On Tuesday, Ed Stetzer spoke to pastors and staff of churches in Every Nation. His message was entitled, Churches in North America: The Present, The Future, and Our Response. Below are my notes.
Some Opening Caveats
- Don’t believe all the (negative) hype about the decline of Christianity in N.A.
- Oftentimes these are hyperbolic statements intended to motivate toward a specific end.
- People who point to problems with solutions to sell.
- When people say “in the church…”
- What church are we referring to (especially with regard to statistics)?
- Are we referring to mainline denominations or evangelicalism?
- How are we defining a “Christian?” Are we defining “Christian” as someone who adopts the moniker or someone who has been born-again, believes in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and attends a local church? Because how we define “Christian” changes the group of people we’re talking about.
In Our Evangelical Churches
- Growing Methodological Diversity
- Trends in opposing directions (e.g. house churches, mega-churches, emergent, neo-calvinist). Note that trends here don’t refer to what “everyone” is doing, but what a large group is doing.
- Proliferation Networks – denominations, partnership networks (e.g. Every Nation, A29, Newfrontiers, etc.)
- Churches looking more and more different.
- Theological Dissatisfaction
- Evangelical angst.
- A growing desire to dig deeper into the gospel.
- Same evangelical dissatisfaction was the root cause of the Emergent movement (desiring a more holistic gospel) as well as the New Calvinists (desiring a greater emphasis on the atonement).
- A Need For More Robust Disciple-Making – Disciple-making that is not just out of a book.
- More Discussion on Gender – An issue that should not be ignored or intentionally overlooked.
- Effect of the Recession on the Church – the “de-clergification” of church. More laypeople doing the work of ministry. A good thing.
Issues from the Culture
- Post-Seeker Culture
- Most people who were going to be reached by the “seeker” movement have been.
- Church is no longer the first place people go to regarding spiritual things.
- We have confused invitationalism with evangelism
- Spiritual but not Religious
- There is a perception that spirituality is good while religion is bad.
- The growing view is not atheism, but spirituality.
- This is problematic because people view evangelicals as “religious.”
- This is a good thing because people are open to “spiritual things.”
- Growing Intolerance – Not to be confused with persecution, but still a growing mentality of “those Christians.”
- Sexual Overload
- We can no longer ignore the fact that people are being shaped by the pornification of the culture.
- This is a place where the gospel can and must shine brightly to broken people.
Ed Stetzer is the President of Lifeway Research. You can read his blog at http://www.edstetzer.com/.