Stats on Perceptions of Church and Responses to Christians

America's Unchurched are willing to hear what people have to say about Christianity, but a majority also sees the church as a place full of hypocrites, finds a LifeWay Research study.

• 72% of those interviewed think the church "is full of hypocrites."
• Yet 71% said they believe Jesus "makes a positive difference in a person's life"
• 78% would "be willing to listen" to someone who wanted to share what they believed about Christianity.
• 64% think "the Christian religion is relevant and viable for today"
• 72% of un-churched adults believe God, a higher or supreme being actually exists.
• Only 48% agree there is only one God as described in the Bible
• 61% believe the God of the Bible is no different from gods or spiritual beings depicted in non-Christian religions.
• 22% of Americans say they never go to church (highest ever recorded by the General Social Survey), up from 17% in '04.
• 79% of unchurched Americans think Christianity today is more about organized religion than about loving God and loving people;
• 86% believe they can have a good relationship with God without being involved in church
• 44% said Christians "get on my nerves."
• Yet, 89% of the unchurched have at least 1 close Christian friend
• And while turned off by church, 78% are willing to listen to someone who wants to talk about their Christian beliefs. The number rose to 89% among adults ages 18-29.
• Additionally, 78% said they would enjoy an honest conversation with a friend about religious and spiritual beliefs, even if they disagreed.
• Only 28% think Christians they know talk to them too much about their beliefs.

(BP News 1/9/08)

Excerpt from a February 2008 Mission America Newsletter

People Leaving Church

Steve posted a blog about the alarming number of people (70%) leaving church between ages 18-22. There were many comments following his post, many of which were quite insightful. Here are my thoughts:

1. Our objective is people who love Jesus.

It is important to note that while church attendance may facilitate this objective, it its not the objective. It is also not a prerequisite to the objective of loving and pleasing Jesus.

If they love Him, they will seek to please Him by obeying Him. The goal of our teaching is to teach them how to please Him.

However, it is very difficult to objectively measure someone's love for Jesus. Therefore, we instead measure things that can be objectively determined, like church attendance. George Barna and Ed Setzer, who work hard to objectively measure everything, say that a growing number of evangelicals are following God apart from the conventional church

2. "Church" as it exists today bears little resemblance to the "gathering of believers" in the New Testament.

Today, a "church" is a legal entity with its own needs. It requires a steady diet of money and a variety of staff to care for it. Regardless of its creeds and assertions to the contrary, for many churches their primary function is not training Lovers of God but rather self-perpetuation. With staff to pay, mortgages to pay, buildings to build and/or maintain it is inevitable that budgetary matters become a central issue in many churches. How many times has a church's direction been altered to satisfy a key (read: wealthy) member? More often than any of us would like to admit.

I can remember when I first got the revelation that a church was not a building. Once freed from that constraint, the concept of church became much broader and I believe more Biblical. I cannot help but wonder if we are now due for another redefining of church which eliminates the formal organizational entity.

The fastest growing church in the world today is the underground church in China. I may be mistaken, but it it my understanding that for the most part, it has no formal organizational entity, staff, property or budget. It is simply a set of people who love Jesus and gather together when possible to share their love for Him and each other. This appears to be the closest thing to the new testament church around today.

3. People (Christians) in the church tend to be more healthy, mature, fruitful and productive than those outside the church.

The simple reality is that, far too often, Christians outside the church do not gather together informally and fulfill the functions of the body. They lack for input in their lives and output of their gifts. They become distracted, scattered and ineffective.

We need each other and do not function well as "Lone Rangers." We were never intended to do so.

An organized group of people (an organization) is able to pool resources to accomplish things that individuals or unorganized groups cannot.

Perhaps even an organizational legal entity is consistent with Paul's admonition that everything should done "decently and in order." Even the church in Acts had an administrative staff (deacons overseeing food distribution).

For all its flaws, the reality is that the church is the best thing going.... so far.

4. Ride the Wave

If the current trend of people leaving the church in droves continues, then there are two ways to deal with it.

