C & E No More

My daughter commented on Easter that it looked like even the Christmas and Easter attenders weren’t showing up for worship. I looked around and agreed.

Times have changed. I asked a young acquaintance of mine what she was doing for Easter. Church was not in the plan. Their families don’t attend church. It isn’t a part of their lives.

The same is true of a good number of people in our culture, both young and old. The church habit is slipping away.

The big question this presents believers with is: How will people hear about the hope we have in the risen Savior, Jesus?

If Christmas and Easter attenders are dwindling, if overall church attendance is declining, if the attractional, institutional church is losing its appeal, how will the Gospel invade the lives of the hopeless?

This is the question each believer and every church must wrestle with. My thoughts? Here they are:

1. The risen Christ isn’t boring or routine. Christians need to be reminded about this in creative and compelling ways.

2. If the risen Christ is the source of true hope, Christians need to be ready to offer this hope in caring and appropriate ways within everyday relationships and encounters. The church must exert new energy for the formation of every believer as a disciple in the trenches.

3. If the institutional church is no longer the center of the culture’s spiritual quest, the church must deploy to venues that allow believers to speak into the god conversation of the culture. This will require great patience, strategic thinking, courageous action, and some radical retooling of budgets.

4. The church must trust that God really desires all to be saved. As the paradigm of outreach shifts, Christians need to remember that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Lord’s Church. Times and methods may change, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever!