Why is the church shrinking in the United Kingdom? You won't believe it...

A survey in the United Kingdom explains why churches are shrinking--and it stands the usual explanations on their head.

Care to guess why residents of Great Britain and Ireland haven't been attending church much lately? The answer is astonishing and refreshing: a large ecumenical survey reports it's because the churches have backed down from being who they are. Some excerpts:

"A new survey of thousands of churchgoers in the UK says the opposite however, and indicates that the emptying of the churches has been caused mainly by preaching and pastoral care that has been emptied of moral or doctrinal Christian content."

...

"The results of the year-long survey of 14,000 UK residents by the interdenominational Ecumenical Research Committee has been called ‘surprising’ by mainstream secular and Christian media. The overwhelming response is to call on churches 'to robustly defend moral values with conviction and courage and cease being "silent" and "lukewarm" in the face of moral and social collapse.'"

...

"91% of responses followed a uniform theme that the decline in traditional Christian moral and doctrinal teaching has caused the outflux of congregations. They listed the lack of apologetics, the reasoned defence and explanation of Christian doctrine, as one of the main reasons for the collapse. 'It’s a myth today that the people of this country have rejected Christianity; they simply haven’t been told enough about it to either accept or reject it,' wrote one respondent."

This is great news, if the church can respond to it the right way. There will undoubtedly be some proud leaders who will say, "The people are naive and mistaken." There may be some, though, who will see the door God has open in Britain.

Thanks to Christdot for getting the word out on this. See also the report from the Times of London.

Posted: Wed - March 9, 2005 at 08:48 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Why is the church shrinking in the United Kingdom? You won't believe it...

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson