For five decades and in growing numbers, American Christians have been saying no to Sunday church. I think it is time we listened.

We have labeled them “unchurched,” “nonbelievers,” “former Christians,” “happy pagans,” “lost,” and a “mission field” that’s “ripe for harvest.” These negative terms imply that the absent have a flaw that needs to be addressed.

New congregations have harvested some of these former mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic churchgoers. But even their numbers rise and fall — especially when the founding pastor slips up or retires, and the overall trend in church participation remains down. In some Western states, Sunday churchgoing has fallen below 10 percent of the population.

When this slide commenced in 1964 as baby boomers began graduating from high school, many church leaders didn’t even acknowledge it. For years, they kept counting the absent as present. Then, when the losses couldn’t be ignored, they blamed them on whatever hot-button issues were roiling the religious establishment, as if new liturgies, women in leadership, and liberals (or conservatives, take your pick) had driven people away.

We need to see that these “formers” aren’t saying no to God, or to their Christian identity, or to their yearning for faith. Many are simply saying no to Sunday church.

They are expressing a preference for something other than getting up early on Sunday, driving across town, sitting in a pew for an hour or more, making small talk with people they don’t really know, and driving home again.

They are saying no to Sunday, the only day they can get a slow start in this everyone-works-hard era.

They are saying no to being an audience in an age of participation and self-determination.

They are saying no to institutional preaching, repetitive liturgies, and assemblies controlled by small cadres usually older than themselves.

They are saying no to being told what to believe.

They are saying no to having their questions ignored.

Instead, they find spiritual enrichment on the Internet and on television. They read faith-related books. They pray on their own. They find their own networks of faithful friends.

The problem isn’t their faith. The problem is Christianity’s delivery system. We are stuck in trying to lure people to physical locations at a time of our choosing, to do what we think they ought to do, and to be loyal in paying for it. It is time we looked beyond the
paradigm of Sunday church.

I think the future lies in “multichanneling’’: a combination of on-site, online, workplace and at-home offerings that create networks of self-determining constituents, many of whom might never attend Sunday church.

The first challenge, however, is to recognize how deeply wedded we are to Sunday on-site participation as the only true expression and measure of faithfulness. Almost everything about our institutions — facilities, ordination training, staffing, budgeting — aims to draw people to a central location on Sunday.

We need to see that what works for some doesn’t work for others. Not because the others are flawed, nor because our culture has collapsed and turned against God, but because things change. Just as Jesus took his ministry out of the synagogue and radically rethought the meaning of Sabbath, so God is drawing us away from “former things,” even ones we treasure and consider our duty.        

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Ehrich (see web site) is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project.)

Do our lives have a purpose, or are we products of random chance? If everything is predestined, is there anything we can do to improve our fate? If not, are we without hope?

These questions are discussed daily in seminary classrooms — but add special effects, a lot of suspense, a love interest and reconciliation with an estranged parent and sibling, and you have the story line of Knowing, a new, big-budget Hollwood thriller starring Nicolas Cage.

The sci-fi film topped box-office receipts in its opening weekend March 20-22, taking in nearly $25 million in a period generally slow for movies due to audience competition from the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.

Cage’s character, John Koestler, is the son of a fundamentalist preacher who believes in the gift of prophecy as described in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians. John, who is an MIT professor and a single parent since the tragic death of his young wife, is not so sure there is a divine plan.

When a time capsule at his son’s elementary school is opened after 50 years, he finds strong evidence of foreknowledge of major catastrophic events, including the end of the world.

Baptists have been arguing about predestination versus free will for nearly 400 years. One of the first controversies dividing Baptists was between Particular Baptists, who believed God has pre-ordained who is saved and lost, and General Baptists, who believed every soul is free to determine whether to accept or reject Jesus Christ.

That debate pitted the theology of John Calvin, the Swiss reformer whose doctrines of divine providence pointed toward predestination, and Jacob Arminius, the Dutch reformed theologian who emphasized that humans have free will.

