Losing America

Last Thursday was the National Day of Prayer.  I was generously invited by our local ministerial alliance to participate in a community service.  My role , along with other area pastors, was to give a brief presentation and then lead the assembly in prayer related to my presentation.

Each of the pastors were to share one of the deep concerns on our heart for our country.  I knew immediately what I wanted to address.  Jesus gave us this parable in Matthew 13:33. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.” The Christian faith is, by its very nature, contagious.  If it is not spreading, or “working all through the dough” as in the parable, then we must ask why.

This is, in fact, the precise reason we planted a new church.  The following are a few facts about Christianity in the United States.

• We’re losing America.  We were once a Christian nation guided mostly by Christian beliefs, principles and morals, but no more.

• 85% of all churches are plateaued or declining.

• Of the 15% that are growing, 14% is by transfer growth (people leaving one church to go to another).

• In the last 10 years, Protestant church attendance has declined by 9.5% while the indigenous national population has increased by 11.4%.  In other words, we’re not even reaching our own children.

• In the USA, there is a net loss of 48 churches every week.  If you total the number of existing churches plus all the new churches being started, then subtract the number of churches closing, we are losing about 7 churches every day.

• North America is the only continent where Christianity is NOT growing.

• The USA is now the third largest unchurched nation in the world.

• 200 million North Americans have no church connection.  In other words, there are now hundreds of millions growing up without being influenced by Christianity in any way.  This is having a grave impact on our nation.

• Islam and Buddhism are both growing faster than Christianity.

• Statistically, starting new churches is the most effective method of reaching people for Christ.

• In every nation and every generation where Christianity has grown and thrived, the key has been starting new churches, not for those already churched, but for the unchurched. We were once a nation rampant with new churches planted.  The number of new churches in the U.S. has steadily declined over the past fifty years while we have sent missionaries to start hundreds of thousands of churches around the world.  Missionaries are trained to enter the mission field and find ways to connect with and bring people to personally know and follow Jesus Christ.  This is what we must begin doing in America again, right in our own communities.  It’s time to open new mission outposts in our own communities.

Consequently, my prayer for America is in line with what Jesus said in Luke 10:2. “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”