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August 2025

August 14, 2025

Christianity’s Improved Social Status

"As the decline in religious attendance has slowed, the past few years have also seen...

April 2025

April 15, 2025

Bad Theology Causes Church Decline

Christopher D. Raymond looks at the recent data about the decline in church affiliation and...

August 2024

August 23, 2024

“You can belong and never believe”

In San Francisco, the cool place to be is in church. That is to say,...

May 2024

May 16, 2024

September 2023

September 06, 2023

Are Changes in the Church Contributing to De-Churching?

Over the last few decades, church attendance and affiliation have dropped dramatically. Over those same...

April 2023

April 12, 2023

Should Churches Hide Their Controversial Beliefs?

Critics of the "He Gets Us" campaign and "seeker-sensitive" congregations are complaining that the people...

June 2022

June 10, 2022

Politicians Have Been Borrowing Megachurch Tactics

Bill Bishop, who has studied the social dimension of politics, says that beginning with George...

January 2022

January 28, 2022

The Metaverse Gives Us Metachurch

Now we have churches in the metaverse, in which the avatars of worshippers meet in...

January 17, 2022

How Should Churches Respond to Cultural Hostility?

Churches took one approach to relating to the culture when it was pro-Christian. It took...

March 2021

March 04, 2021

What to Do About the Backlash Against Evangelicals

When evangelicalism was popular, virtually all denominations tried to emulate it, resulting in a loss...

May 2020

May 07, 2020

Church Decline Isn’t Reversed by Contemporary Music & Worship Styles

According to the new American Enterprise study of American religion, the decline in church membership and...

April 2020

April 30, 2020

The End of Big Churches?

Big, densely-populated cities are being hit hardest by the coronavirus epidemic. Big gatherings in general--as...

January 2020

January 23, 2020

Church Growth by Kicking Out Old People

A vital, growing church has lots of young families. A church in Minnesota wants to...

October 2019

October 22, 2019

Multiple Congregations with One Video Pastor

In "multi-site" churches, a congregation has multiple "campuses," sometimes spread across the country, all of...

September 2019

September 20, 2019

The Problem with Rebranding the Church

Hans Fiene of Lutheran Satire outdoes himself with Mr. Thompson and the Vicar Rebrand.

May 2019

May 29, 2019

Megachurches Discovering Liturgy & Traditional Christianity?

The Church Growth Movement led to a surge of megachurches--congregations of 2,000 and more--built on...

August 2018

August 14, 2018

The Implosion of the Church Growth Movement?

Willow Creek is imploding, due primarily to a #MeToo sex scandal involving its influential celebrity...

February 2018

February 22, 2018

Graham’s Passing as the End of an Era

In addition to being the supreme evangelist, Billy Graham did much to establish evangelicalism as...

May 2017

May 04, 2017

Does mainline liberal Protestantism have just 23 years left?

More on the plight of mainline liberal Protestantism. . . . Evangelical scholar Ed Stetzer calculates...

October 2016

October 07, 2016

In defense of small churches

Most churches throughout history and throughout the world have been small. Today more than one...

December 2015

December 04, 2015

How megachurches are doing

Megachurches continue to attract big numbers, but, according to a new study, people aren't attending...

May 2015

May 22, 2015

Traditional style, progressive substance

We blogged about Rachel Held Evans, her point that Millennials can't stand the church growth...

May 18, 2015

How a contemporary sees contemporary worship

Robert Burns prayed for the power "To see ourselves as others see us!" (To a ...

May 05, 2015

“The sacraments are what make the church relevant”

Yesterday we blogged about Rachel Held Evan's contention that church growth techniques designed to reach...

May 04, 2015

Church growth tactics don’t work with Millennials

Rachel Held Evans was something of an evangelical renegade who left the church for awhile,...

February 2015

February 11, 2015

How pastors and other leaders deal with inner chaos

There are lots of books about leadership, particularly leadership in churches. The book that won...

November 2014

November 13, 2014

Church design that appeal to Millennials

The Christian pollsters and research company the Barna Group has researched what kind of church...

September 2014

September 18, 2014

“Revangelical”

Brandon Robertson is one of the spokesmen for the "Revangelical" movement, the prefix meaning, in...

September 10, 2014

Should Christianity try to be “cool”?

Brett McCracken, author of Hipster Christianity, argues that there are intrinsic contradictions inherent in the...