Death or Resurrection? Christian Church Leader Responses to External Change

Christian churches in many Western countries have been confronted with a general decline in church membership and participation due to significant, society-wide shifts. This study seeks to better understand how church leaders at the local level work through the challenges posed by these external developments. Using a combination of semi-structured interviews and panel sessions conducted in The Netherlands, our analysis reveals a wide variety of change responses by local church leaders, even within church traditions. Based on these differences, we develop a process model of how and why local church leaders will differently engage with external change, thus opening up the debate around the contingencies and activities that may support local churches and their leaders in reversing local church decline. Our research also highlights the importance of local level processes and dynamics in understanding how Christian churches interact with their external contexts.

Leadership functions and church decline in the Reformed Churches in South Africa: Considering Ephesians 4:11–16

Multiple studies from Ephesians 4:11–16 have been carried out that focused mostly on aspects of the believers’ priesthood. This article highlights the significance of adhering to the biblical instructions of God as a means to attain church growth. The church was instituted by God and as such he directs the process of church growth. Nevertheless, the ongoing membership decline in the World Protestant Churches globally and the Reformed Churches in South Africa (RCSA) locally is an indicator that the church is failing to meet the will and purpose of God with the church. In the World Protestant Churches and the RCSA, the decline trends are basically the same, and the loopholes are pointing at church leadership. This article seeks to describe the leadership failure to uphold the blueprint of church health according to Ephesians 4:11–16. These are the keys to real church revitalisation and growth. The exegesis of the problem verse (Eph 4:11) was carried out to indicate the various leadership gifts that are necessary for church growth to occur. The Bible and related literature are the sources of data. This article identifies how an omission of the gift-oriented tasks in a congregation leads to church decline.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Within the context of the continued church decline within Western Christianity (Christendom), this article reflects on the historical, mostly ‘Practical theological’ focus on church growth by exegeting the source texts from a ‘missiological perspective’. This study is also very conscious of modernity’s onslaught on the evangelical church through the therapeutic and managerial revolutions, which functions with an attitude of anti-clericalism when focusing on church growth.

Strategic Youth Management: Returning the Youth to Church in Australia

In a brief review of scholarship, this paper presents the general assessment of Church decline among the Youth in Australia. Journals, books, magazines, and websites information were the resources employed in the analyses. It was discovered that the spiritual and personal growth, discipleship role, and mission life/work determine the young adult's understanding of the church and environment. Lack of interest, busy life schedule, political issues, and people-pleasing were found to have triggered why the young ones have declined in their church attendance. The review recommended that effective youth ministry is possible if there is a specific and time slot for busy life schedule people; pastors adopt strategic ministry to the youth and focus on enhancing the youth's philosophical thoughts. The findings would help appropriate youth ministry in the contemporary context. Future researchers may consider the explanatory or exploratory mixed-methods design.

The Missional Future of Free Churches in a Secular Context: A German Case Study

Similar to most Western nations, Germany has experienced a history of secularization, resulting in church decline. However, some Christian communities have been less affected by decline. The historical free churches (Freikirchen), usually of an evangelical nature, have not only developed a more explicit missionary identity than the mainline churches, some of them have also been able to experience church growth against the larger trends. In this paper quantitative and qualitative data are presented based on a study of the Bund Freier evangelischer Gemeinden (BFeG) in Germany. These data show that general church growth and conversion growth are correlated, that young churches grow better (in both respects) than older churches, that the net conversion growth (conversions minus decline) of younger and older churches is overall largely the same, and that growth results in Berlin outperform the results in other cities and in the BFeG as a whole. These results are put into context by extended case studies of two churches, one old and one young, and they are discussed with a view to existing studies of (free church) mission in the West.

Learning to Lament: Complaining to God about the Decline of the Church

In this paper I want to consider using the book of Lamentations as a metaphor for understanding the suffering occasioned by the decline of the Western church, specifically the drastic fall in church membership and participation witnessed in Britain from the mid-twentieth century to the present. It is my contention that the church needs a way in which to speak its own hurt and disappointment with God, its heart-cry and its complaint, and that Lamentations provides a theological framework in which it might parse the various elements of its grief with the aim of understanding church decline within the providence of God. Lament gives the church the permission and the language to blame God for its decline, and to seek God as its singular hope for a future.

Secular Apathy and the Public Paradox of the Gospel: Towards Radical Inculturated Proclamation

This article engages the condition of religious apathy in western secular society, drawing on the apparent pessimism of secularization as a creative catalyst for re-imagining the scope of public mission. It first highlights the reality of religious apathy as observed sociologically, and briefly surveys varied missiological responses to western church decline. An alternative response, ‘Radical Inculturated Proclamation’ is then offered, embodying the inherently paradoxical nature of the Gospel as both drastically distinct and culturally embedded within the religiously apathetic western context. This concept is further explored with a nuanced reflection on the intentionally ‘absurd’ idea of self-aware street preaching and the possible implications for creative interruption of contemporary public spaces. Incorporating the perceived inappropriateness of such practices is deliberate, enabling active embodiment of the Gospel’s inculturated radicality within a public sphere with no apparent ears to hear. Such a proposal contributes to public theological engagement by reconstructing the cultural and theological limitations of contemporary kerygmatic expression within a post-Christendom context.

The Established Churches, Church Growth, and Secularization in Imperial Britain, c.1830–1930

This chapter considers the question of whether church establishments, representing the alliance of church and state, contributed to church decline. It does so through a study of the established Church of England and the established Church of Scotland during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chapter argues that these churches experienced a remarkable resurgence in the decades after 1830—the period representing the height of British world influence—building thousands of new churches, conducting a vibrant home and overseas mission, educating much of the British youth, mobilizing lay support, and raising significant financial donations to supplement their historic tithes and endowments. The motivation behind this growth was largely a sense of Christian responsibility for the higher interests of the British peoples and Empire. Although this revival of the established churches waned after about 1900, there is no evidence that established religion was a cause of church decline in Britain.