Why do more women than men flock to the Church?

Why do more women flock to the Church? - Telegraph:

Good question with no answers that will make anyone comfortable.

Is There A God or was it all just chance?

Is There A God? (What is the chance that our world is the result of chance?)

So compelling, in fact, has become the case for the universe as the product of a conscious creator that astrophysicist Hugh Ross, a former post-doctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology observes (in his book The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God) that:

“Astronomers who do not draw theistic or deistic conclusions are becoming rare, and even the few dissenters hint that the tide is against them.  Geoffrey Burbidge, of the University of California at San Diego, complains that his fellow astronomers are rushing off to join ‘The First Church of Christ of the Big Bang.’”

For those not familiar with “the Big Bang,” this cosmological event, now almost unanimously regarded as fact in the scientific community, constituted the beginning of the universe about 14 or 15 billion years ago, and bears eerie similarity to the biblical account of the universe’s creation.  As Arno Penzias, the 1978 Nobel Prize recipient in physics, stated to the New York Times on March 12, 1978:

“The best data we have (concerning the Big Bang) are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.”

Do Christ’s divinity and resurrection defy common sense?

Do Christ’s divinity and resurrection defy common sense?

What happened to Jesus' body?

The entire Christian religion stands or falls on the resurrection of Christ. With no resurrection, we could follow Christ’s teachings and ethics and live fairly good, decent lives. But in the end, Paul says, it wouldn't matter. In the end there would loom before us the cold desolation of the grave and our loss to eternity. If Christ is not raised, we have put our faith in a falsehood. We would have begged for God’s grace on the basis of something untrue. We are still trapped by our sins and have no way out. Truly, we would be pitiful.

But in fact, Christ was raised from the dead. Indeed, Jesus’ resurrection is the central event in all human history. The resurrection is God’s ultimate saving act in the world. All gifts of grace from God are intended to bring us to believe in our hearts that Jesus was raised and to confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord. Having made that confession, God’s grace leads us to live as Easter people.

We are redeemed by God's grace through our faith in Christ because God was in Christ, reconciling the world to God’s self. Saving faith is in the living person of Christ. Jesus’ teachings are not the object of our faith. Jesus’ miracles are not the object of our faith. The accounts and testimony about Jesus in Scripture are divinely inspired, but the Bible is not the object of our faith. The Christian faith is faith in Jesus Christ as the risen one.

This faith is not merely acknowledging that the resurrection happened. The apostle James observed that even hell-bound opponents of God acknowledge the truth about God. Merely assenting to the truth of the claims of Christianity isn’t the point. Saving faith is to stake one’s life on the Christian claims. It is to place the person of Jesus Christ at the center of one’s own identity, the center of one’s relationship with God and others.

One of the historical facts of the first Easter is that Jesus’ tomb was found empty  and that no one ever explained what happened to the body. Last week I said we still don’t know. While that is true in a forensic sense, it is not necessarily true in a spiritual sense.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it – 1 Cor. 12.27

No one of us dares claim that he or she is the body of the risen Christ, but we do declare it together as a church. Jesus of Nazareth was God embodied on earth. The Christian church is Christ embodied on earth. If this claim is true, then within our church we should be able to see, hear, feel and do what Jesus did. So let’s look at what Jesus did, and see whether we embody them now.