1. Try to change the way we do church so that people don't leave.
2. Prepare people to survive and thrive and minister in the world to come... one in which the conventional church is less significant than it has historically been.

I think the answer is both...

More to come.

In the mean time check out Spiritual Obesity and A Time to Leave.

A Time to Leave?

As a parent, my goal is to prepare my children for the day that they will leave my household and establish their own household. If they are 40 yrs old and still living with me, something is wrong. My household would be very dysfunctional at that point.

I wonder if there is a spiritual parallel here. Do we have churches full of adult children who need to launch out and create their own spiritual households?

One common reason why adult children continue living with their parents is the high cost of home ownership and associated living expenses. It is more cost effective to stay with Mom and Dad than it is to move out. They have become accustomed to the luxuries (read: non-essential, but nice to have stuff) that Mom and Dad have but that they could not afford on their own.

Is the same true of spiritual adult children? Starting a traditional church (spiritual household) is very expensive... it requires facilities, audio/visual equipment, staff, expensive and time consuming seminary training, etc. The barriers to entry are intimidating. Could this partially explain why many Adult Children prefer to stay at home and help mom and dad do an extension to the house rather than move out and start their own household?

It is interesting to note that new church plants grow at much faster rates than established churches. In the same way, Adult Children don't usually produce a lot of children while they living with their parents. It is not until they get out on their own and get their own place that their own family starts growing.

Many of the "conventional" churches that do grow seem to be those that find a way for people to start their own spiritual households. One way of doing this is through small groups (cell groups, home groups, etc).  These might be compared to living on the family estate, but having your own house there apart from Mom and Dad. There can be numerous advantages to this type of situation, but there is also a great temptation to only half-way grow up. The pattern is that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. 

Could it be that God's pattern is for us to stay at home (or church) for a season of preparation and then to launch out on our own and start our own households (both natural and spiritual)?

If this were the pattern, wouldn't it make sense for people to leave the church at some point?

The question then becomes, What SHOULD happen to people when they leave home or church?

1. They should feed and sustain themselves. They should have learned this at home during their preparation phase. This is the most basic measure of maturity... to be able to take care of yourself.
2. They should maintain mutually supportive contact with their extended family.  The relationship evolves to more of a peer to peer relationship than a provider/beneficiary relationship. There should be give and take, not just take. No man is an island and we all need other people in our lives.
3. They should establish their own households and families. They should then begin the process of preparing a new generation to one day leave and start their own households. Reproduction is another measure of  maturity. Without it, the cycle ends.

Once upon a time, people tended to stay close to their family and place of origin. They might live out their whole lives and never travel more than a few miles from their birthplace. Some might have lived in the same house or on the same property with multiple generations of extended family. Households were large.

As time went on, these customs changed. People moved away and settled in cities. Houses were replaced with apartments. Households became more numerous while at the same time becoming more compact.

As the nature of households has changed in response to a changing culture, should we now be open to redefining the nature of the spiritual household? (See Barna Update: Americans Embrace Various Alternatives to a Conventional Church Experience as Being Fully Biblical)

The data indicates that more and more people are in fact leaving the traditional church. It also indicates that almost 1/4th of Americans now get their primary spiritual nourishment from a small group of 20 or less each week and that 6 million are meeting is these small groups but rarely going to traditional church.

Rather than attempting to change the trend, it there a way to take advantage of it? Could this be God's way of pushing us out of our church nests?

In the first century, the disciples were comfortable in Jerusalem and neglected the great commission. So God allowed persecution to drive them from their comfort zones and they took the gospel with them, creating new spiritual households all along the way.

If the current trends hold true, the spiritual landscape will be radically different in a few years.  If we focus our efforts on preparing people to start their own spiritual households while remaining connected to their extended spiritual family, this could be a very fruitful season.

Spiritual Obesity

Obesity results when there is more input than output.

When we take in more nourishment than we are using, the body stores it as fat. As this fat accumulates:

• we have less energy
• our ability to do things is impaired
• our health is impaired
• we are less attractive.

The same is true in the spiritual realm.

