Rev Bill

George Bullard of The Columbia Partnership gives more ideas on the findings of The Pew Forum Survey Of The US Religious Landscape .

The survey found:

“More that one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion–or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, roughly 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.” [5]

Bullard comments:

1. Even when you provide a strong faith and fellowship background for children who grow up in your congregation, you cannot expect them to be members and leaders of your congregation in adulthood not only because they move to another town, city, state, or country, but because 9 out of 20 of them are switching their religious affiliation or dropping out of public religious practice. You have to provide a strong faith and fellowship background because it is the right and loving thing to do.

2. An increasing number of your members and leaders will not have a lifelong orientation to your congregation, your denomination, or to the Christian faith. They will need basic and simple as well as advanced and complicated understandings of faith and practice. 3. Increasingly congregations will not be able to search for new members among people who are oriented to their denominational ethos. Congregations must be willing to cross various denominational, theological, cultural, religious, and demographic barriers to attract new members.

As I posted about his observations Monday, these findings are not surprising, but they do point out a trend that churches need to address. The ideas that people will continue with the denomination they grew up in — or move and automatically look for a church that is exactly like the church they had been attending — are not accurate. People tend to look for churches that can meet their perceived needs, regardless of the denomination.

This brings me to what I see many churches struggle with:

How can we get past the idea that folks will come because they feel tied to our denomination and begin to find ways to really address their needs?

Which brings me to another struggle:

How do we try to address people’s needs without becoming a part of a “consumer mentality’ where folks feel the church is “about them” and not about God?

I’d love to have some comments here!

You can read the entire Pew Forum Survey Of The US Religious Landscape here and read Bullard’s observations here.

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