"A Few Thoughts on Numbers, Decline, and What We Might Do"

From the blog of the moderator of the Presbyterian church (USA), Bruce Reyes-Chow, comes a meditation on declining membership numbers in this major American mainline denomination. According to the moderator, the denomination's membership numbers have declined by another seventy thousand this year, and people have reasons that they send Reyes-Chow's way. "The church is too liberal!", "The church is too conservative!", and more.

Reyes-Chow responds with thoughts on the complexity of the situation, the ambivalence of numbers, and the failure of the church's institutional worldview (bringing with it a failure to adapt). To start the process of breaking this worldview and making the church more flexible, Reyes-Chow proposes some questions, like:

- "What ARE our essentials and non-negotiables as we gather as a denominational gathering of the Body of Christ?"

- "Can we handle an abundance of manifestations of the Presbyterian family where congregations look, feel, and operate in drastically different ways?"

- And "Can we truly embrace the unknown, but yet joyfully strive to seek God's intentions?"

To check out the rest of Reyes-Chow's interesting and provocative blog entry, go here.

"One of the Most Powerfully Influential Religious Leaders in Today's World (and You Probably Don't Know His Name!)"

The above title for this entry on the "Road to Priesthood" blog is followed by the question "When you think of religious leaders who've helped bring social change to the 20th century, what name comes to mind?" The author suggests you probably thought of Gandhi, or Martin Luther King Jr. Close? How about Walter Rauschenbusch?

"Who the heck is Walter Rauschenbusch," you ask? Well, only the pioneer of the Social Gospel Movement in the early 20th century, and a potential uniting figure for mainline Protestants and evangelicals. Not to mention the fact that Rauschenbusch's book Christianity and the Social Crisis helped inspire Gandhi, King, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Desmond Tutu.

Rauschenbusch's great-grandson, the Rev. Paul Rauschenbusch, spoke on the occasion of the book's 100th anniversary about the book, and his great-grandfather, for the New America Foundation. Check out the full video of the speech in which the younger Rauschenbusch talks about how the book continues to "challenge and inspire today's social justice thinkers" as well as how different Christian denominations can "find common ground in the understanding of our faith, melding the Evangelical church's traditional focus on the gospel with mainline church's focus on social justice."

To read more go here.

"I'm an atheist, and I go to church"

Would you expect to find an atheist in your church? How would you treat them once you knew they were there? Caryn Solly, writing on the blog of RevolutionNYC church in (you guessed it) New York City, shares her experiences as an atheist among the Christians.

For Solly, the primary attraction for attending RevolutionNYC is the ability to challenge her own beliefs and maintain an open mind. Although she has made friends and has connected to the community there, and respects the teachings of Jesus, Solly wants to see the other side of the conversation, and to be part of elevating the tone of that conversation between Christians and atheists.

To find out more about what attracted an atheist to church, and just where she sees that Christian/atheist conversation going, check out the full article here.

Do Not Despise Your Youth

What is the potential for leadership by the younger generations in your congregation? Does your congregation yearn for growth and change, but get held back by a sometimes overzealous desire to honour and preserve its history?

David J. Wood, writing for the Call & Response blog of Duke University's Faith & Leadership website, makes the case for making room for young leaders (including young, and often generationally isolated, pastors) to live up to their productive and creative potential.

What do you think? Do congregations sometimes saddle their young leaders with too much baggage from the past? Read the article here.

The End of Christianity? - Hardly.

The conventional wisdom is that Christianity in the Western world is in decline. The "Christian" percentage of the population is declining, and many churches are facing dwindling attendance. In an April issue of Newsweek, Jon Meacham described this phenomenon as "the end of Christian America."

According to Soong-Chan Rah, however, the reports of the death of the Western church have been greatly exaggerated. Writing for Sojourners' "God's Politics" blog, Rah puts forward the idea that American Christianity, at least, may actually be growing, and doing so in "unexpected and surprising ways."

"In 1970, the city of Boston was home to about 200 churches. Thirty years later, there were 412 churches. The net gain in the number of churches was in the growth of the number of churches in the ethnic and immigrant communities. While only a handful of churches in 1970 held services in a language other than English, thirty years later, more than half of those churches held services in a language other than English."

To read more of Soong-Chan Rah's reasoning on this hopeful note, check out the article here.

The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.             Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823

According to an article in Salon, some of the best newspapers - newspapers that still held the standard that democracy is maintained by freedom of information - are very sick, terminal in fact.

So I heard on the CBC local news this morning that the next apocalypse is forecast for 2012. This has something to do with the Mayan calendar cycle ending on that year (the ancient Mayan calendar has several cycles, this is the end of one of the longest). According to some proponents, "modern astronomers" have also found evidence that the year 2012 is likely to be the timing of the apocalyse. The radio news segment then cut to an astronomer laughing in response.