When we spend too much time feeding at the spiritual trough compared to the amount of ministry we do, we become spiritually obese. We risk becoming one of those who are "ever learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth." Paul told the Corinthians, "by now you should be teachers..." but they were content to remain immature spectators rather than active participants. It reminds me of one description of a football game: 22 guys running around on the field desperately in need of some rest and 22,000 spectators sitting in the stands desperately in need of some exercise.

With physical obesity, the solution is to decrease intake and increase output. In the spiritual realm, the same applies but with the greater emphasis being on increasing output. I'm not saying you should quit reading your Bible. But maybe instead of attending another Bible study, you could be leading one. Spiritual sustenance is one of those things that seems most effective when put to use sharing with others.

I would love to close here with a lovely platitude about God having mercy on us and helping us to spiritually "get in shape." Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. That's like expecting God to help me lose weight without ever putting down the Cheeto's or getting off the sofa. I wish it worked that way, but it just doesn't.

Battling Obesity

I've struggled with obesity for many years. I've been on more diets than I can count and have lost hundreds of pounds. The only problem is I always found them again. They were right there on the sofa or the recliner waiting (or is it weighting) for me. I am afraid that the only long term solution is increased activity (otherwise known as exercise.) I have to get up off my butt and do the things I know to do. 

The same is true of spiritual obesity. After years of teaching, there is nothing left to do but...

just do it.

visit www.Nike.com/courage

Recommended Reading

The following are Barna Updates

Americans Embrace Various Alternatives to a Conventional Church Experience as Being Fully Biblical

Barna Finds Four Mega-Themes in Recent Research

A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration with Christianity

If you would like to receive free e-mail notification of the release of each new, bi-weekly update on the latest research findings from The Barna Group, you may subscribe to this free service at the Barna web site www.barna.org.

Non-Traditional Church

More and more Americans are now embracing non-traditional expressions of religious life. In a Barna Update entitled "Americans Embrace Various Alternatives to a Conventional Church Experience as Being Fully Biblical," Barna states:

For decades, American Christians, who comprise more than four of our every five adults, assumed they had one legitimate way to practice their faith: through involvement in a conventional church. But new research shows that this mind set is no longer prevalent in the U.S. The latest Barna study shows that a majority of adults now believe that there are various biblically legitimate alternatives to participation in a conventional church.

Many People (and many pastors) seem to be embracing the concept of home churches (among other things) as legitimate expressions of the body of Christ. 

This is a trend which should not be surprising and is not necessarily bad.

For decades, church leaders such as Paul Yongi Cho have been promoting the concept of cell groups or small groups as a key to:

• Evangelism
• Personal relationship development
• Accountability
• personal discipleship
• personal ministry
• in short, practically living out the Christian Life and ministry

The fastest growing churches in the world are the home churches in China.

Most growing churches actively seek to involve their people in some sort or small group ministry, without which, traditional "church" can become merely a spectator sport.

It should not be surprising that some conclude that they can enjoy the small group ministry without having to deal with all the politics, overhead and extra-biblical trappings associates with many traditional churches.

Titanic

If we are in fact facing a crisis among American youth then what is needed is radical change.

I wonder how often our efforts at changing youth ministry are essentially cosmetic and really amount to nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Forrest Berry
--------------------------

Business Process Management

Business process management (BPM) is a method of efficiently aligning an organization with the wants and needs of clients.

The activities which constitute business process management can be grouped into five categories: Design, Modeling, Execution, Monitoring, and Optimization.

Design

Process Design encompasses both the identifying of existing processes and designing the "to-be" process. Areas of focus include: representation of the process flow, the actors within it, alerts & notifications, escalations, Standard Operating Procedures, Service Level Agreements, and task hand-over mechanisms.

Good design reduces the number of problems over the lifetime of the process; a real world analogy can be having an architect design a house. Whether or not existing processes are considered, the aim of this step is to ensure that a correct and efficient theoretical design is prepared.

Modeling

Modeling encompasses takes the theoretical design and introduces combinations of variables, for instance changes in the cost of materials or increased rent to determine how the process might operate under different circumstances.

It also involves running "what-if analysis" on the processes: What if I have 75% of resources to do the same task? What if I want to do the same job for 80% of the current cost?

