Old Church and New Evangelism

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An article in the October 2009 edition of the journal Missiology titled "Old Church and New Evangelism" speaks directly to Christianity's waning influence in the West. Author Kenneth Ross looks at his own church's decline. He heads the Mission Council for the Church of Scotland and is wondering aloud how the church can restart evangelism in areas have been assumed to be Christian for 1000 years or more.

In Scotland alone, the numbers are startling. A Church Census taken in 1984, 1994 and 2002 show the decline of church attendance. The census shows that in 1984, there were 853,700 people attending church on a given weekend. In 1994, it was 691,120. By 2002, there were only 570,130. This represents a decline of about 19% within 18 years. (The population of Scotland is a little over 5 million.)

Ross quotes Loren Mead of the Alban Institute: "The storm buffeting the churches is very serious indeed. Much more serious than we have admitted to ourselves, and much more serious than our leaders have yet comprehended.... The storm is so serious, I believe, that it marks the end of 'business as usual' for the churches and marks the need for us to begin again building the church from the ground up."

In the article, Ross suggests several points of engagement between church and culture that could prod the old church into new forms of evangelism. I'll talk about these in tomorrow's post.

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