Years that may shed some light on what the future could hold for us as we navigate the impending days ahead.
You can also read the article 6 Predictions that Didn’t Make the Cut.
The life and times of Perry... 