• Jesus pointed to God. If there is anything that always bursts forth in the life of Christ, it is Jesus’ extraordinary God consciousness. Jesus did not know God as some cosmic clockmaker who wound the universe up and then went on vacation while creation runs on its own. For Jesus, God was Abba, Father. Actually, it really means “Daddy.” Jesus knew and declared a God of incredibly close relationship to human beings.
• Jesus proclaimed the Word of God. In his preaching and teaching, Jesus’ overriding message was to return to God. God is to be worshiped and praised, but just as importantly, God is to be honored. To honor God calls for more than worship and praise. It requires a reorientation of life and society. It is a call to justice and reconciliation.
• Jesus suffered and died. He did not turn away from doing God’s will even at the cost of his life. Jesus’ suffering was not the point of his ministry, but it was unavoidable to carry out his ministry, because the entrenched powers of the world opposed the godly life Jesus proclaimed.
• Jesus shared his table with his friends. There are one hundred references in the gospels to Jesus eating. In Jesus’ community, table fellowship was one of the chief signs of the Kingdom of God. Jesus knew that it is not possible to cross swords with someone who shares your bread. It is at table that families are formed, which is why our monthly fellowship meals are literally godly gatherings.
• Jesus befriended the poor and the marginalized. Some people in his day had been discarded by society’s mainstream. Widows, the poor, prostitutes, sinners of every stripe and women generally found that all doors were shut to them. Jesus took them in and made them citizens of his kingdom. He brought in the powerful and privileged, too. He left out no one, even a thief hanging on the next cross over.
• Jesus healed the sick. People came to Jesus when they had no other hope. They sought Jesus and Jesus sought them. In God’s grace and God’s power, Jesus healed them.
• Jesus prayed. Jesus was a person of continual inquiry and confession with God. Jesus taught his disciples how to pray. Prayer is the most intimate speech a human being can have. It is to pull open one’s soul before the ultimate keeper of the soul. Jesus prayed in gladness, in action, in love, in despair, in agony and in the last breath of life. There was no circumstance or occasion that Jesus did not pervade and surround with prayer.

There are many more things Jesus did, of course. I’m not trying to make an exhaustive list. When the Christians in Corinth read Paul’s letter reminding them that they knew Christ had been raised, I think some recollections of Jesus’ life like this must have been remembered. And in remembering, they saw in themselves the risen savior, because they did, however imperfectly, what Jesus did.

• The church points to God. The church calls the world to God and reveals God as one who can be known and admitted into close relationship with every human being. The church proclaims the word of God and worships God. The church honors God in its work for justice and reconciliation. The Word and work of the church calls society to live as God intended.
• The church suffers and sometimes dies. It is almost incomprehensible that the Christian faith and its works flourish where its persecution is greatest. While we in America don’t suffer for our faith, our brothers and sisters in Christ in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, China and many other places are being imprisoned or killed today because they proclaim Christ.
• We share our table with one another. More than that, we share our food with the hungry. The works of Christian relief agencies have staved off starvation in Bangladesh, Africa and South America. In any American city today, Catholic and Protestant missions are all that stand between many poor people and terrible hunger.
• The church brings in the poor and offers comfort to the sinners of the world. We are all sinners, yes, but there are many people who have become so entrapped in sin and falleness that the secular world would just drop them from sight. But inside prisons and drug-rehab centers, in the lives of the chronically homeless, we find the church.
• The church heals the sick. It was not an atheist association that built Baptist Hospital or St. Thomas hospital. Around the world, medical relief missions work to inoculate children, conquer disease and improve preventive medicine practices in third world countries. Mother Theresa’s order of Sisters of Mercy was the last hope for countless thousands of the lowest caste of Indians suffering in the gravest crises. It is no coincidence that Mother Theresa was a disciple of Jesus Christ and not of some pagan deity or secular humanism.
• The church prays. We remain in continual confession and inquiry before God. In the sum of our prayers we bare the world’s soul. We overcome life’s tragedy because we know that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and that no thing that exists or can be imagined can block us from approaching God with confidence in his mercy.

There is one thing left. Jesus loved. Jesus was the supreme lover of all time. It is in this love we find Christ’s greatest presence. Without this love we are lost and empty; with it we are a holy people, fit for God’s works. Our love does not evoke the sappy sentimentality of simple romanticism or the giggly goofiness of erotic titillation.

Our love is patient and kind. It is not envious or boastful or proud, it is not rude or self-serving or easily angered. Our love keeps no record of wrongs. Our love protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Our love never fails. In our faith we have hope, but our love is greater than faith or hope. Our love reaches out instead of turning in. It builds up rather than knocks down. It values and cherishes rather than degrades or derides.

