(By Thomas S. Rainer) Please don’t shoot the messenger. And please wait on additional data and research that will be more positive and helpful. But please read my words closely and carefully. I am troubled by one major aspect of the research we just conducted. You can peruse the details of our research at my previous blog post. Simply stated, we conducted a random sample of churches
with data in 2013 and 2016. The margin of error of the research is +/- 3.1 percent. It’s an accurate study – very accurate. In the previous post, I shared that 65 percent of churches are declining or plateaued. For most of us, that number was better than the conventional “wisdom” we have heard. In that sense it was good news. CONTINUE
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Faith is ONLY a gift of God, and one can plant the seeds of the gospel and another can water but God causes the growth and unless God builds the house it doesn’t stand and many more truths.
Also declining churches may be prophetic, part of the great falling away and part of in the last day’s people will no longer endure sound doctrine etc etc etc..
and ‘grow the church’..like it’s some sort of business..? Hope not but have heard some seminarians say the ‘got into it’ because it’s a ‘good job to have’ etc etc etc.
finally many leave some churches because there no longer relevant, and I don’t mean like those compromising worldly minded churches that seek to receive evil as if good and thereby remain relevant to an evil age, but churches aren’t relevant in that they aren’t preaching the whole council of God and also not covering the seasons (to everything there’s a time and season) and these sure seem to be the season of birth pangs leading to the season of the anti-christ which is the season just prior to the return of the Lord, but before the return of the Lord what will the season be, persecution for one, and such things as people will say ‘blessed are those without nursing babies and small child in those day’s’..where’s a sermon on those sorts of things? How many pulpits are warning there kids not to join today’s military as another example?…
many (not all) churches are out of touch with the age we’ve entered, the age of the end of the age and the return of the King the Lord Jesus Christ in which all whose names are not found to be written in His book of life will be eternally judged for uncovered sin and rejection of Christ, churches aren’t covering and giving warning and sound advice like beware of joining the military and showing why not to as just one example…and more, but maybe they’ll lose their tax exempt status if they covered many current things?
we’re NOT to forsake fellowship one with another especially as the day’s draw near (and there’s something, it mentions the day draws near, do many sermons that are heard mention anything like that? not many) so many leave a building and find fellowship elsewhere but have fellowship yes and make disciples yes, can’t all things be about ‘the end times’ for sure!, but neither can these things and prophecy be left out which seems alot of what happens.