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Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Decline of the Church
Jason Clarke has posted some thoughts and notes from a lecture on the decline of the church in the UK. It is fascinating reading, and great to get some real flesh on the often anecdotal statement "the church attendance is decreasing".
One of the major things to note for me is the difference between the UK and the US. SO much of church talk is compared to the US, which forgets that there is a background church attendance of 40% there compared to less than 7.5% [1998 figure] here.
Here are some of Jason's thoughts:
5. Surveys on church attendance in UK show: 1979 - 12%, 1989 - 10%, 1998 - 7.5%. The trend is downards
6. Anecdotally, the figure is much much lower in urban places, maybe 1%, and sometimes higher in rural areas with low population densities.
7. Reminded me again of how different the UK is the USA. The UK is secular, the US is a religious nation (over 40% attendance/connection to church)
8. People are occasional attendees, the role of regular attendance is gone from most churches.
9. People have their own liturgical calendar. In the country it can be around harvest, mothering sunday etc. I wonder if in urban areas it is around public holidays that are now vacation times. The church calendar now marks peoples vacation lives. How do we live the church calendar when peoples liturgy is something very different?
11. National Census in 2001, optional question on religion, had 71% of UK self selecting as Christian! Was this people believing and not belonging, where are they getting their christian input from? Or is it people selecting Christian as an ethnic statement, i.e ‘Not Muslim’, and a selection against atheism, i.e most people believe in God, and if they aren’t muslim will still opt for Christian when questioned. In other words they saw this survey as ‘do you believe in god?’
14. Despite downward trend of church, 97% of people opt for a religious funeral! Reminded me again of place for connection to our world in funerals for evangelism.
15. Also 20% of children are baptized, another key place for church to meet people. Weddings down to 40% by church, but still a huge proportion.
19. In 1851, 39% of population at best were in attendance at church, and 50% of those were not in c.ofe churches
24. First and Second generation of children growing up who have been taught nothing about christianity, huge implications for our evangelism!
You'd better head over here to read the rest [and/or take a look at his notes!]Labels: church, mission
Posted by: Mark | 11:51 am
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