Therefore:
Lutheran (EL C S*A) Ping!
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Be rooted in Christ!
Posted on 07/16/2012 5:43:07 PM PDT by RightGeek
New numbers reveal that the collapse of the Episcopal Church dramatically accelerated in the last ten years. The denomination is literally falling apart, with attendance down 25% between 2000 and 2010.
For a link to the PDF file with the numbers, and for Rod Dreher’s comments on them, look here; but it’s important to note that the effect of these numbers on the life and the well being of local churches is even greater than the raw figures might suggest.
Many mainline Protestant congregations today are stuck with an infrastructure built in the 1950s and 1960s. There are buildings to maintain and salaries to pay. As congregations have dwindled and aged, it gets harder and harder to keep the place running. The congregation has less money for program, for outreach, for anything but survival, and the energy of the congregation turns inward. There is less going on that can attract new members, and each year more maintenance is deferred, more corners are cut, and the congregation gets a little smaller and a little greyer.
Ten years ago, roughly half of Episcopal parishes faced this kind of situation. Ten years of declining attendance on this scale means that many more parishes are now in survival mode. As the church’s resources decline, more and more of the energy and the funds of its members go to staving off collapse. Less and less is available for the wider world.
The numerical decline, bad as it is, matters less than the collapse in the moral authority of the church. The Episcopal Church has made many controversial pronouncements on social issues; at the latest General Convention the church declared that transgendered persons cannot automatically be barred from the priesthood. One can agree or disagree with some of these individual decisions, but what is striking over time is the decline in the moral weight of the church.
It used to matter what the Episcopal Church thought of this or that social issue. Other mainline Protestant churches and many social and political leaders followed its theological and political debates. Now, basically, no one outside the dwindling flock in the pews really cares what The Episcopal Church says about anything at all. General Convention can pass a million resolutions, and nothing anywhere will change. No one is even really angry anymore at anything the Episcopal hierarchy does; at most, there is a sigh and a quiet rolling of the eyes. Soon, there will not even be that.
It’s an extraordinary decline in an institution that a generation ago was still one of the pillars of American life. At this point the disaster appears irretrievable; those running the church are determined to run it into the ground and it is hard to see how that can change.
For Anglicans, the theological and demographic collapse of their church is a bitter blow. The traditions of this church exert a powerful hold on those who were raised in it; those declining attendance figures bespeak a lot of sadness and despair. But The Episcopal Church has moved on, headed down what looks increasingly like the theological path of least resistance as it makes the transition from a church that once spoke to a nation to a sect in communion only with itself.
Let us wish The Episcopal Church well on its journey towards whatever hope its bureaucrats and functionaries see glimmering ahead of them in the deepening twilight. God moves in mysterious ways, and the failure of a church is not the failure of a faith. Christianity is all about hope in the face of death; America’s Anglicans are learning a lot about what that means. For this, perhaps, we need to learn to be thankful.
When the cancer of apostasy eats into the leadership of a church, it inevitably dies. God Word will prevail against the gates of hell.
Therefore:
Lutheran (EL C S*A) Ping!
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Be rooted in Christ!
And they feel good about it, just like government pleasing and catering to the few as they sh!t on the majority in doing so.
They REPLACED biblical teaching with the latest socialist and PC crap. Even back then.
I heard pro-gay sermons, I heard anti-gun sermons, I heard sermons that equated people with AIDS to saints, I heard we need to raise taxes sermons, I heard that the miracles in the Bible were probably not miracles, etc.
Nothing was BASED on the Bible. I would go home frustrated and mad. Soon, i started giving less and less on the offering plate.
Then I left and eventually so did most of the congregation.
The Episcopal Church in my town does have the prettiest stone church - right by a lake. I think that is ALL it has now.
BTW - I joined a Bible based Baptist church. It grows and grows every year. They have had to move/build three times in the last 10 years - to a BIGGER church.
Believe in nothing and at the same time believe in everything, and this is what you get.
Touchstone magazine has had some excellent articles over the years on the Anglican/Episcopalian church. The only true synod left today is the African convention, as the American and British have now left the tenets of the faith behind in order to be politically correct. Many of the moral leaders still left in America have now sought reconciliation with the catholic church.
In our affluent suburban community all the politically correct mainline Protestant churches are dying.
The Roman Catholic church, the Baptists, the independents and our church, the church of the Nazarene - you know, the ones that still take the Bible seriously - are all doing just fine, thank you very much.
Young people are hungry for truth and morality, and they are flocking to these churches in droves. The crumbling infrastructure of the mainline churches is not their real estate, but their theology.
there is an Episcopal Church in a town less than an hour from where I live that has doubled in size in the past ten years. Of course, the rector is a conservative traditionalist. The congregation has a good mixture but predominately is conservative. It seems they leave their personal differences outside the church door when they enter and kneel before the altar. However most other churches have lost membership.
I belong to an Episcopal Church in CT. It’s just the opposite. They sermons are invariably based on the day’s readings. No politics has ever been mentioned by any of the four rotating ministers. I feel pretty good going there. The church is mostly made up of Catholics who go there to get away from the Catholic Church’s weekly begging for money and animosity towards its own parishioners.
I would appreciate if someone could tell me, aren’t there “two” Episcopal churches in the U.S.? ELCA... and another, more conservative version? Also, how does the American Episcopal church (one, or both versions) fit with the Church of England?
Thank you.
They might consider:” On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.”IMHO
there is an Episcopal Church in a town less than an hour from where I live that has doubled in size in the past ten years. Of course, the rector is a conservative traditionalist. The congregation has a good mixture but predominately is conservative. It seems they leave their personal differences outside the church door when they enter and kneel before the altar. However most other churches have lost membership.
Many are finding the true light in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA)
The ACNA—see my post # 15 for link.
And eventually paganism. Oh wait, that is already occurring.
Lots of prayer over this decision. The Holy Spirit impressed upon me to take my family and flee. We did.
In the last days at this parish, I wrote the bishop a letter expressing my disappointment in his leadership of the diocese. Bishop Wimberly time and again promised the diocese of Texas would remain conservative. He misled the folks.
My last words to Wimberly was that the Episcopal church was decaying from within. He wrote back categorically denying this was the case.
A decade later, The Episcopal diocese of Texas voted to condone homosexual relationships within the church.
I am a member of the Anglican Church in America. There is a growing conservative Anglican movement within the United States.
I know exactly what you mean. Liberal church services are like going to a DNC convention (diversity racist anti-white screeds, and all) speech. Sick and sad.
These ‘churches’ only survived in communist nations because the State had the power to dictate and enforce the communist party line. As the liberal church progress here, they are becoming communism’s atheist/humanist party meetings.
ELCA is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the largest US Lutheran church, generally very liberal.
The Episcopal Church is the US branch of the Church of England, both very liberal with a small minority of conservative holdouts.
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