A short thread on church growth/decline in the West:

I just finished David Hempton’s “Methodism: Empire of the Spirit.” He gives (among other things) a number of reasons for the decline of Methodism, and they are strikingly relevant for churches today.

1) Loss of focus. “Late Victorian churches tried so hard to reclaim the wider secular culture that they overreached themselves and failed both to nurture their inner core of associational members and to concentrate on congregational recruitment.”

2) Displacement by the state. “The problem was compounded when the state, with incomparably greater resources, took over many erstwhile religious functions, including education and welfare, leaving the churches almost high and dry.”

3) Self-interest. “The propensity of Europe’s old state churches to align themselves with forces of conservatism and traditionalism (out of perceived self-interest) in a period of fast-moving political, economic and social change was nothing short of disastrous.”

4) Middle-classism. “If one pauses to look at the differential ratios of priests to people in a host of European cities, one finds the same pattern of conspicuous underprovision in working-class neighbourhoods compared with middle-class districts.”

5) Low demands. “Mainline denominations decline as they make fewer demands on their own members, have no very obvious recruitment mechanism, and steadily lose ground to new, more energetic movements.”

6) Compromise. “Methodism could not sustain the same momentum and commitment from its followers when the gap between the ideals of scriptural holiness defined internally by the movement and achieved externally in the wider society narrowed to quite respectable proportions.”

Whoever has ears, let them hear.