More reasons why Michael Spencer thinks <a href="evangelical Christianity is about to collapse in this country:
3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.
4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.
5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to “do good” is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.
6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.
7. The money will dry up.
I would challenge #4, based on my experience with classical Christian schools, homeschoolers, and now Patrick Henry College, all of which are outdoing secularist education in its own terms.
What is the problem with denominations? I can’t think of anyone, from anywhere on the theological spectrum, that is particularly happy with his denomination’s hierarchies and bureaucracies these days.
What do you think of his categories: megachurches, dying churches, and fragile churches? I’d have to challenge that one too. A megachurch that teaches the prosperity gospel rather than the gospel of Christ is already dead, no matter how many people attend. And assertions that a particular church is “dead” or “dying”–usually said of churches that are not growing or whose members are aging or, often, that are not exciting–are deeply offensive to me. To think in these terms is to fall into a theology of glory, as opposed to a theology of the cross.
And yet, does Mr. Spencer have some points?
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