The Failure of the American Church

There's no denying that the American church faces a crisis of relevance in this day and age. Currently, attendance at American churches today is rapidly dwindling. According to George Barna, the number of adults in American who no longer attend church has almost doubled since 1991, even though the adult population has grown 15% over that time. Adult church attendance in the USA is at only 18% and is dropping lower each year. By the year 2025, the church will have lost half of its market share in the United States. Clearly, interest in church these days isn’t what it used to be.
But why? Amid today’s culture with an unprecedented openness to spirituality, should our churches not be bursting at the seams with new attenders? Sure, some of our churches might be still be growing, but the vast majority of that growth today comes from transfers within our same Christian subculture rather than from new conversions. Why are so many interested in spirituality today, but so few are interested in attending church?
Dwindling attendance isn’t the only problem besetting the American church today. Despite the church’s best efforts, the cultural chasm between itself and contemporary culture grows larger with each passing year. Barna’s recent research shows that the major influencers of American culture today are law, music, movies, TV, internet, family, and books. Among the second tier of influencers, schools, peers, newspapers, radio, businesses appear. Consistently, surveys show the church appears among those institutions with little to no influence in today’s culture. It seems that the gap is growing larger between a godless culture and an insulated church who isn’t quite sure how to respond.
In the face of such a dire situation, the church instinctively responds by simply tinkering with the same model it’s always used; attempts are made to improve the sermon’s relevance, expand the children’s programs, rev up the worship band, and add more outreach events, for instance, in response to this dilemma. Yet in the face of its rapid decline in influence and a fluid, postmodern society, is simple tinkering on the old attractional, “come to us” model of church still the answer to our ills? Is more of the same still the answer, or is an entirely new paradigm of church needed in our day if we are to bridge the ever-enlarging gap between ourselves and the culture around us?
We will explore this answer in our next post.