One way of putting the truth would be that the religion which has declined was not Christianity. It was a vague Theism with a strong and virile ethical code
.. When no man goes to church except because he seeks Christ the number of actual believers can at last be discovered.
.. I am a senior/solo pastor in the PCA, a conservative, evangelical presbyterian denomination. My sense of our small church is that people (both on the left and right) are more despairing over America’s political state than its spiritual state.
I am in my early thirties. Those older than me seem to think that our church will start growing dramatically once we can get our techniques and programs and leadership “vision” dialed in. Growing a church like this has “worked” for a long time in evangelicalism, but I am not so sure that church growth can be produced so easily any more, or at least for much longer. Those younger than me, with some happy exceptions, seem to be spiritually adrift in the goo of MTD.