From The Guardian-One of the most persistent myths about contemporary Christianity is that only evangelical churches grow while liberal Christianity is doomed because it's too wishy-washy. This is believed with pleasure by evangelicals, with despair by ageing liberals, and without thought by the chattering classes. As you'd expect, it's nonsense, and we have just had more proof.
To judge from the spin on the Church of England's most recent report, everything is completely marvellous: churches all over the country are growing, especially congregations outside traditional church buildings. Nearly one in five of the congregations surveyed had grown in the 10-year period covered. On the other hand, a rather larger proportion – a bit more than one in four – had declined, while most had stayed steady.
This comes from a conference on Church Growth (as the Church of England calls the field of church decline) to consider the latest and most accurate statistics on the matter.
More here-
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2014/jan/18/church-growth-theology-evangelical-lesson-liberals
No comments:
Post a Comment