According to Lifeway research, the holding of physical meetings during the pandemic is still affecting the number of those participating in the meetings at evangelical churches. Churches are open but meetings gather only about 85% of the pre-pandemic numbers. We have similar kind of experiences in Finland, so this cannot be something that is specific to US.
My interpretation is that online only has drawbacks. Many drift away from church fellowship if they do not have regular offline contact/prayer with other believers.
Welcome to the conversation, Justin. I think the online church idea is good to a point, but hopefully the home group type meeting will be something you can eventually find or host. While I attend a traditional medium sized church, my kids either do home church on the internet or small home group type church. The only problem I see with home groups is the lack of oversight, and some groups tend to get into the bushes theologically if the dominant voices lead them that way. Of course.that can happen in mega churches with dominant leaders as well.
In any case, this is good place to vent.
Speaking of venting, my pastor’s sermon this past week was good, using Genesis 3 as a text for the theme of “God with us” as part of the Advent season, but had one sentence in which he said something like, “Unlike atheists and evolutionists who see no need for God in creation…” which grinds on me still today. Guess I need to exercise a little of more of that grace and patience, as I know he meant no offense, but was lumping evolution and atheism in together as is common in culture rather than attacking evolution specifically. Still, it leaves me wondering if I should have a conversation with him on the finer points of evolutionary creationism, or if that would be fruitless, and possibly patronizing. Sigh.
Great point. I was struggling to shorten my title enough that it was on par with the length of other thread titles I saw. I updated and hope it’s more clear now.
Thanks for the response. It’s interesting that your kids are doing home church too. Although our kids do online church we do let our kids be part of local youth groups, so they can be around other believers.
We’ve been part of and hosted several small groups in the past and are comfortable leading them, and our online church (a well known large and well equipped church) provides excellent studies and training for hosts. The challenge is that without any affiliation with a local church it is harder to find and organize a group of people.
I can empathize with your frustration. Linking evolution and atheism is at its core an appeal to tribalism. I hope you are successful in whatever your response is.
I was sure whether to interpret this as “online-only has drawbacks” or “online has only drawbacks”
I agree with the former only
It’s unfortunate that in-person attendance is down, but I do wonder if the shake-up is an opportunity for reinvention.
Our online church (Saddleback Church) is one outlier that bucked the trend. Over 4000 small groups were added to the church during 2021 and church online attendance his way up and is now a huge part of this already large church even after people returned in-person (in other words the church grew, a lot). In the coming years we may see significant growth in online+home group fellowships. This is the direction our family is going anyhow.
There’s no one size fits all solution but I welcome making headway on the echo-chamber / tribalism problems that I suspect keep many people out of the church.
Yes, the purpose was to write ‘online-only has drawbacks’.
I am glad to hear that your church is growing. Online+home group fellowship sounds a solution that has a lot of potential. I hope this idea can spread. I plan to use this as a positive example on a course I attend at the moment (Church planting).
One observation about the pandemic is that many individuals drifted away from the church they officially belonged to but did not attend actively before the pandemic. Now these persons are seeking a new home. Several have joined our church during this autumn. How about those who have joined your church, are they believers that have switched from other churches to your fellowship or are there many new believers?
I don’t know about the situation in your area but here, attitudes towards new and spreading churches have changed a lot during the last decades.
For example, in 1980’s the pentecostals in Finland had the policy that the capital area was the only area where several pentecostal churches could exist in the same area. In all other towns and small cities, there could be only one pentecostal church. Anybody trying to establish a new group on the territory without the acceptance of the only church met hostile attitudes. Other denominations showed similar kind of attitudes.
Now the majority seems to understand that this kind of territory-thinking is not good as our main responsibility is to fulfill the will of our Lord and spread the Kingdom, not to feed the territorial ambitions of leaders within local congregations/churches. It is also increasingly recognized that modern cultures are fragmented and we need new groups that can reach the various cultural fragments within our societies.
Planting of new groups or small churches is a favored idea and there is cooperation where members of one church may help those from another church to strengthen their work. Even within the majority church, evangelic-lutheran, priests have planned and started new service/worship communes within the umbrella of the church. ‘Church planting’ is nowadays a basic course in theological seminars that train future workers and pastors for different free churches, including the pentecostals. The emphasis of ‘church planting’ courses has changed from establishing churches in new missionary fields to establishing new small groups within fragmented modern societies. Those small groups can grow to a local church or remain part of a larger network-type church.
I’ve struggled to shorten some too. Sorry to be all Captain Obvious on you. As I said your first post cleared up any confusion. Hope your search is paying off.
We live in Florida so our prospects for finding a progressive church are very low. But, we decided we wanted to focus on racial reconciliation in our community and tried to start some bridge-building groups in our primarily white church. They were not receptive to it (and there weren’t enough people of color to lead or even attend) so we decided to move on. We eventually landed at a primarily black church in town that we really love. I’m never really shy about my more progressive beliefs (though I usually know when to keep schtum) and so I’ve had plenty of conversations with my pastor and with other congregants. I’ve noticed that at this church, I have been more accepted than at any other conservative, primarily white church (I forgot to mention that our current church is very fundamentally conservative - very much a pentecostal experience).
Oh, and, I don’t have to worry if any of my fellow church members attended the January 6th rally, which is a definite bonus for me! - (our county at one time had the highest amount of people who were arrested for 1/6)
That’s a great question. Much of the growth was by adding new believers. For the 18 months prior to the end of 2021, 609 baptisms and 33,440 decisions to follow Jesus were reported [1]. Among other initiatives, one of the most effective was the pop-up food distribution centers ([2]). I know a lot of churches did similar efforts and I’m thankful whenever I see the body of Christ out in the community meeting people where they are.
