Can $93 Million of Studies and Experiments Save the Churches


While denominations and others inside the faith have had conferences and study groups trying to fix the decline in church membership I've not heard of an "outside" group or company bankrolling a large effort to reverse falling church numbers. That is until now. The Ely Lilly company gave 92 groups about one million apiece to look for solutions. In the link are just a few of the winners and what they plan to study. 

I've given my own assessment here many times as to why church membership is falling. It is that our culture has changed and increasing numbers of the public don't see any point to church. That being the case efforts to reverse the decline are useless. So, I was interested to see if the grants were be used only for pointless marketing which is already being done and is not changing the decline.

The link includes the text of what a few of the grant recipients will do with their one million dollars. Some will use for money for "community engagement" and "intergenerational conversations." These are fancy words for marketing. Every church that ever existed has tried to bring in more members. Some have been successful at taking members from other churches but numbers overall just keep falling. 

A couple of the other grant recipients are raising the white flag of surrender. Unspoken is the conclusion church membership will keep on falling. So, they are looking at practical solutions to keep churches going as long as possible in spite of the inevitable decline. These recipients use nice words like "lay training." This means running churches with volunteers and dumping the paid clergy and office staff. Churches would become something like service clubs, the Lions or Rotarians.  

It was good to see the latter groups dealing with reality. I've seen countless pleas for Christians to pray or teach salvation, etc. etc. One of the commenters to the link said church membership would turn around if only people were taught we are in the end times.  

Repeating the beliefs of the Middle Ages hasten the faith's demise. 

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