14) The Last Bit: What’s the State of the Church in Your Country?

We’re not sure what it’s like for you in the churches in your country, but in the USA, it seems there are opinions across the board on the importance of the church. The Barna Group opened a can of worms in the USA when they surveyed some 4500 adults between May and August of 2013. They say their research could vary in its accuracy, plus or minus 3 points. Either way, it was sobering.

https://www.barna.com/research/americans-divided-on-the-importance-of-church/#.V-hxhLVy6FD

It was a “good news, bad news” kind of survey. On the one hand, around 4 out of 10 said they had been in church during the past week. So that’s good. That’s basically the same answer we’ve heard for decades. Maybe the media have been giving us “fake news” about throngs of people walking out of churches for good. Imagine: Out of the next 10 people you meet anywhere in the USA, there’s a fairly accurate chance that 4 out of the 10 are weekly church-goers! Yay!

However, before you get too excited, there was a fairly telling downward trend going on in the last 4 or 5 years of that survey. And what’s more [warning: bad news], 59% of the Millennials who grew up in church have dropped out at some point along the way. And the number reporting that they haven’t attended church at any point in the past 6 months has doubled — from 25% to 50% — just in the 4 years preceding this survey. 35% say they don’t attend church because the church isn’t relevant.

For the purposes of their survey, they considered participants as Millennials if they were born between 1984 and 2002, “Busters (or Gen-Xers),” if they were born between 1965 and 1983, Boomers if they were born between 1946 and 1964, and Elders if they were born 1945 or earlier.

Learn more about their findings in the little, book, “Sacred Roots: Why the Church Still Matters, available in eBook and paperback for five bucks at…

https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Roots-Frames-eBook-Matters-ebook/dp/B00FJ46X9Y

So what’s the state of the church in the country where YOU live? Please click “comment” following the web version of this item. And thanks in advance for your input.