News Stories About Christianity Miss the Point


This morning there were two headline news stories about the Christian Church in the U.S. Both stories were about prominent Protestant denominations. 

One article was in the Iowa statewide paper, The Des Moines Register. This article covered in depth Methodist churches leaving the main Methodist national organization, United Methodist Church. The article treats the break away of churches as a calamity which it definitely is not. The split, as most people know, is over rules prohibiting gay marriages and gay pastors.

The number of churches leaving is quite large in an absolute sense. Yet, it is only about 11% of Methodist churches in Iowa. It is an even smaller percentage of members because the churches leaving are mostly smaller rural ones with older members. The fiscal impact of these smaller rural churches leaving the larger organization, however, is positive. Salaries of Methodist preachers comes from a centralized pot. This means that small dying churches are often subsidized by other churches. When small churches in declining communities are dumped there is less cost to the remaining churches. No wonder the split is treated so amicably by the larger organization. The headline should have said, "Small Methodist Churches Make Stupid Move for Stupid Reasons."

The other story is about the Southern Baptist Convention, usually referred to as "Southern Baptists." A retired professor from a seminary outlined carefully the downward spiral of churches and membership in the SBC. It is accelerating. While the decline in well known, the professor lays out in stark terms what is happening to SBC money. It is being shoveled en mass at start up churches (called "plants" in church talk). The amount spent on plants has doubled in recent years but fewer churches are being planted. The number of plants is no longer made available. 

The professor's solution is to stop throwing big money at church planting and simply focus on the old-time religion. That is to shout even louder there is a Bible and what the Bible says is "the truth." He seems oblivious to the fact our culture has changed and the old-time religion lives on mainly in old people.

The entire Christian faith needs to realize that what has worked for two thousand years has reached the end of its rope. 

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