The Corinthians knew, and we know too, that this love does not—could not— come from ourselves. It is far greater and deeper than anything we could bring forth. We know we did not have this love or live this life until we encountered the Gospel and took the chance that maybe the most fantastic of all tales could really be true: that the tomb really was empty and that Jesus really does live. 

The Corinthian Christians are long dead, the apostles have turned to dust. But generation after generation of Christian people have suffered, healed, prayed and proclaimed, all on a single declaration, that Christ is raised.

What happened to Christ’s body? Well, look around you, look around. Here it is, all of us together.

What not to say to an atheist

Advice for Christians who discuss their faith with atheists… from an atheist:



This is a short video, less than three minutes.

Reaching out: The difference between critics, seekers and doubters

Why The Church Needs Apologetics: A Look at Critics, Seekers, and Doubters

Even though apologetics is seen throughout the Bible, we are sometimes seen as exalting reason to a place that was never intended or we assume apologetics is the sole catalyst as someone’s conversion. I bring this all up because I am presently enjoying reading Introducing Apologetics: Cultivating Christian Commitment by James Taylor. Taylor lists three kinds of people who we will encounter when doing evangelism. If anything, if we do evangelism and encounter people in these categories, we should see why we need apologetics in the Church. Taylor says when dealing with people, many people may fall into various categories such as:

1. Critics: those with criticisms of the Christian faith who are not open to the possibility of its truth. Critics need to be answered to neutralize the effects of their criticisms on seekers and doubters. 

2. Seekers: people who are open to our faith but are prevented from making a commitment primarily because of honest questions about the Christian claims. 

3. Doubters: are Christians who find it difficult to believe one or more tenants of the Christian faith with complete confidence. Doubters need to be restored to full Christian conviction by giving them the tools to remove their doubts.

In own experience, I run into a lot of #1′s. 

The Problem with the Christian Explanation

Earlier this month I explained the reasons to disbelieve Jesus rose from the dead. A week before that I explained the five historical facts that must be accounted for to reject that Jesus was raised.

Comes now retired detective J. Warner Wallace, who says,

As a detective, I’ve come to recognize that any explanation of an event in the past has its own set of virtues and liabilities. Even in my own cases, when I’ve gathered the evidence, reconstructed and articulated an account of criminal events, and successfully prosecuted a defendant in a case, I’ve always been aware of the liabilities and evidential deficiencies in my explanation of events. No case is perfect. All cases have unanswered questions. All cases have strengths and weaknesses. Juries are able to make decisions in spite of this reality because they reach a point of evidential sufficiency and conclude that the liabilities are outweighed by the strengths of the case. They also come to accept one explanation as superior to the rest. 

So as I examine the Christian explanation for the Resurrection, I am quick to recognize its strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, it accounts for the minimal evidences thoroughly (and it also accounts for a much larger set of evidences related to the Resurrection as described by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona in The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus). On the other hand it suffers from what some would say is an insurmountable liability: 

A supernatural event (like the resurrection) must be possible in order for the disciples to be correct about their observations related to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Read the whole thing at The Problem with the Christian Explanation | Cold Case Christianity.

10 reasons we lose our high school grads

Ten Reasons Kids Leave the Church

The numbers are shocking: about 70 percent of church-going youth stop going to church almost immediately upon leaving home after high school. Why?

The linked article offers 10 reasons:

1. We are making the church too "relevant" and not teaching our young people the deep traditions and their meanings.
2. "They got into church, but the church never got into them."
3. We do not treat youth, especially older youth, as intellectually capable.
4. We did not equip them for the moral and spiritual struggles of life with a strong Christian foundation.
5. We give them "hand me down" religion.
6. We offer them "community" but not much more - and they find other communities.
7. We over-emphasize feelings and they look for other opportunities to feel good about themselves.
8. They got tired of pretending, especially in front of their parents and church people, that because they "have Jesus," everything is fine in their lives.
9. We make Christianity into rules to be followed rather than a calling and life to be lived.
10. They just don't need the church any more because we present the church in a consumerist mode - and they stop being consumers. 

Read the whole thing.

