An article by Karl Vaters entitled “13 Reasons Not to Worry About the Future of the Church” offers insight into how Christians are dealing with the nosedive in attendance and affiliation they are experiencing in America. Vaters acknowledges this immediately:
The church is in trouble.
It must be. My blog feed keeps telling me it is.
For several years now, barely a day goes by without someone writing about the imminent demise of the body of Christ.
Everyone seems to have a different reason why they think the church is dying:
- The “nones” are growing faster than the church
- The “dones” are leaving faster than we’re replacing them
- People aren’t singing together any more
- Offerings are way down
- Regulars attend less often than they used to
The post-pandemic turndown seems to be permanent in many places
But despite all the gloom and doom, I have not lost one moment of sleep over the demise of the church.
That Vaters feels no stress reveals the basic disconnect between believers and non-believers on this matter, and that gap is, I’m afraid, permanent and unbridgeable.
It’s evident from the first of thirteen points he makes:
Point 1: The Church Belongs to Jesus, Not Us.
The explanation for this point is one sentence: “And Jesus knows what he’s doing.” God is in control, believers insist, and so even if it looks bleak, his steadfastness is cause for calm. But this, of course, assumes that Jesus/God exists and operates the way Christians believe he does. They are not open to the possibility that the reason people are leaving religion is because they’ve realized the truth: gods don’t exist. Instead, these people are somehow deceived or never were Christians to begin with. This seems a little obvious, perhaps even axiomatic, but the shortsightedness inherent in such a position (“We could be wrong!”) means they will be in constant denial about the reality of the problem, and as it worsens, some of Vaters’s more moderate positions might radicalize.
Point 2: The Picture Is Not As Bleak as We Think
His second point is an attempt to make things global:
While the European and North American church is dealing with significant issues, the church in many parts of the world is experiencing strong, steady growth. As reported at Lifeway.com, “There are fewer atheists around the world today (147 million) than in 1970 (165 million), and the Gordon-Conwell report expects the number to continue to decline into 2050.” Plus, “Not only is religion growing overall, but Christianity specifically is growing,” especially in the global south.
We could summarize this point as follows: Sure, in the West, where scientific literacy is steadily rising, religion is on the decline. But in the developing world, where scientific literacy lags, it’s growing.
If the growth of your religion is most pronounced where scientific literacy is most lacking, it doesn’t say much about the foundations of your religion.
Point 3: The Church Always Thrives Under Persecution
Christians have a persecution complex: they see it as inevitable because it’s throughout the New Testament. True Christians suffer for their faith. This is so engrained in the Christian psyche that I’m not surprised it appears this early and only surprised that it wasn’t the second point.
If persecution is coming to the American church (which is where almost all of this hand-wringing is coming from) it may reduce church attendance numbers and perceived cultural influence, but it won’t kill the church.
Prosperity is far more dangerous to the church than persecution has ever been. As the Puritan writer Cotton Mather put it in the early 1700s, “Religion brought forth prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother.”
This point seems more like pop psychology than measured reasoning. It also ignores the reality driving this decline. People aren’t leaving the church because they have cushy lives — not exclusively, anyway. They’re realizing they don’t need this in their lives anymore, and they have tools at their disposal (read: the internet) that put dissenting views and reasoning well within their grasp. They can begin by feeling church is just not for them anymore and fill that in later (as they so choose) with good critical analysis of Christian theology that makes them add, “Well, not only do I not need it but it also just doesn’t really make a lot of sense when I think about it.”
Point 4: Loss of Privilege Is Not the Same As Persecution
This point is actually refreshing.
The removal of the Ten Commandments monument from a courthouse is not persecution.
I’m not saying it’s good, but it’s not persecution.
There are Christians in places like Syria and Iran who know what real persecution feels like. When we claim persecution for what is a loss of privilege, we minimize the real persecution our brothers and sisters face all over the world today.
It does feel a little like Vaters can’t make up his mind, though: are Christians facing persecution or not? As church attendance continues to dwindle, he might shift his opinion on this a bit.
Point 5: The Church Is at Its Best When We Are Counter-Cultural
I get the feeling that this is an attempt to be a little edgy, but it is in fact quite ridiculous:
The church doesn’t hold the reins of power well. We’re better in a burr-in-the-saddle role than being the conquering hero on the stallion. Let’s leave that role to Jesus himself.
Christianity has dominated the Western world for most of the last 1,700 years. It’s had a near-total monopoly on the culture. Its myths fill our collective consciousness. For hundreds of years it had the power to compel compliance through various means (including torture). To suggest that at any time in modern history it’s only been a “burr-in-the-saddle” of society is absolutely ridiculous.
This is why Christians are panicking. They are losing that monopoly. They are losing their political and cultural power. And they are going crazy about it.
Point 6: The Church Is Bigger than Our Buildings and Our Denominations
Churches are being turned into residential units, bars, and even skateparks. What are we to make of that?
