Wow! Amen!

Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, page 123.

Our economic recession began in a recession of the soul. If our hearts were filled with the Holy Spirit, we would be so freed from financial foolishness that we would not have established lifestyles, personally and nationally, that we now know are practically unsustainable, politically divisive, economically backward and perhaps even militarily risky.

The most relevant message to our nation today, and to ourselves, is personal repentance, confession of sin, newness of life and hope in the gracious promises of God in Christ.

Patrick,

“is there data on the characteristics of joiners during recession times at all though?”

We do have data on how people have changed their religious belief which was asked during the 2001 ARIS survey. (Incidentally also taken during an economically depressed time.) You can see the data here. Pages 24 or 25 are the significant ones for this question. The question was asked if people used to have a different religious belief.

Only 1.1 million (roughly .5 of one percent) said that they had ever switched from No-Religion to something else. So any other growth that denominations would have had would have been from other churches, or nominal Christians returning to their church roots. They study in the current post shows that their has been a huge shift from mainline churches to Evangelical churches. There has also been a huge shift to no-religion, probably at the expense of mainline and catholic churches. (People are leaving evangelical churches too, but the inflows have been greater than the outflows to this point in time.)

By comparing data between the 1990 and 2001 ARIS and then look at the transfer numbers, we can see that all the Catholic growth can be attributed to immigration.

So to answer your question, I think it does primarily involve people coming back to church, but not necessarily the church of their youth.

I hope this helps, trying to grasp who is moving where can be really hard to peg down numerically without reanalyzing the raw data.

We are agreeing on this! This is unusual for us.

Mike

On church growth, while Jesus often said his people were the few among many, he also said they would grow many times over. The mentallity that the church will always be the few so if no one listens that means were on the right page is misleading. It may be that you preach a bad version of the Gospel. I would also say the culture is a neutral medium. the first christian went into the world with only the culture around them. They had to be Jews to Jews, Greeks to Greeks, and Romans to Romans. To say the first step in coming to the Gospel is change your speach, change your music, and change your clothes, is a bad approach.

The church should always do the defining of itself.

We have a culture that hates the church and we let it into the door to redefine who we are.

Big screens and rock bands play into our emotions.

Our emotions may be fine but they should not be the driving force behind our worship or our faith.

The Word that comes to us from outside of ourselves is what we need, not necessarily what we like or what we want.

The beat can overwhelm the message quite easily.

Usually in places where the church has given in to our comfort level, there follows a giving in to the erosion of core doctrines of the church.

For example, in most of these places, the altar is quickly removed and the replaced by a stage with band instruments. And the vestments of the pastor are replaced by hip shirts, or Hawaiin shirts (here in San Clemente). So now, the church looks just like the culture.

The Word is watered down into a neat set of propositions and the sacraments are devalued into pure symbolism, dependent upon your sincerity or emotions.

I don’t know about up there, but down here you can’t find the Living Word of God at the mall, or the movie theater or at the sports complex.

Most of these culturally relevant churches end up with a bunch of modern day Pharisees who actually believe they are living up to God’s expectations, or they turn into pious phonies who are just playing along because they want to fit in.

I am painting with a broad brush here, but I have seen this phenomenon in every one of these culturally relevant churches that I have been to in my area.

“The culture is always wrong when it comes to the things of God.”

I think I disagree with you here. Missionaries took a long time to realize that they needed to distinguish between what was cultural and biblical, cultural and non-biblical, and what was cultural and about which scripture was silent.

I don’t have a problem with “big screens” and “rock bands”. Both my 14 year old son and I are what you would call “visual learners”, and having power point to follow along with the sermon helps both of us to stay focused. While I appreciate many types of music, my son made the following comment when visiting my sister-in-laws church. “Why do they play music who’s sole purpose seems to be to try and put you to sleep just as the sermon is starting?”

The reason that I am not a “numbers guy” is that when you start to think in those terms it can much more easily lead into things that are pleasing to man. It is much easier to give in to the culture with big screens and rock bands and ‘cool looking’ preachers and hip coffee bars, etc. The church can easily (when it gets to that point) have an appeal to just one demographic. I see this all the time where i live.

From there, it is a very short trip to get away from pure Law/Gospel preaching into…whatever.

The culture is always wrong when it comes to the things of God.

I believe the church ought be counter-cultural even if it means that many will not like that or be “comfortable” there.

Thanks, Mike!

I think that Christ’s exhortation “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give your rest” is an important message to communicate in trying times.

My previous comment answers your concerns about growth.

Mike