State of the Church

In the United States in 2008 (Barna, PEW research, recent Newsweek magazine article)

• Over 4,000 churches closed.
• Over 1,700 pastors voluntarily left the ministry every month.
• 1,300 pastors were terminated every month.
• 3,500 members left the church every day.

From 1990 to 2008 in US (past 18 years)

• Total % of those claiming to be Christians dropped 10%, from 86.2% to 76%.
• % of Catholics dropped from 26.2 to 25.1 (1% drop).
• Other Christians (Mainline, Protestant, Evangelical) dropped from 60% to 50% (10% drop).
• Other Religions rose from 3.3% to 3.9% of population
• Those with "No Affiliation": rose from 8.2% to 15% (nearly doubled)
• "Don’t know/refused to answer": up from 2.3 to 5.2% (doubled+)

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Columnist Dick Staub, in addressing "the cause and cure of what ails us", asserts that "in the Age of the Hungry Soul faux Christianity dominates American religious life, as Christians have failed to represent Jesus to the world."

• The hypocrisy of sex scandals (catholic priests and head of the National Association of Evangelicals)
  
• The spread of greed, consumerism and “affluenza” (churches directing money to their own campuses rather than the poor and needy)
  
• Instead of "in the essentials unity, in the non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity", we have 3,800+ denominations
• Evangelicals have declared "war" on, and seeking political power over, “outsiders” instead of loving them
• Churches have become consumer-driven entertainment centers, demographically shaped special interest groups divided by age, ethnicity, education, income and worship style.

The Road to Recovery:

• We must restore God to the central place of our lives and churches (lukewarm, lost first love)
• We need to rediscover a holistic gospel boiled down to the essentials (Jesus didn’t come to make us Christians but to make us fully human, restoring what unraveled in our rebellion against God)
• We need to rediscover a sense of authentic community that fosters unity in diversity (more concerned with the direction of people’s lives than with the immediate perfection of their lives)
• We must serve our local community in word and deed (love God; deep faith lived out rather than talked about; moral compass; sharp, accurate, and fair ethics)