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The Great Dechurching Will Hurt Poor People

Discussion in 'Pastoral Ministries' started by robt.k.fall, May 29, 2024.

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  1. robt.k.fall

    robt.k.fall Member

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    The Great Dechurching Will Hurt Poor People
    May 29, 2024 at 4:53 pm
    Kevin Schaal


    > Churchgoing is good for the poor and vulnerable in a variety of ways: it gives people moral guidance on how to live their lives. It gives them opportunities to directly serve others as a community. It results in tithes that are then spent on a wide variety of charitable works. These things are not salvation, and it is certainly possible for someone to be warming a pew for 50 years without a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. But any person is far more likely to find Jesus while nodding off in a pew than watching Netflix in bed.
    >
    > It’s brutal to look at any decline this severe in any set of churches. While some conservatives may feel the temptation to smugly remark about the results of theological liberalism, that feels about as appropriate as a lecture about the dangers of drug addiction during the funeral of a young person who died of an overdose. Conservative evangelicals are facing their own demographic challenges, and non-denominational megachurches are overtaking denominational identity. The Great Dechurching is bad news for all Christians, no matter how you slice it.

    Source: The Great Dechurching Will Hurt Poor People ( The Great Dechurching Will Hurt Poor People )

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    #1 robt.k.fall, May 29, 2024
  2. Wingman68

    Wingman68 Well-Known Member
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    Perhaps if the churches hadn’t strayed from their roots, their people wouldn’t have strayed from them. I see myself in the second paragraph but I will not go along to get along. This is a typical blame shift from a liberal mindset.
     
    #2 Wingman68, May 30, 2024
  3. Silverhair

    Silverhair Well-Known Member

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    Dechurching as you call it is not based on financial position it is based on personal choice. There are as many temptations before the "poor" as the "rich". No one is forced to turn away from God or to stay away from church.

    Due to a number of factors I can not attend church in person but I can and do listen to two and often three services. I find it strange that many will blame all their troubles on anything but themselves and we always have those that will support them in their blame game.
     
    #3 Silverhair, May 30, 2024
  4. Deacon

    Deacon Well-Known Member
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    Having moved recently, my wife and I have had the opportunity to visit quite a few churches over the past few months.

    Many of the churches are very good; clean, well maintained buildings, quite a variety of good music, good sermons and good, friendly people.

    The one that impressed me most was not necessarily the one that had the best of all of these but the one that displayed the clearest mission for reaching out into their community.

    Where I live is quite rural. We travel more than half an hour to a nearby town. We are no longer as young or spry as we used to be. But I still desire to be part of a ministry that is alive with the desire to reach out to those who are needy, whether they know it or not.

    Rob
     
    #4 Deacon, May 30, 2024
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