Mainline Insanity

In today's news there was a release regarding a large congregation in Colorado that is part of the Anglican Community.  Because of the attitude toward ordaining homosexual priests in the American Episcopal Church this 2500 member congregation is splitting away from the mother church.  This is happening all across America.  The great divide is accelerating.

 

I have commented on this before.  Mainline denominations of all stripes are on a self destruct course.  When the pressure is on they either revert to whatever they were 50 years ago in the name of "Core Values" or they try to adapt some "Relevant" (read that Homosexual) agenda to attract new members.  Neither strategy works.  Never has and never will.

 

The leadership in these Church organizations have no trust in the Creative Anointing of the Holy Ghost to bring life and liberty to the faith communities they try and fail to lead.

 

800 churches close per week in America.  The bulk are Mainline Denominations.  In the fellowship I am involved with, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, the percentage of decline is about the same as the national average.  The American Lutheran Church ELCA is a little faster.

 

Missouri Synod Church Membership dribbles off:

1990    2,602,569 Members    6016 Congregations

1995    2,594,555 Members    6154 Congregations

2005    2,489,300 Members   

2006    2,463,747 Members 

 

I don't have Congregation Numbers past 1995  but its obvious that even with the "Burst" of new congregations there are fewer and fewer people attending.  This decline will continue in all mainline churches until they collapse.  Trying to maintain 6000 Mo Synod congregations nationwide will continue to be a bigger and bigger burden as fewer and fewer people attend these churches.  The budgets will bust, pastors will quit and churches dissolve.

 

Meanwhile "Other" Churches prosper.  Why?  Other Churches plant new.  Mainline dies.

 

Why?  A lack of sensitivity to the things of the Spirit.  Doing the same things over and over again in the flesh and hoping for better results.

 

That's insanity.  That's spiritual suicide.

 

The good news is Pentecostal Churches are springing up all around.  If the mainline churches don't turn those buildings into condos or nightclubs after they close the Spirit Filled Congregations will be there to pick the pieces.  From this 2006 Article: Pentecostal and so-called non-mainline Protestant churches show continuing growth in the United States, while mainstream churches continue to lose
membership, according to the latest annual figures on US church membership

 

There is an easy and better way to do this without falling off the end of the earth.  Become the Church people would attend if they had a chance.  It looks nothing at all like the Church you joined, formed or your parents baptized you in.  People are hungry for the real thing.  Mainline feeds them pabulum.  Churches are filled with starving Christians.  They must dry up like the fruitless fig tree Jesus Cursed.  It's time to stop playing church and feed the sheep.

 

Good people have poured their lives into a lost cause.  Salvation was within reach.  The graveyard of empty religion will claim these empty shells. Jesus was saying all along, "There is a better way, walk ye in it."

Tradition has made the blood of Jesus of no account.  It was so easy to do it right.  I may sound bitter. I'm just sad. What a waste.