Back in September of 2007 I wrote a blog post about how the churches in the area I had lived in had an appearance of strength, but not the reality. The specific issue that caused me to notice that was the passage of a ballot initiative to allow riverboat gambling in the county. Dearborn County, Indiana had a lot of churches--churches in the towns, a couple of megachurches in one area, and it seemed like every other crossroads had at least one rural church. They all opposed the gambling; and yet it passed easily.
In the years since, this trend has continued. Some big-name church leaders have been caught in sin, often but not always sexual misbehavior. The "mainline" denominations have continued their decline: some scholars have predicted that the Episcopal Church may disappear by 2040; they still have their buildings and a fair amount of money, but their decline in numbers continues, and the numbers of weddings and baptisms in their churches look even worse for the future. The United Methodists have begun the process of breaking up into liberal and conservative groups. But since the breakup was stalled by postponing their international conference because of the Covid pandemic, some congregations are pulling out early, even at the risk of losing their buildings. And this is happening with both conservative and liberal congregations.
This decline is not limited to liberal churches, although they seem to be worse off than the conservatives. The Southern Baptists are stagnating in numbers and beginning to show signs of disagreement among their leaders. Other groups are not much better off.
And it isn't just the Protestants, either. The Roman Catholics are still dealing with the fallout from the sex abuse scandals among their clergy. Some years ago Rod Dreher, a writer I sometimes read, who was brought up a Methodist in Louisiana, moved to the Roman Catholic church after a personal awakening. As the sex scandals came into the news, he moved to an Orthodox church. But in the years since, several of the Orthodox groups became embroiled in financial scandals. He has stayed with them. But for myself, I don't see that one scandal is less bad than another. All of them show a failure of the denominational brass to live up to their supposed standards.
But I think there is a distinction to be made, an important one. The decline of church organizations does not necessarily indicate a decline in real faith. It may only indicate a separation of the wheat and the chaff. It has been noted for years that in most local congregations, 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. The rest are just pew-sitters. But there are signs that a substantial part of those 20% are no longer content with the traditional congregation model of church.
Back in 2015 Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope published the book "Church Refugees." At the time the "Nones" identified by Pew Research, the "religiously unafilliated," were big in the news. The assumption of many was that these were people who were no longer Christians. But Packard and Hope started finding and talking to people, and found that many of them were still Christians, but were "done" with the traditional religious structures. And many of them were not just the back-row, Easter-and-Christmas attenders, but were part of the 20%--a substantial part of them even pastors! The authors estimated that nearly half of Pew's "Nones" were actually what they called "Dones"--Christians still, but trying to live their faith outside the traditional organizations.
I became part of that group years ago, well before that book came out. Some of us weren't that enthralled with the "Done" label--some of us called ourselves "Free-Range Christians." I did go back to a small church in the fall of 2018 because of a major disruption in my life that resulted in getting divorced. I was helped by the men's group, and supported the church in gratitude. But over time, they seem to be drifting into further decline, and I am back to "Free-Range" status again.
How will this turn out? I do not know. I do not claim to be a prophet. But I do think that one possible outcome is that the Real Church, as defined by our Lord, will be revealed, with less drag from the institutional substitutes, and will remain when those are long gone.