I had forgotten to come back to this.
Thank you. Yes.
Swimming upstream and going against the grain, at least privately, even conservatively, seem to be my norm. It takes no effort at all for me to find myself in this position.
More than a little disorienting at times.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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Yeah. I find I fit in wherever I go. All too well. It’s like I forget my raging doubt. And then a nice colleague sincerely says ‘That was a nice answer to prayer’ and I remember I don’t believe that at all. My boss, the vicar, handles me brilliantly. He knows where I’m at. And today he asks me when I’m coming back to church. Real nice. The thing is, I would! But for my significant other. She can’t. By a couple of orders of magnitude. I’d go despite everything. I miss communion. Weird huh? I’m reconciled to never having the conversation. And no one will ever say anything vile. I’ve started wearing a rainbow wrist band. No comment yet!
In Edmonton, there is an evangelical church which based a study series on the video series concerning origins from Biologos leadership, so they do actually exist.
In this six-session video companion to Origins, professors Deborah and Loren Haarsma explore what God’s Word and God’s world teach us about the way the universe began.
I realized that my comment may have given a negative image of local congregations/churches that have done work in some area for a long time. I would like to praise, not criticize these churches for their valuable work.
Although the work done during the past decades is valuable, there is a need to be continuously renewed and give birth to avoid mental or spiritual death. A local church that does not produce new life is in a serious risk of degeneration. If the local churches can adopt a renewed mentality and give birth to new small groups and ‘satellites’, that would be wonderful.
If that does not happen, then it may be necessary to get new life and activity from outside, new small groups and churches. Giving birth may be difficult and painful but it is probably easier than resurrecting the dead.
I fit in, too, mostly. And then I open my mouth sometimes. The best men I know are much better than I am at minding their words. I marvel at the skills, when I see them employed, particularly the willingness to measure a situation and not engage. Must try harder. Must study strategies. But even when I manage to keep my mouth shut, I often find myself swimming against the grain — in my head. But I’m to the point, where I am not willing to accept “I don’t know how a Christian…” or accusations of disingenuousness (Christianese for “lying” and “deceptiveness”.) being thrown around like confetti, or put like shot.
I would miss communion, too. For a number of reasons. I don’t think you’re experience is weird. Actually, is it a tiny break for you from the discomfort of raging doubt — to forget for a while? Or does it make you feel guilty, once remembered, for having let your guard down?
Never having the conversation. Wow, what if we did have it in churches? Like @beaglelady ’s does? What if we actually assumed that doubt of some kind is normal, hardwired in many (most?) thoughtful people, and valued that they show up in spite of the doubt? Rather than treating other peoples’ doubt as our personal enemy?
Gotta love this forum and thread from a discussion standpoint even if many broadsweeping generalizations are interwoven among the comments. Trying to find a way to politely lay my cards on the table so to speak. As someone who has come to highly suspect, leaving room for new understanding as new discoveries arise, that our creator utilized evolution but with a profound intervention 10-6k years ago, I have difficulty with many of the more fundamentalist (for lack of a better word) views on Genesis and creation. At the same time, I find it difficult to embrace a cessationist (rather than continuationist) view of the Holy Spirit after the 1st century CE for lack of scripture telling us to stop seeking spiritual gifts. As a result, I do not often fall within the entirety of the groupthink where I sit, stand and kneel. I also know that science is predominantly a process often confused with conclusions and derived principles which evolve, and are sometimes upended entirely, over time (Alzheimer’s imaging scandal anyone). The past 2-3 years have witnessed a remarkable lack of grace - some groups embracing extreme and often illogical views denouncing scientific principles and other groups using “science” and “disinformation” to blugeon those with whom they disagree - when many of these groups have seen a turnabout with their prior conclusions. For me, “science”, “disinformation”, “fundamentalist”, “evangelical” and other buzzwords of the day often make me cringe. Frequently, but not often enough, I beg and pray, for my Lord and Savior to take away all my “us”, “them” and “how could they think…” attitudes. Good luck finding a spiritual home which best allows you to grow in the Lord and become more and more like Him and less like our natural selves.
I would challenge you to look for a church that, rather than taking exactly the stand you agree with on points, has a healthy atmosphere for discussion and service to others. There’s a large number of churches that are popping up that are non-denominational. People found that while doctrinal and other issues are important, they can sometimes lead to splitting hairs on theological matters and distract from the overall (or “mere”) message of Christianity. In my view, it is better for us to worship with a diverse crowd than force everyone to agree on everything. With that being said, I don’t mean to discount the importance of denominations or institutions like catholicism, methodist, episcopal, etc.
The church I go to in Houston (Ecclesia) has a “doctrinal statement” which is just the apostles creed (they said they literally ripped it off haha). They are very careful about not reading genesis like a “science book,” but also are open to people differing of opinion. Are you willing to sit next to people in church, or in life, who don’t agree with you politically, doctrinally, or scientifically on everything? In my view, the fact that there are different churches isn’t a bad thing at all; our world isn’t the same and the needs and cultures of each community are different.
I think accepting and supporting science is an important part of a church for me too, but I also caution about finding a church where everyone agrees on everything. In other words, I’m fine finding a church that doesn’t take a stand and where pastors realize they aren’t scientists so don’t necessarily speak as an authority about scientific matters either.
