The future church

We hear a lot these days about dechurching, deconstruction, and decline. Church attendance in America is dropping. Is this a crisis or merely a correction? Is it more of a problem or an opportunity? What can we expect for the future of the American church landscape?

I’m not a prophet or the son of a prophet (Amos 7:14), but I was asked recently to speak to some church leaders about that question. Here are six answers I proposed.

1. The church’s future is certain. 

Amid much hand-wringing and prognostication, we must start with one absolutely sure truth: the church has a future. Our Lord Jesus Christ said so: “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).

Because Jesus promised he will build his church, we should have profound optimism about the future. Yes, your local church (or mine) may fold, split, or shrink. Individual churches and denominations will rise and fall. But the church as a whole will thrive. Anytime you feel disheartened about what’s happening in America, look at what God is doing in, say, the Global South and be encouraged. Jesus is building his worldwide church, just as he said.

2. The church’s future is complicated.

According to Jim Davis and Michael Graham, about 15 percent of American adults have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. And the Pew Research Center projects that over the next 50 years, Americans who claim no religious affiliation at all (“Nones”) will rise to between one-third and one-half of the population. That’s sobering. But as you ponder headlines about declining church attendance and the growth of the Nones, consider these contrasting statistics: 

64 percent of Americans identify as Christian

43 percent identify as Protestant

35 percent identify as evangelical/born-again

Half of black Americans identify as evangelical Christians

Latinos are the fastest-growing evangelical population

80 percent of teenagers with evangelical/born-again parents also identify as such

Individual churches and denominations will rise and fall. But the church as a whole will thrive.

 

The data suggests the future of the church is complicated. It won’t be linear, monolithic, or predictable. Just look at what’s happening in Christian higher education: in the past 12 months, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary announced plans to sell its main campus, Trinity International University shuttered its residential undergraduate programs, and King’s College in Manhattan announced it may shut down too. Yet simultaneously, seven major seminaries have seen enrollment growth in each of the past five years. Is Christian higher education dying or growing? Well, it’s complicated. And so is the future of the church.

3. The church’s future is conservative.

In 2005, the United Church of Christ (UCC) became the first mainline Protestant denomination to officially embrace gay marriage. They expected this progressive stance to result in a growth boom. In 2006, with great optimism, the UCC announced the ambition to plant more than 1,600 new congregations by 2021.

Over that 15-year period, however, the denomination’s membership declined by more than 40 percent; 60 percent of its congregations now have fewer than 50 people; and in 2021 it sold its national headquarters to pay bills.

This story shouldn’t surprise; it’s the story of mainline Protestantism over the past 60 years. In 1960, the seven mainline denominations boasted 30 million members. Now they have 13 million. Writing at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, John Lomperis observes, “Churches that . . . reject clear biblical teaching on sexual morality can expect dramatic, long-term, and irreversible membership decline.” 

The numbers don’t lie: theological liberalism leads to stagnation and decay. Whatever future the American church has, it’ll lie in the hands of those who embrace historic Christian orthodoxy. 

4. The church’s future is contested.

Various factions are vying to define the American church’s future. The ex-evangelicals want a deconstructionist future. The meta-church enthusiasts want an online future. The culture warriors want a combative future. The wokesters want a progressive future. The nationalists want a Christendom future. And so on.

The numbers don’t lie: theological liberalism leads to stagnation and decay. 

And many of these people are in your church contending for their tribe’s future, like a family vacation where all the kids are fighting in the back seat.

The way forward is to realize this is the new normal. American society is fragmented, and the future of the church is contested. The days of an “evangelical consensus” (if there ever was such a thing) are behind us. But rather than descend into tribalism and quarrelling, we should make our case for the church’s future boldly and charitably, showing love and good humour toward those who disagree. We should develop a habit of “correcting [our] opponents with gentleness [so that] God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 2:24–25). We should be quick to admit our faults and failures, delighting in God’s love for us in Jesus.

If you’re going to lead in the church, you must be willing to fight for orthodoxy, purity, and gospel integrity. As Michael Graham put it, “We need non-anxious leaders who aren’t afraid to be in a perpetual three-front war with the secular left, the secular right, and the world/flesh/Devil.” In short, we need multi-directional leaders.

5. The church’s future is corporeal.

Earlier this year, I received a marketing email from a large Christian parachurch organization inviting me to a “metaverse church summit.” As I researched the experts leading the summit, I recognized a man who’d been a church planter in my city; I’d sent a few folks his way to help him assemble a core team. He spent two years trying to plant a church, never achieved critical mass, and then ran out of money and shut down the church.

Yet here he was, leading a “digital church network.” I’m not exactly sure what that is, but the fact that a digital church movement is being led by someone who hasn’t led an analog church shows the problem with this approach.

Don’t believe the “metaverse church” hype. The future of the church is corporeal—physical and embodied. After all, as social neuroscience expert, Matthew Lieberman has shown, “Our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental than our need for food or shelter.” We shouldn’t need a scientist to tell us this; we learned it the hard way during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Don’t believe the ‘metaverse church’ hype. The future of the church is corporeal—physical and embodied.

 

Many of us are familiar with Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He taught that the most basic human needs are physiological; once those are met, we can “ascend the pyramid” to address needs for safety, love and belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. But according to Lieberman, Maslow got one thing wrong. Mammals are born helpless and rely on social connections to meet their physical needs. Thus our most basic needs are social, not physical.

Even if the metaverse is the massive disrupter some think it will be, it’ll never replace our need for embodied social connection. 

6. The church’s future is countercultural.

The church in America has long been plagued by the perils of enculturation. In the words of Richard Lovelace,

If the church has not fully appropriated the life and redemptive benefits of Jesus Christ, . . . either it will suffer destructive enculturation, absorbing elements of its host cultures which it should discern and suppress as unholy, or . . . protective enculturation, fusing itself with certain aspects of Christianized culture until the gospel is thought to be indissolubly wedded to those cultural expressions.

Lovelace regards enculturation as a “rust” forming on the church’s witness. To shake the rust loose, the gospel must be disenculturated: “Disenculturation . . . is vital to the church’s missionary expansion. . . . The gospel is free to become encultured—to wear many forms of expressions like clothing when the need arises—only when it has been disenculturated.”

I pray that the church's future will be one where the church does the work of disenculturation so it becomes robustly countercultural. What we need are neither “relevant” churches (destructive enculturation) nor culture-war churches (protective enculturation). We need churches with joyful, thick, gospel countercultures that invite people into and embody a new way of life. Churches exist as a “city within the city”—or a small town!—gracefully affirming what can be affirmed but opposing what should be opposed.

Some aspects of this future fill me with anticipation; others perplex and daunt me. But I draw strength from our starting truth: Jesus will build his church, and he’s given us the joy of working alongside him. So let’s get to work.