Those theories divided many Protestants into Calvinist and Arminian denominations, but in some, like Baptists, both Calvinist and Arminian strains have existed side by side. Southern Baptists traditionally have embraced some points of Calvin’s doctrines — like eternal security of the believer — while rejecting others to affirm that “whosoever will” can come to faith in Jesus.

Still, that hasn’t stopped occasional skirmishes between Calvinist Southern Baptist groups (such as Founders Ministries) committed to historic Baptist interpretations of the so-called “Doctrines of Grace” and anti-Calvinist Southern Baptist groups and leaders. For instance, last year Southern Baptist Convention president Johnny Hunt’s church hosted a “John 3:16” conference that took a critical look at Calvinism.

These are ambitious questions, and Knowing takes them on in ways that may not be fully theologically (or emotionally) satisfying. But the movie — rated PG-13 for disaster sequences and some strong language — is overall faith-affirming, and for Bible fans there’s an understated but pretty cool allusion to and depiction of the Old Testament book of Ezekiel’s “wheel in a wheel” prophecy.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.)

One of the startling facts this recession has revealed is just how much the prosperity of the modern American lifestyle is so very fragile.

For many, their lives are forever altered because their money quickly disappeared. We who serve the church of Jesus Christ might hope that when the economic supports of the nation’s leading economic indicators fall, the result would be a dramatic and noticeable return of many to weekly worship services.

We would be wrong.

The latest research from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals that while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has shed over half its value since October 2007, there has been no increase in weekly worship service attendance during the same time period. These statistics should give us cause to reassess our methods of evangelism and the way we are relating to our culture.

Of course, at no point should we ever resort to purporting an erroneous philosophy of health and wealth religion in order to gather a crowd at church.

To do so would compromise the content of the gospel and make the message of Jesus seem to be little more than another religious idea on the landscape of American spirituality. We must do better.

At this season of the year when Christians remember the work of Jesus on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, the national partnership forged between the North American Mission Board (NAMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSC) should be of great interest to us all.

We should take time to remember the purpose of this partnership which is supported by the Cooperative Program and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering.

If we are perceived as some sort of self-serving religious operation disconnected from real problems faced by real people in real churches, people will rightly ignore us. If, however, the cause of domestic missions can remain Christ-focused, gospel-centered, church-based and missions-directed, the stability and resilience of our work can be shown to be valuable in supporting the work of evangelism and church planting in our nation.

Some of the finest BSC staff balance a national focus for and a local practice of missions as seen through a joint funding agreement with the NAMB and the BSC.

The ministry of Bob Foy who serves with lay renewal outreach; Mark Gray, Frank White, and Pam Mungo who labor to implement a coordinated force for church planting in North Carolina; Amaury Santos and Guillermo Soriano who work among Hispanics, one of the fastest growing population segments in our state; John Ridley, our Baptist campus minister at East Carolina University and Chris Schofield who leads our office of prayer and spiritual awakening — all represent the best part of our cooperative work with the NAMB.

As we prayerfully work to give sacrificially to the historic Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, I trust we will thank God for the blessing of His hand on our work for many years and look forward with expectancy to the work He is calling us to accomplish by His grace and for His glory.

As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. John 20:21

NAIROBI, Kenya — “If we want to visualize a ‘typical’ contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela (shantytown).”

So wrote religion historian Philip Jenkins in The Next Christendom, his provocative 2002 book about the rapid growth and southward movement of global Christianity.

Jon Sapp, the International Mission Board’s former regional leader for Central, Eastern and Southern Africa, agrees with Jenkins — but adds a caveat. Rather than a woman in a hut, Sapp believes the typical African Christian “is going to be a young urban couple. Because we’re rapidly heading toward a 50 percent urban population.”

IMB photo Erich Bridges, who works with the International Mission Board, wrote several stories featuring ministries in Nairobi, Kenya. View Nairobi photo gallery.

That’s right: Even sub-Saharan Africa is following the global movement toward cities.

Jenkins acknowledged as much in his book when he quoted Kenyan scholar John Mbiti, who observed that “the centers of the church’s universality (are) no longer in Geneva, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, New York, but Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa and Manila.”

