I recently came across an interesting article titled 5 Disruptive Church Trends That Will Rule 2016. In the article, which was written back in February 2016, the author lists five big trends to watch for in churches throughout 2016.
The 5 trends he listed were:
- Church online will become an advance, not just a supplement to or replacement for church
- Preachers will preach less often
- Experience will trump content
- Passion will beat polish
- Only the most engaged and the curious will attend
I thought he was right on with this article but would love to hear from you. Did you see any of these trends becoming major factors in 2016? In what ways was he right on? What did he maybe get wrong?
Comments
The article is very superficial in its analysis. I agree that we need to move with our changing society, but it's not all about attracting converts or building attendance numbers.
My other gripe is his assertion that less preaching makes for better preaching. Those pastors who wrote 100-150 sermons and messages each year were excellent at exegesis and applying the Word of God. They had lots of practice, and an urgent need to rely on God's guidance every week. I would say they were the better preachers.
Iain Murray, in his book, "Revivals & Revivalism" documents how, from about 1740 until the early 1800s, revivals took place. They took place in churches where the pastor preached the word of God fearlessly, at times for many years, and the church had a deep concern for the "lost". The revivals were always instigated by God and not by man's pleading or emotional gatherings.
Do Calvinists have a deep concern for the lost or do we leave it all to God? If so, why did Jesus command his disciples to go into all the world .......?
I think the author is right about these trends and they all seem to focus on the convenience of the worshipers. Sometimes we lose sight of the first priority of worship which is to bring glory to God, our comfort and convenience should be way down the list.
If those trends are true then the church is on a slippery slope.
"And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:7-8)
Here are what I see to be the most disturbing trends:
1. redefinition of the Gospel to be more of a social Gospel along the line of classical liberalism as see in some writings of the leaders of the Emergent Church movement.
2. removal of God's wrath from the atonement. Substitutionary atonement is divine child abuse. Jesus suffered our wrath to become an example of how to overcome human violence.
3. universalism replacing the doctrine of limited atonement.
4. there seems to be not enough preaching that fits this description stated by John Piper: " a sermon is is an expository exultation over the glories of God revealed in his word.”
5. the loss of the authority of God's Word. The Bible has become a collection of stories about God which become authoritative as the Spirit applies it. Karl Barth's view seems to have gotten a hold in churches.
6. loss of Christian identity. It is said we are all "broken people now." What about "new creations?" With the loss of Christian identity comes the loss of concepts of mortification and vivification.
When pastors or churches adopt these disturbing trends they do so in the name of being relevant to our culture. However it is these very things that make Christianity irrelevant because its no longer Christianity. No wonder why people are leaving our denomination or others.
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