Will the church survive?

After giving 45 years of my life to the work of the church, the pain I feel should not be surprising. But it still hurts.

Here’s my July column for the Holland Sentinel…

The news of late has been difficult to read. And I don’t mean the indictment of the former president, the war in Ukraine, the sudden implosion of the Titanic submersible, or even the slow-motion implosion of our Ottawa County government.

For me the news that has been most difficult to read concerns the church. After giving 45 years of my life to the work of the church, the pain I feel should not be surprising. But it still hurts.

Last month the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church in North America met in Grand Rapids and re-affirmed the action taken last year, which declared that the Heidelberg Catechism’s use of the word “unchastity” includes homosexual sex (along with adultery, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, polyamory, and pornography). They further declared that “this interpretation has confessional status,” meaning that this new position is very, very important, right up there with the other creeds and confessions of the church.

To say that this has been a difficult time for the CRCNA would be an understatement. The meeting this year ended without closing worship and, in the words of The Banner (the CRCNA’s official publication), “left many stunned.” That would include me as well.

I was raised in the CRCNA, but I left it in my 20s and became a Presbyterian, which seemed like a better fit at the time. Even so, when I read about the problems the CRCNA is facing over human sexuality – and it’s difficult not to notice, living as I do in western Michigan – I feel the pain of it in my gut. For most of my adult life, Presbyterians fought over the same issue and finally started to splinter in 2010. Other denominations have had or continue to have similar fights. So maybe what I feel is akin to post traumatic stress. Whatever it is, the church is suffering, and I feel it too.

Mainline churches of course have been losing members for decades, so that’s not news. But it seems clear that evangelical churches are now also in steep decline. After reaching a peak in the 1990s, the CRCNA has seen a steep decline in its membership, as has the Reformed Church in America, which has lost 45 percent of its membership in the last 30 years.

But Dutch Reformed people are not alone. The Southern Baptist Convention recently reported a loss of 457,371 members, the largest single-year numerical drop in more than 100 years. While the Roman Catholic Church continues to enjoy remarkable worldwide growth, far exceeding the rate of population growth, the Catholic church in the United States is a different story. American Catholics now account for just six percent of the worldwide total membership.

The trend even has a name. I seem to be reading about the “de-churching of America” in every other headline these days. That’s discouraging enough for someone like me, but it appears that even among the faithful, those who have decided to hang in there for now, a change is occurring. According to the Pew Research Center, 40 percent of Americans continue to attend worship “in one way or another” (either in person or online), which sounds hopeful, but those faithful worshipers as it turns out are now attending church much less frequently. Once per month seems to be the new definition of an active church member.

Church members aren’t the only ones who are leaving. Apparently pastors are too. The Great Resignation, which reached its height in 2021 when more than 47 million Americans quit their jobs (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics), has also affected the church. Today there is a pastor shortage across all denominations. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, to give just one example, claims to be short “at least 600 pastors,” mainly affecting churches in small towns and rural areas. (The church I served last year in the Netherlands was accustomed to receiving dozens of applications whenever they engaged in a pastoral search. To their surprise and consternation, fewer than 20 pastors applied last year.) This has apparently become the new normal.

I wish I could end with a word of hope or an inspiring verse from the Bible. As you might imagine, I know lots of them, mostly because it was my work to deploy them in situations of pain and despair. But sometimes – and this may be one of them – it is best to be quiet, to sit with the silence, and to listen instead of talk. I don’t know what all of this means, but I suspect that there is something I should pay attention to.