And Nairobi (see story links below this column).

Grappling with the future
The city’s young leaders in business, academia, politics and the church are grappling with how to guide their nation into the future — and away from the kind of social conflict that almost tore it apart after the last presidential election.

Before “the skirmishes,” Kenya had been viewed as a largely peaceful beacon to the suffering nations surrounding it, despite periodic political and tribal violence. Refugees and immigrants have long sought it out as a haven.

The savagery of the election-related violence, during which hundreds of people were burned and hacked to death, “was a shock and a surprise to many of us,” says Francis Mukusa, the young missions director of Nairobi’s 4,000-member Parklands Baptist Church.

“For me it was really sad to see human beings killing other human beings. It gives us a new challenge as a church to seek the face of God and examine our hearts. I think the church in Kenya has a big part to play in reconciliation and healing. The church is the hope of this country.”

Parklands sponsored an effort called “Wheels of Hope” that sent Christians into Kenyan towns and cities, even before the killing subsided, to encourage people to reconcile. As they traveled from place to place, Wheels of Hope participants witnessed “the glory of God, the hand of God,” Mukusa says. “They saw people from the different ethnic groups come together, praying and confessing to each other. They tried to tell people, ‘Hey, these are your brothers, they’re your sisters. It doesn’t matter where we came from. We’re all Kenyans and we all belong to one Father.”

The same challenge confronts Christians as they seek to reach the many peoples and classes of Nairobi — wealthy business owners, slum dwellers, different tribal/ethnic groups, Asians, students, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, Hindus.

Nairobi is a magnet not just for Kenyans but for people from far and wide, in part because of the ongoing crises of East Africa. “Look at who Kenya borders,” Sapp says. “Somalia, a major problem. Southern Sudan, 20-year civil war. The (earlier) problems in Uganda,” not to mention Rwanda.

“Nairobi just became the hub.”

Power couple
The question is whether Nairobi’s (and Kenya’s) numerically dominant younger generation can steer society in a new direction — in a culture that has long placed most power in the hands of elders and strongmen. That’s where Sapp’s typical Christian “young urban couple” comes in.

“Their faith makes a difference” in their lives and in the environment around them, he explains. “They treat one another differently. They raise a family differently. They use their time and resources differently. I see it happening. I know people like that.”

Churches in Nairobi are being started by people in their 20s. They aren’t yet rapidly reproducing like some church movements in Asia, Sapp admits, but they’re solid and growing. “They have the passion and they’re learning how to do it on a very thin budget.”

They’ll need to move past a reliance on church buildings and land (extremely expensive in the city), past the “crusade mentality” that produces many spiritual decisions but few disciples — and toward “new evangelical tools and methods that meet the needs of the high-density person,” Sapp says.

“T4T” (Training for Trainers), the simple strategy of teaching Bible stories that can be taught to others, appears to be one of those tools (see "Hope flickers in Nairobi’s slums").

“Can you get people to take their faith to the day-to-day, to the street, to affect other lives?” Sapp asks. “That’s what we want. I’m hopeful. We’re not there yet.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Bridges is a global correspondent with the International Mission Board. Visit related blog or listen to audio version of this column. See slideshow about life in Nairobi’s “trash dump” slum.)

Related links:

• Healing Africa’s wounded urban heart
• Hope flickers in Nairobi’s slums
• No throwaway people in ‘trash dump’ community
• Nairobi’s south Asians respond to prayer
• Penetrating Nairobi’s business scene
• Cruising Nairobi’s ‘Little Mogadishu’
• Photo gallery

Last fall more than 40 million Americans voted to place a woman within a heartbeat of the oval office. Today women have unprecedented influence in business and government.  

Many of our universities and graduate schools are led by women, and women make up a majority of the students in these schools.

It is far different from the time of the writing of the New Testament where the publicly influential woman was the exception rather than the rule. In first century Judaism, from which Christianity was birthed, the role of women was even more restricted than in commerce and politics. In the synagogue and in the temple women were not allowed to pray publicly in a worship service or be taught by a rabbi. In fact a common prayer prayed by a devout Jewish man was to thank God that he was not a pagan, an ignorant man or a woman. In short, women and their roles in religious life were viewed much differently than today.
                                                     
For many Christians there is a disconnect between women in the classroom, boardroom or oval office and in the pulpit.

