Posted on 09/19/2012 5:57:03 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
....Although increases in Evangelical churches, Latter-day Saints, and nondenominational and Catholic congregations overcome losses nationally, the new churches that have sprung up in Clark County have not seen the membership boosts to counter the almost 18,000 members lost from mainline protestant churches in the area between 1980 and 2010. National surveys show a 34 percent increase in the overall number of church members in that period, but Clark County experienced a 30 percent reduction in membership. Over that time, the county saw an 8 percent drop in population....
....“Each year it seems like less and less people become interested in attending church,” Noel said. “I see more churches having to share space to stay open, I’ve seen more churches having to go to a less traditional time frame for worship and I see more pastors having to go to work over the next 10 years.”
Maybe those churches should preach the Gospel and stop worrying about how society views them. Just a suggestion.
What state is this?
The article doesn’t say if this if due to a general loss of church membership or maybe demographic changes in a city.
There is a cure to this ....
Preach the Gospel ...
the real one ...
not the social one many of these churches have been preaching
They are like the MSM taking their liberalism to the grave.
“There is a cure to this ....
Preach the Gospel ...
the real one ...
not the social one many of these churches have been preaching”
This works. I moved from Presbyterian to a very conservative SBC church because of the social Gospel cant from the pulpit. It was a good move but I have found that the SBC is out and about in the community doing things for people every day, much more so than in my old church. The difference is that we do it to bring more people to Jesus rather than believing that Salvation is through social action (the heart and soul of the Social Gospel movement).
It works.
As a manager of a venerable AM radio station once told me, “we lose ten listeners a day through the obituary column”.
The same is true of my Catholic parish. As older members die off they are not being replaced by the young, who are either becoming completely secular due to a poor upbringing and liberalism taught in the schools, or they are gravitating towards Evangelical churches which appeal to their spiritual needs more effectively.
Rewriting the language of our Mass in outdated language from the Middle Ages sure did not help in this regard.
Each Sunday we met in the local high school gym and set up chairs in front of the bleachers. We placed our fake silk plants out and positioned the podium. Our pastor was young and enthusiastic and we filled all the chairs and much of the bleachers on that one side.
The best I can explain it was it felt like how I imagine an old tent revival would sound. We sang loud, spoke loud, and worshiped with jubilance! (Rev. Sammy Rodriguez's GOP benediction reminded me of those sermons!) And of course, we collected week after week and eventually we had enough money to build a dedicated building.
It was very exciting! But in the end, what we had built was a very beautiful but very serious space. It was no longer appropriate for the younger kids to run around the floor before service started. Jeans and Ts were suddenly not dressy enough. Voices sang less loudly. And I think we underestimated how important the social event of arriving early to set up chairs and drink coffee together was really part of our... I don't know... We felt like a big family.
Just 3 short years after building a church our amazing pastor got moved to a different state. Our new pastor is a good guy but he is also very serious. Mostly I just attend when my Mom feels like singing some hymns! Anyway, I guess all I am saying is that you don't need a impressive building to have an amazing church.
Maybe those churches should preach the Gospel and stop worrying about how society views them. Just a suggestion.””
Precisely. There are many false prophets preaching the new religion of false christianity which embraces many of the ancient beliefs of the deviant crowd. What we really need are more queers getting married in churches. sarc
Liberal theology, notably modernism and neo-orthodoxy, took over the mainline denominations in the early 20th Century. The early 21st Century will see their effective demise.
The more important issue is the survival of the evangelical church in an increasingly secular and anti-religious nation. The effects of neo-evangelicalism and sundry other efforts to water down the Gospel may have the long term effect on the evangelicals that liberalism had on the mainline churches. Evangelical and fundamentalist churches have done a poor job in retention of the young. All the efforts of Sunday schools, youth groups, and college ministries have yielded scant fruit. If the Millennials do not return to evangelical churches as did the Baby Boomers and to a lesser extent, Generation X, did after they married and started families, Baptist churches, both Southern and independent, conservative Presbyterian congregations, independent Bible churches, Assemblies of God, etc., may well be in rapid shrinkage mode in 20-30 years. Today the Gothic mainline church facilities in the central cities are distressed real estate; tomorrow it may be the megachurch structures in the suburbs.