Related:

A recent nationwide poll on religious identification noted that respondents citing “no religion” (The Nones) made up the only group that grew in every state, most numerous among the young: A whopping 22 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds claimed no religion, up from 11 percent in 1990. Worse yet: The study also found that 73 percent of Nones came from religious homes; 66 percent were described by the study as ‘de-converts.’

This gave me pause, because the mechanism was not holding. More precisely, the church I grew up in was not making disciples.

A chemist tells the truth

A world-famous chemist tells the truth: there’s no scientist alive today who understands macroevolution

Professor James M. Tour is one of the ten most cited chemists in the world. He is famous for his work on nanocars, nanoelectronics, graphene nanostructures, carbon nanovectors in medicine, and green carbon research for enhanced oil recovery and environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction. He is currently a Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Rice University. He has authored or co-authored 489 scientific publications and his name is on 36 patents.

Here is a video of a lecture Prof. Tour gave at Georgia Tech on Nov. 1 of last year. It's 99 minutes long, so a key excerpt pasted from the linked site, above, is below the video frame.

… I will tell you as a scientist and a synthetic chemist: if anybody should be able to understand evolution, it is me, because I make molecules for a living, and I don’t just buy a kit, and mix this and mix this, and get that. I mean, ab initio, I make molecules. I understand how hard it is to make molecules. I understand that if I take Nature’s tool kit, it could be much easier, because all the tools are already there, and I just mix it in the proportions, and I do it under these conditions, but ab initio is very, very hard. 

I don’t understand evolution, and I will confess that to you. Is that OK, for me to say, “I don’t understand this”? Is that all right? I know that there’s a lot of people out there that don’t understand anything about organic synthesis, but they understand evolution. I understand a lot about making molecules; I don’t understand evolution. And you would just say that, wow, I must be really unusual. 

Let me tell you what goes on in the back rooms of science – with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. I have sat with them, and when I get them alone, not in public – because it’s a scary thing, if you say what I just said – I say, “Do you understand all of this, where all of this came from, and how this happens?” Every time that I have sat with people who are synthetic chemists, who understand this, they go “Uh-uh. Nope.” These people are just so far off, on how to believe this stuff came together. I’ve sat with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. Sometimes I will say, “Do you understand this?”And if they’re afraid to say “Yes,” they say nothing. They just stare at me, because they can’t sincerely do it. 

I was once brought in by the Dean of the Department, many years ago, and he was a chemist. He was kind of concerned about some things. I said, “Let me ask you something. You’re a chemist. Do you understand this? How do you get DNA without a cell membrane? And how do you get a cell membrane without a DNA? And how does all this come together from this piece of jelly?” We have no idea, we have no idea. I said, “Isn’t it interesting that you, the Dean of science, and I, the chemistry professor, can talk about this quietly in your office, but we can’t go out there and talk about this?”

"How are the dead raised up?"

This is the fourth in a series of messages about the factual basis of the resurrection of Jesus and what does it mean to us. 

I have been talking a lot about the resurrection of Jesus in the past few weeks, including that the resurrection is a fact of history, not myth. The Gospels recount the resurrection; the apostles preached and wrote about the resurrection. But what do the Gospels and the apostles mean by “resurrection?” 

I am exploring this topic in this manner:

1. The negative definitions of resurrection – what it is not. 
2. Paul’s admonitions to the church in Corinth about the main meaning of Jesus’ resurrection, 
3. Paul’s explanation to the Corinthian church of the nature of resurrection.

Jesus' resurrection was not a resuscitation.

A resuscitation is when the very same body that died is made to come alive again. Compare the resurrection of Jesus with the resuscitation of Lazarus in John 11. There, Jesus stood at the entrance to Lazarus’ tomb, wherein Lazarus has lain for four days. Jesus commanded, “Lazarus, come forth!”

The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go” (vv. 43-44).