The Georgia Baptist Convention recently removed a church from its rolls because the church selected a woman as pastor. The splintering of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina was driven to a large degree by opposing views of the role of women in the church.

The position of many of these Christians is that the Bible explicitly prohibits women from teaching men or holding any positions of leadership that involve leading men in the church.

This position may be summarized by Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and an early supporter of Gov. Sarah Palin for vice-president. In an interview Land stated: “We don’t go beyond where the New Testament goes. Public office is neither a church nor a marriage.”

Land and others who supported Palin see their position as perfectly consistent. Palin is qualified to be president but prohibited from being pastor of a local church by biblical teaching. Their position being that biblical truth stands authoritative over cultural changes.          

Yet perhaps the truth is not so simple. The New Testament shows a paradigm change in the expanded roles and responsibilities of women in the early church.

In passages such as the first Christian sermon at Pentecost, Peter quotes the prophet Joel and proclaims the time has been fulfilled for the Holy Spirit to come in a new way. “In the last days, God says I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophecy ‘Even on my servants both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days’” (Acts 2:17-18).

Early in the history of the Christian church women assume some form of leadership roles that would be unthinkable in synagogues.

Phoebe is a deacon and a benefactor (Romans 16:1-2), Mary, Lydia and Nympha are leaders of house churches (Acts 12:12, 16:15, Col.4:15).   

This is in marked contrast to Judaism in which eight males were required to be present to form a synagogue.

Paul claims that in the new day of Christ there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile, slave or free or male and female. (Galations.3:28). Still there are passages such as 1Timothy 2:11-15, and 1 Corinthians 14:35-38 that seem to teach that women should be silent and not have any authority over men.

However, might those passages be considered in light of these others that reveal an expanded role for women in the church?

For those that claim that this conclusion is letting the modern place of women override biblical truth I would prayerfully ask you to consider other areas where this type of  biblical application is seen as legitimate.

In Romans 13:1-2, Paul states that all governing authorities are from God and are to be obeyed. Does this mean the Christian should see all governments as legitimate and is bound to obey them? Governments like Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Saddam’s Iraq?

It is easy for the discerning Christian to go to his or her Bible and find passages such as Daniel 6 (where Daniel defied the pagan king’s order to cease praying to God) to justify civil disobedience. Another passage such as Peter and John’s defiance of local authorities’ orders in Acts 4 to stop preaching about Jesus could be used.

Consider the Christian’s view of the legitimacy of war. We realize that Jesus taught “Blessed are the peacemakers,” (Matthew, 5:9 ); “Do not resist evil but turn the other cheek,” (Matthew, 5:39); and, “Love your enemies,” ( Matthew, 5:44).

Yet we also take into account the cultural situation of the early church in which there were no Christians directing armies or nations.

Does the modern Christian sit idly by and let evil triumph?

Do we allow the innocent to be murdered, imprisoned and tortured if we have the power to prevent it?  

I believe a case can be made that the Christian can go to war — though surely reluctantly — to defend the innocent.

To reach that conclusion one has to consider the culture in which the New Testament was written, other biblical passages that proclaim the Christian’s duty to protect the innocent and weak, and pray for God’s guidance in that matter.

I contend this is the same method Christians use to justify women in ministry. Conclusions reached by this method will be different but the line of reasoning is similar.

Another example is how a Christian views wealth. Wealth or an abundance of goods is almost uniformly condemned in the New Testament; (Luke 6:20-26; 16:19-31; James (5:1-6); 1 Timothy, 6:9-10).

Few preachers including myself preach that we should totally renounce all our wealth. However, we use a nuanced view of scripture, considering the context of these texts and other texts that deal with the subject of wealth and material possessions. This is seen as legitimate by most, though it is similar to the line of reasoning that finds leadership roles open to women in the church.