A real world analogy can be "wind-tunnel" test of an aeroplane or test flights to determine how much fuel it will consume and how many passengers it can carry.

Execution

Put your design in to practice.

Monitoring

Monitoring encompasses the tracking of individual processes so that information on their state can be easily seen and statistics on the performance of one or more processes provided. An example of the tracking is being able to determine the state of a customer order (e.g. ordered arrived, awaiting delivery, invoice paid) so that problems in its operation can be identified and corrected.

In addition, this information can be used to work with customers and suppliers to improve their connected processes. Examples of the statistics are the generation of measures on how quickly a customer order is processed or how many orders were processed in the last month. These measures tend to fit into three categories: cycle time, defect rate and productivity.

The degree of monitoring depends on what information the business wants to evaluate and analyze and how business wants it to be monitored, in real-time or ad-hoc. Here, business activity monitoring (BAM) extends and expands the monitoring tools in generally provided by BPMS.

Process mining is a collection of methods and tools related to process monitoring. The aim of process mining is to analyze event logs extracted through process monitoring and to compare them with an 'a priori' process model. Process mining allows process analysts to detect discrepancies between the actual process execution and the a priori model as well as to analyze bottlenecks.

Optimization

Process optimization includes retrieving process performance information from modeling or monitoring phase and identifying the potential or actual bottlenecks and potential rooms for cost savings or other improvements and then applying those enhancements in the design of the process thus continuing the value cycle of business process management.

De-Churched Christians

According to George Barna in his book Revolution,

Revolution: George Barna: Books ISBN: 1414307586 ISBN-13: 9781414307589

the greatest trend among Christians in America is that an increasing number of dedicated and passionate Christians are leaving the church and finding their life other venues outside the church. Barna calls these people Revolutionaries.

These "Revolutionaries"—by definition, their faith is the highest priority in their lives—are seeking diverse and alternative forms of church, through affinity groups, homeschooling, house churches, the Internet and marketplace ministries.

We estimate that the percentage of Americans who express and experience their faith through the local church will drop from 70% in 2000 to about 30-35% in 2025. And the percentage of people experiencing their faith through an alternative faith-based community will increase from 5% in 2000 to 30-35% in 2025.

This revolution of faith is happening. Pastors should try to find a way for their church to cooperate with it. Whether that happens inside a building, at Starbucks or on the basketball court is irrelevant. Transformation is more about the commitment of your heart than where you hang out on Sunday morning.

Excerpt from the Christianity Today article, The American Church in Crisis, is/was located at:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/outreach/articles/americanchurchcrisis.html

And in the same article...

Ed Stetzer, missiologist and director of the Center for Missional Research at the North American Mission Board (namb.net) of the Southern Baptist Convention, has found similar evidence of spiritual behavior occurring outside church walls. He recently finished a study on alternative faith communities, and found that a growing number of people are finding Christian discipleship and community in places other than their local churches. The study found that 24.5% of Americans now say their primary form of spiritual nourishment is meeting with a small group of 20 or less people every week.

"About 6 million people meet weekly with a small group and never or rarely go to church," Stetzer says. "There is a significant movement happening."

The statistics about young people leaving church are alarming, but the real question is what happens to them after they leave church?

Conventional wisdom suggests that anyone walking with God is attending church somewhere. But is that really valid? We all know people who do not attend church yet are still love God.

In fact, the greatest growth in Christianity today is in China where "church" as we practice it in America is illegal and for all practical purposes impossible. Yet, it is in this environment that Christianity flourishes best. Is that merely a coincidence? or is there something to be learned here?

Could it be that the way we do traditional Church here in America actually impedes the Advance of the gospel?

70% of Youth Leaving Church

According to statistics in Thom Rainer's new book Essential Church?: Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts, 70% of youth will leave church by the time they are 22. (Statistic from pre-release review by Steve Murrell)

According to Barna, 80% will be disengaged by the time they are 29.

We are losing this war. We must develop a new strategy.

Essential Church?: Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts ISBN: 0805443924 ISBN-13: 9780805443929