We are likely to lose many church buildings in the coming decades. This will be especially challenging for churches with full-time pastors and a mortgage. I also foresee massive stress points coming for most, if not all, denominations.
I sympathize with those who love their church’s historic building and their denomination, only to lose one or both. But I’m grateful that buildings and denominations are not needed for the church to survive and thrive.
In fact, we may need to lean on our buildings and denominations less in order to lean on Jesus more.
This point is just to serve as a balm to those handwringing traditionalists who are upset about the material decline in the church, nothing else.
Point 7: The Church Is People Who Love Jesus, God’s Word, and Each Other
If churches aren’t buildings, what are they?
This is one of the main reasons the church thrives under persecution. It forces us to turn to what really matters and can never be taken away – loving Jesus, following the Bible, and caring for each other.
Churches (particularly Protestant churches, especially those that align with the Evangelical movement) maintain their hold on people through the social cohesion they provide. Non-theistic churches are forming that attempt to fill this void, so this point is a non-starter from the beginning.
Point 8: The Church Has Faced Bigger Problems Than This (Whatever Your “This” May Be)
Besides, Vaters says, it’s not all that bad:
Whatever your real or perceived church crisis may be, it is not “the greatest calamity the church has ever faced.”
We tend to magnify the severity of small pains that are close to us, while diminishing the reality of much larger pains that are further removed from us.
The church has faced far bigger problems than what most of us are currently experiencing, but those problems are so far away from us that they feel insignificant. The church survived them all.
But it is that bad. Christians fail, intentionally or unconsciously, to realize exactly what the problem is.
The internet is killing the church. It is exposing young people to more and more arguments against theism in general and Christianity in particular. These ideas weren’t widely diseminated in times past. A thousand years ago, uttering such criticism would risk death. Now, it’s everywhere. And content creators are getting better and better at presenting the dark and illlogical sides of Christanity, and Christianity just keeps throwing the same apologetics mud at them. And here, the internet applies something new: reactions to those apologetics. Discections of those apologetics. Critical analysis of those apologetics. So not only does the internet provide the initial explanation of why Christianity makes no sense, it provides answers to Christians’ attempts to explain away those faultlines and fractures, and it shows apologetics to be hollow, shallow, and repetative.
Point 9: My Corner of the Church Is Not the Church
I’m not sure why Vaters put this one in here:
My segment of the body of Christ may be tied to a particular worship style, theological stance, historical background, denominational identity, or any of a wide variety of other distinctives. But the way I worship is not the church. It’s just my little corner of it. If the way I like to worship becomes less popular, that has nothing to do with the strength of the church as a whole.
In fact – brace yourselves – even if the church in America collapses, as tragic as that would be, it would not mean the end of the church.
Jesus has sheep that are not of this fold.
It’s really a tweak of point 6.
Point 10: Maybe the Parts that Can’t Survive Shouldn’t
This point seems like it’s going in a direction of critical self-examination.
I know that sounds harsh, and it may even be triggering for many small-church pastors who have heard something similar because of their lack of numerical gowth. But the small church is not the issue.
This is not a point about size, but of type.
Anything Jesus does will not just survive, but thrive. Eternally. So I have to wonder, if my favorite form of church is dying, maybe it’s because Jesus isn’t building it?
Everything but the church itself (as defined in point #7, above) has an expiration date. No denomination, worship style, or tradition is forever. Sometimes a congregation, tradition, or denomination dies because it has finished serving its purpose.
This point is not meant to trivialize the very real pain of a local church going through serious hardships. I stand with you. Like John said to the suffering saints in Philadelphia (Rev 3:7-13), “I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” You have my heart, my prayers, and any help I can offer.
Instead, though, Vaters is simply using an old apologetics technique applied to those those who leave the faith to explain why some churches are failing: they weren’t really Christian.
Point 11: The Church Is the Most Relentlessly Growing Organism In History
This, too, is a short point — two sentences.
For almost 2,000 years of great triumphs and horrifying persecution, the church keeps going.
When Jesus builds something it tends to stand. And stand strong.
The fact that it’s been dominate in the political and cultural machinary of Europe and America for centuries has nothing to do with its longevity. It’s all Jesus’s work.
Remember when we used to worshop Zeus? Neither do I. Worshiping Jesus will eventually seem as antiquated.
Point 12: Worry Doesn’t Work
Another one-sentence explanation: “In fact, worry makes it worse.” This smacks of desparation, but I could be reading more into it than is really there.
Point 13: Jesus Told Us Not to Worry About Anything
The bottom line:
You can toss the previous 12 points. This is all I need to know.
To wildly (but hopefully not inappropriately) paraphrase Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5:25-33:
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your church building, where you will worship or fellowship; or about your denomination, what decisions it will make. Is not the church more important than buildings, and the faith more important than denominational creeds? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his church’s life or a dollar to its offering basket? But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Whatever is of worry is not of faith.
And we need all the faith we can get.
Vaters is doing his best to cope with the coming reality, but he’s still in denial, so he will never accept it when it comes.
