Major Decline in Church Attendance

FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS -WORLDWIDE REVIVAL!
BAD NEWS: US CHURCH ATTENDANCE IS IN MAJOR DECLINE!
CURIOUS NEWS: SPIRITUALITY IS INCREASING!
THE AGE OF CHURCH-IANITY IS OVER!
SOMETHING NEW IS DAWNING!

<>FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS -WORLDWIDE REVIVAL
God says, "Look at the nations and watch--and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." --Habakkuk 1:5

AMAZING GROWTH: It took 18 centuries for dedicated believers to grow from 0 percent of the world's population to 2.5 percent in 1990, only 70 years years to grow from 2.5 to 5 percent in 1970, and in just the last 30 years to grow from 5 to 11.2 percent of the world's population. Now for the first time in history, there is one believer for every nine people worldwide who aren't believers. (Down load Adobe Acrobat pdf pie chart, download Adobe Acrobat pdf line chart)

Dr. Ralph Winter of the US Center for World Mission reports, "God's promise to bless all the 'families of the earth,' first given to Abraham 4,000 years ago, is becoming a reality at a pace 'you would not believe.' Although some may dispute some of the details, the overall trend is indisputable. Biblical faith is growing and spreading to the ends of the earth as never before in history.

"One of every ten people on the planet is of the Bible- reading, Bible-believing stream of Christianity. The number of believers in what used to be "mission fields" now surpasses the number of believers in the countries from which missionaries were originally sent. In fact, more missionaries are now sent from non- Western churches than from the traditional mission- sending bases in the West. The Protestant growth rate in Latin America is well over three times the biological growth rate. Protestants in China grew from about one million to over 80 million believers in less than 50 years, with most of that growth occurring in just the last few decades. In the 1980s, Nepal was still a staunch Hindu kingdom with only a small persecuted church. Today there are hundreds of thousands of believers and churches have been started within each of the more than 100 distinct people groups."

(DOWN LOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE
In Microsoft Word format from the US Center for World Mission)

AND YET -In the midst of this unprecedented world wide growth America's church attendance is in major decline.
Read on...

BAD NEWS: CHURCH ATTENDANCE IS IN DECLINE

Americans almost all say religion matters, yet more people than ever are opting out. Not just out of the pews. Out from under a theological roof altogether.

In 2001, more than 29.4 million Americans said they had no religion - more than double the number in 1990, and more than Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians all added up - according to the American Religious Identification Survey 2001 (ARIS).

People with no religion now account for 14% of the nation, up from 8% in 1990 when The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, authors of the ARIS, conducted its first survey of religion in 1990.

Today the range stretches from 3% with no religion in North Dakota to 25% in Washington State. For them, Sundays are just another Saturday.

(DOWNLOAD THE FULL 46 PAGE ARIS REPORT HERE
The City University of New York's American Religious Survey -Adobe Acrobat pdf format)

Os Guinness at the Lausanne II in Manila stated, "Secularists, or people with no religious commitment, now form the second largest bloc in the world, second only to Christianity and catching up fast..."

AND YET -In the midst of falling Church attendance we are experiencing the increasing interest in spirituality.
Read on...

CURIOUS NEWS: SPIRITUALITY IS GROWING!

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll in January 2002 shows a shift away from religious identity: 50% of Americans call themselves religious, down from 54% in December 1999. But an additional 33% call themselves "spiritual but not religious," up from 30%, and about one in 10 say they are neither.

The majority of Americans, 81% according to ARIS, still do claim a religion. They represent a counterargument to the theory that the more developed a country - in education, occupations, science and technology - the more its people move away from religion, says Ronald Inglehart, who heads the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan in a USA Today interview.

According to the World Values Survey (http://wvs.isr.umich.edu/index.html), conducted by sociologists in 65 nations since 1981, "We see (a religious attitude) when we ask how often people spend time thinking about the meaning and purpose of life. We see it in people's attitudes toward the environment and in the growth of a worldview that sees all life as sacred and invests nature with dignity and sacred quality," Inglehart says.

< style="font-family: verdana;">"Contrary to the well-known secularization theory that God is dead and will soon drop off the consciousness map, the USA is a holdout. Spirituality is actually growing in the USA."

I am interested in your views:
WHY IS SPIRITUALITY INCREASING?
WHAT IS GOING ON? -With growing interest in spirituality isn't it curious that the church is in decline?

Read on....

THE AGE OF CHURCH-IANITY IS OVER.
SOMETHING NEW IS DAWNING!

Could it be that God is doing something new?

Is God moving beyond the Church?

Is Church-ianity coming to an end in Western culture? Actually, we already are living in a post-Christian culture.

There are two post-modern prophets that foresaw this coming. They saw the end of Church-ianity as a good thing. They are Søren Kierkegaard and Dietrick Bonhoeffer.

Søren Kierkegaard wrote "Attack On Christendom" in which he celebrated Christendom's decline! He longed for the day when Christians would simply be "followers of Jesus." He felt that "being Christian" merely because one was born in a so-called Christian nation and was even baptized by the church was not good enough. In fact, he saw this as the end of Christianity. "When everybody is a Christian, nobody is a Christian." Such people are only "playing Christianity." Kierkegaard was no lover of Church-ianity. He was, however, a lover of Jesus. He believed that in order to be a follower of Jesus, one needs to take a leap of faith. (His idea of the Leap of Faith was picked up by two recent films: Vanilla Sky and Kate and Leopold)

Dietrick Bonhoeffer, was a true prophet of our day. Like most prophets he was killed for his faith. It was Adolph Hitler and his murderous Nazis who assassinated Bonhoeffer by hanging. Bonhoeffer saw the futility of the modern era and how irrelevant the modern church was. Bonhoeffer welcomed secularization because it was "a clearing of the decks for the God of the Bible." He prophesied of a time when a viable form of Christianity would emerge. "A religionless Christianity." Can you imagine that? A Christianity free of religion. Wow! He saw a time when lovers of Jesus would speak without "religious jargon" and would effectively speak "in a secular fashion about God." Click here to watch a RealVideo of Bonhoeffer talking about his prophetic vision.