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Church of Christ in Decline

News - Current Events

Contributed by Phil Spadaro

Monday, 29 January 2007

In Decline

The Christian Chronicle has two articles concerning the state of the church of Christ in the United States. The first article focuses on perspectives, observations and opinions of members of the church. The second article is primarily a synopsis of statistics and trends from after World War II to today. A third page contains a map and spreadsheet for you hardcore bean-counters out there.

The news is not good. There has been a decline in membership (compared to national population growth) almost across the board. Any gains do not match the extraordinary population growth this country has seen since the early 80s. The ICOC numbers (Click here and here) have been stagnant as well. However, the Christian Churches have had significant growth; but at what cost. Many of the Christian Churches have a adopted an ambiguous stand on salvation issues (i.e. baptism for the forgiveness of sins). Perhaps these numbers will sober us toward unity and helping one another grow and retain convictions from the bible concerning matters of salvation.

What are your observations? Have you seen growth or decline? What about the matter of "softening" our stance on salvation matters and the proportionate growth that follows? Let me know your thoughts and feedback.

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Comments

Christian churches
Written by Alan on 2007-01-29 05:34:16

Maybe the rumored ambiguous stand on conversion in the Christiah church is overblown. Look at the 2005 megachurch list:

http://www.christianstandard.com/pdfs/lro.63315-megachart3.pdf

and notice how many of the congregations have had over 100 baptisms. Quite a few have had more than one baptism per ten in attendance. I doubt the Louisville, Ky church accomplished 1,399 baptisms that year by diminishing the importance of baptism.

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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 30 January 2007 )

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