You could think of slavery as another issue that requires consideration of the context of the time the scripture was written, other scriptures and God’s new revelation and insight given as we view the topic of slavery today.

Good people can disagree on whether the evidence is strong enough to justify women in ministry. However, recognition of the common ways we all reach our verdicts of what scripture permits can lead to more cooperation among Bible believing Christians.    

Some time ago I watched some men construct a sidewalk. As they finished the men placed expansion joints in the sidewalk.

Expansion joints are indentions or mechanisms in sidewalks, driveways or bridges that allow expansion or contraction so these objects can endure and fulfill their purpose.

Might it be that God placed the scriptures empowering women for such times as these, when women are commonly in leadership roles?

I do not claim everyone will reach the same conclusion I have reached — that women have been freed to give leadership in all roles in the church. I do desire that those good folks who have decided that my conclusion is in error would consider how they themselves reach conclusions on scriptural issues and whether the method I have used to reach my conclusion is similar to the method they use on other issues.

In a bridge or a sidewalk expansion joints allow a structure to be strong enough to endure and fulfill its purpose.

Perhaps God placed the scriptures that empower women to leadership in the Bible in order for the church to fulfill its purpose in spreading the gospel and proclaiming the kingdom of Christ for times such as these.        

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Julen is pastor of FBC Cramerton.)

As the recession’s hardship spreads, faith communities face not only extreme budget pressure but a crisis of purpose and identity.

For one thing, congregations aren’t being spared. Endowments are shrinking, as are those of other not-for-profits. Congregations weren’t even exempted from scams.

Their members face the same layoffs, salary-cutting and factory closings as other citizens. Constituents handle their religious giving as they do other expenses: cutting freely. Congregations, in turn, are behaving like other economic entities: trimming staff, cutting programs, and deferring maintenance.

So much for the “prosperity gospel” and its serene assertion that God will provide material benefit to the faithful — and its prideful corollary, that wealth is a sign of God’s favor.

Nor are congregations being spared difficult decisions about staying in business. Bedrock institutions that once defined American communities are vanishing: newspapers, banks, longtime stores and restaurants, local factories, schools. Some are victims of recent financial pressure, but many are victims of faded business models and inattention to changing conditions.

Congregations face the same dilemmas: collapsing revenues and ineffective business models. It’s true not just for small neighborhood congregations — long ago given up for dead — but also urban “destination churches” and suburban megachurches, whose well-honed methodologies can’t prevent a falling tide from lowering all ships.

Will faith communities follow the lead of other community pillars and simply close their doors? Will they hang on, shrinking and shriveling, until the last light bill can’t be paid or prosperity resumes, whichever comes first?

Or will faith communities find fresh purpose and a more durable identity?

Congregations have options, but accepting those options will challenge centuries of self-perception.

For example, people clearly matter more than buildings. A building can be closed temporarily and reopened when funds permit, but a staff decimated by layoffs, and ministries starved of funds, can take years to rebuild. In fact, many congregations put their facilities first and consider maintaining inherited buildings their most solemn obligation.


It seems clear that staying in business is more crucial than providing comfort and convenience. If the early Christians met in caves and tunnels, we certainly can sit for an hour without heat and full lighting. We can worship God without the pipe organ and printed bulletins. We can enjoy Christian fellowship without coffee and doughnuts. But can we? Is our actual faith deep enough to endure discomfort?

We can follow the example of early believers and meet in homes. But will we? Is our religious identity wrapped up in private acts of piety carried out in public places, not in oneness?

Put most baldly, are we defined by customs and facilities that we can no longer afford, or by the God whom we worship? Are we an institution or a dynamic body? That is no small dilemma.

Imagine this: a congregation can no longer afford comfortable pews and warm spaces. It moves outside to sidewalk, parking lot and garden, and there does its singing, praising and breaking bread for all the world to see.

Yes, some would simply leave. No pew, no point. But many would discover their need to worship and to be together. And the world outside would see us, perhaps for the first time, and be moved by our witness.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest
based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the
founder of the Church Wellness Project. His web site is www.morningwalkmedia.com.)