Ohio. The problem these “mainstream” churches have is their liberalism and deviance from Christianity. Liberal churches always claim that they are “reaching out” and “broadening their base” but that never really happens.
About 45 years ago I took a nice tour of parts of Europe, mostly Spain. The Cathedrals are beautiful, old, dusty but beautiful. In talking to the priests at various cathedrals I asked when they use these beautiful old buildings. People come on Easter and Christmas and for funerals. Most sundays there will be a few old people taking communion and that is all. We are now nearly at the same place in this country. I used to think that in America it would never happen.
What has caused this evil to befall our country? The Nanny state. Nobody depends on churches for a safety net, every one has an entitled minimum standard of living. nobody belives is Heaven or Hell anymore.
Schools teach that there is no god. That religion is a fairy tale for silly people. When teachers say it kids believe it. I well remember when my oldest child came home from her first grade in school and told me I was wrong about something I said. I assured her that I was right but she told me that her teacher told her I was wrong and that her teacher was a “teacher” and knew more than me.
Teachers unions and teachers, newspaper, TV reporters and Democrat politicians have hurt this country more than most of the other stuff combined.
When our nation ceases to be a “Christian” nation then we can say good-bye to the protection of the Almighty God. We will fall, it won’t be pretty. It’s been a good 225 years.
Like most rust belt cities, it is a combination of demographics and the young fleeing ice and snow for a job.
There is no doubt that the public education system and entertainment has changed our children's culture away from their parents culture.
The same story is repeated in nearly every city across the North.
Of course, the article did not mention many growing nondenominational churches in Ohio.
New churches are founded by passionate and strong-willed starters who seek what is lately called "muscular Christianity", but they grow because of the joiners who are attracted by an energy which they do not, themselves, possess. Eventually, joiners greatly outnumber starters and the church comes to be governed by a new force, the only power the joiners do have -- socializing.
When the blue-haired biddies take over, the church is doomed. They leverage their standing in their own little social networks into positions in church business in a pattern not unlike Stalin's lateral transition from a party leader to government office. They use their sanctioned influence to drive off competing interests and eventually become the principle monetary contributors, though their tithing will never match the expenses the church will incur in pursuit of their whimsical interests. When the old ladies are all that's left of the congregation, the church will not outlive them, and will usually dissolve while the last dozen or so are creepily pivoting around in the pews like a clutch of nosferatu looking for fresh blood to just walk in.
As such, we also reach out to the poor but follow the path of the One who taught us, help the poor by giving them the Bread of Life, then teaching them how to help themselves, ,not teaching them to lean on us for other than love and prayer.
Churches stopped evangelizing while doing service and extending the healing love of Jesus. They don't even help their own members going through hard moments. The churches that did not focus on condoning sin to kill themselves were busy with prosperity worship- enriching themselves with alms. Fancy Real estate and wealthy preachers was bigger than using alms for Christian service.
I am thinking there will be a revival as the dead churches fall.
Churches can not use alms to promote the opposite of Bible teachings and culture and they can't use alms to enrich themselves. These anti-Christ belief systems and actions will remove the Holy Spirit.
**Oakland Presbyterian will join at least 28 other mainline protestant churches that have been disbanded or consolidated in Clark County since 1980, according to data from the Association of Religious Data Archives.**
Ppresbyterian?
At the time (around 1967) you visited Spain, that country was still governed by Francisco Franco, an authoritarian ruler who had crushed the Communists and other leftists in a civil war 30 years earlier. His opponents were largely killed, imprisoned, or fled the country in the civil war's aftermath. The Catholic religion was taught as part of public education, and the Left, both Marxist and social democrat, was still somewhat underground there, unlike the case north of the Pyrennes. Nonetheless, it appears that even then, the Spanish people had largely abandoned their historic Catholicism in spite of government support of that faith and restrictions on the Left's ability to propagandize.
To maintain the Christian faith in a society, you not only need to counter the anti-Christian elements, whether secularist, Marxist, Muslim, et. al., but you also have to effectively convey your teachings to passing generations. Evangelical and fundamentalist churches have been ineffective in this area, as have mainline Protestant churches.
demographics.
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