the encounter

John Ortberg recently released a series of snapshots of America and faith. To many his findings will be surprising, shocking, and alarming. To others it will be a continued confirmation of a severe weakness of the American church in this generation.

Snapshot: The recently released American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) indicates that faith is going down across the board. The number of people who identify themselves as Christian has decreased by 11 percent in a generation. The single fastest-growing category when it comes to religious affiliation is “None,” which grew from 8 percent to 15 percent since 1990.

Snapshot: In the entertainment section of The San Francisco Chronicle recently, someone asked Mick LaSalle, the movie critic, what kind of movie will never be re-made. He said that the one kind of movie that is most unlikely to be re-made today is one that assumes faith as a kind of national backdrop.

Snapshot: I was talking to some young church leaders recently about how, twenty years ago, if someone wanted to look for a model of what an effective church might look like in the future, they would generally go to a place like Willow Creek or Saddleback. But these younger leaders said it was no longer apparent where they should go to see what church might look like in another twenty years.

Snapshot: Tom Klegg and Warren Bird noted that if the unchurched population in the US were its own nation, it would be the fifth most populated nation on the planet, after China, the former Soviet Union, India, and Brazil.

Snapshot: A religion reporter for the LA Times wrote an article, and later a book, describing how he lost his faith in the process of covering his beat. He said that article brought in exponentially more positive emails than anything else he’d ever written.

These snapshots are notan indictment against the world, but against a generation of Christians who are asleep, afraid, and self-focused. May they move us to greater humility, sacrifice, dependence, and grace. May we quit our “church-going” and start “church-being”.

It is time for a new expression of broken attempts at what we have called outreach, fellowship, discipleship, and church.

When will we finally “get” it?

Tags: American Religious Identification Survey, John Ortberg, Snapshots