That is what a resuscitated corpse was like. Compare to the Easter story: 

• Jesus’ body was placed in the tomb on Friday but on Sunday the tomb was empty. The grave wrappings they had put on Jesus’ body were still in the tomb. 
• Shortly, Mary Magdalene saw Jesus. He had been transformed from a broken, bloody, ravaged and shattered corpse into glorified Risen Lord. Yet she did recognize him, though it took some prompting on his part. 
• The women had no idea what happened to the body. To this day we still cannot explain what happened to the corpse. Jesus was raised bodily from death, but it seems that the same fleshly body that went into the tomb was not the very same body of the risen Lord. 
• When Mary talked with the risen Lord, she knew he was still Jesus. His identity continued from his life into his resurrection. But the embodiment of his resurrection, the Christ, was not the same as his embodiment as Jesus. 
• In fact, it is not obvious why the tomb was opened. Was it to let Jesus out? The risen Jesus didn’t have any problem entering locked and shuttered rooms where the disciples had gathered. It’s just as likely that the tomb was opened to let the women and Peter and John in so they could confirm that death had no hold on him.

So resurrection is not simply the reanimation of a lifeless body. What happens to our earthly body seems to be unimportant. It would seem that identity, but not materiality carries over from this life to the resurrected life, but that is not easily grasped, as even Paul saw.

Jesus’ resurrection was not “life after death” as we conceive of it today.

Probably most Protestants in America think that at the moment of death, the soul leaves the body and immediately goes to heaven. This idea of “life after death” is a fairly recent development in Christian history. Martin Luther, for example, said (I think correctly, by the way) that such belief is not much supported by Scripture. Jesus was not resurrected as a disembodied soul. The risen Christ was still embodied, though not embodied in the same way that Jesus was embodied as a human being.

So: resurrection is not resuscitation of a corpse. Resurrection is not the liberation of the soul from the body but a different form of embodiment. Resurrection is, however, a continuation of personal identity.

Paul and the main meaning of Jesus resurrection

The earliest written reference to Jesus' resurrection occurs in the first letter of Paul to the church at Corinth, probably written about AD 54, only twenty or so years after the crucifixion of Jesus. In this letter, Paul reminds the Corinthians that the resurrection of Jesus had numerous witnesses, many of whom "are still alive," and he insists strongly that resurrection is the central doctrine of Christian faith. Here is a key passage:

1 Cor 15:12-2012 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 

16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 

19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

 The problem Paul is addressing is that the Corinthian Christians did believe in the resurrection of Jesus. But they stopped there. To Paul, the resurrection of Jesus is not important in and of itself, all by itself. That Jesus was resurrected is important because his resurrection was the precursor of what God has promised for all of us.

“…if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”

To Paul, the resurrection of Jesus is inseparable from the promised resurrection of all the dead when God rings down the curtain on human history. That’s why Paul called Jesus resurrection the “first fruits” of all those who have died. The resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of all the dead are all the one and same event with an intermission between them.

So Paul understood that Jesus’ resurrection was proof positive that the promises of God are true and can be counted on. In fact, you can bet your life on them. As Paul put it in his second letter to that church, all the promises of God are answered “yes” in Christ.

That’s why Paul rebuts the idea that a Christian can sensibly affirm on the one hand that Jesus was raised and yet fail to affirm on the other that we will all be raised. It would be like saying that the Titans are a pro football team but there is no such thing as the NFL, or, “I drive a Chevrolet, but there is no such thing as General Motors.”

The significance of Jesus’ resurrection to Paul may be summarized thus: 

• It confirms that “in Jesus dwelt the Godhead bodily,” co-identifying Jesus with God. 
• It confirms that Jesus is an open door to eternal life with God for everyone who believes in him. To believe that Jesus was raised is to believe in who Jesus was personally. 
• Jesus’ resurrection is proof that God will also raise us up and we will be glorified as Jesus was.

Understand that God's standards for entering into eternal life are low standards. Paul summed them up in one sentence in Romans 10.9:

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

I mean, seriously, I could think of tougher standards than that. The hard part is not believing that Jesus rose from the dead. That is simply the most reasonable conclusion to draw strictly on the merits of the facts and circumstances. But “Jesus is Lord,” now, there’s the hard part. To declare that Jesus is Lord is to place under Jesus’ final authority how we spend our time and money. That is not so easy, is it?

Paul’s explanation of the nature of the resurrection.

Later in the same letter to the Corinthian church, Paul wrote about the nature of the resurrection yet to come:

1 Cor 15:35-36, 42, 4435 But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 

The Abingdon Dictionary of Theology explains:

In the New Testament, Paul uses “body” as a collective noun for the unity of the flesh and soul. He never makes a hard and fast distinction between the two. The biblical view of human being is we are whole persons with no part detachable. We do not have bodies, we are bodies. We are flesh-in-unity-with-soul. 

So what happens to us when we die? Paul uses an agrarian analogy: A seed sown does not sprout into a plant unless the seed passes away. We die in this life and that meant to Paul that each of us die in our entirety. Paul would have thought nonsensical our common belief that our souls leave our bodies at death and float away to heaven.

In this life we are perishable and subject to decay. When God raises us from the dead, we will be neither. You will still be you and I will still be me (sorry). We will still be embodied, but not fleshly. We will be embodied spiritually. Paul does not get more specific than that and neither can I.

So what does this all mean? Jesus taught that it is not human destiny to disappear into nothingness. He said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me” (John 14:1). Paul is emphatic in Romans that, “Neither death, nor life, . . . nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We face death with certain confidence that God’s care endures beyond the grave. We die in God’s grace. Though dead, we are not abandoned. We are not forgotten by God to oblivion. The promise of resurrection is not that we continue to live after death, but that we will live again after we die. By the power of God we will live again in the resurrection yet to come. We know this because Jesus lived and died and was resurrected. Jesus Christ is proof that God will accomplish what God promises. But why the promise in the first place?

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (John 3.16-17).

Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 18:3) We adults, we want to know, How does the soul work? How does God get it out of our bodies? What will heaven be like? Those are adult questions. Children don’t ask them. Children just ask things like, “Will Grandpa be there, too?”

Which is to say: Does love outlive this life? Will I again be with the people I love and who love me? If there is any way we survive between the grave and resurrection, it is because God's love never ends.

“How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?” In dying we pass away, but we do not perish. We are assured of God’s eternal, gracious care by the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.

After the casket is buried and the mourners are gone away, the love we have for father, mother, spouse or friend doesn't just stop. God knows our love lasts beyond the grave just as truly as his. We continue to love persons who were, but who also still are, because not even death can separate them from God. Let us be content to declare in faith that when we die we remain in God’s care, even if we cannot say exactly how.

“We believe,” wrote Paul, “that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him” (1Thes 4:14).

Autopsy of a Dead Church: 11 Lessons Learned

Autopsy of a Dead Church: 11 Lessons Learned

I was their church consultant in 2003. The church’s peak attendance was 750 in 1975. By the time I got there the attendance had fallen to an average of 83. The large sanctuary seemed to swallow the relatively small crowd on Sunday morning.

The church is now closed. This article strikes home to me because of the history of my wife's church. When I first went to Carr UMC with her in 1977, average weekly attendance was 350, perhaps even a little more.  In 2008, she and I returned on a particular date so she could go with her father and sister to the church's last service before it disbanded. Average attendance had fallen to 17.

Why? For most of the same reasons that writer Thom Ranier identifies in his autopsy, which I will simply list here and urge you to read in full.


1. The church refused to look like the community. 

2. The church had no community-focused ministries. 

3. Members became more focused on memorials. 

4. The percentage of the budget for members’ needs kept increasing. 

5. There were no evangelistic emphases.

6. The members had more and more arguments about what they wanted. 

7. With few exceptions, pastoral tenure grew shorter and shorter. 

8. The church rarely prayed together. 

9. The church had no clarity as to why it existed. 

10. The members idolized another era. 

11. The facilities continued to deteriorate. 

Think about them and read the article.

Five religious topics we need to explain to our youth

Five Apologetics Topics Youth Workers Need to Be Able to Address

A fundamental question about youth groups at a church is whether they are formed to train the youth in biblical truths, principles and morals, or are they for "fellowship"?