We're posing a question you may not want to hear - why is the Church in decline in the United States, and what can we do to address this unsettling reality? We're not here to sugarcoat the situation, but rather to explore the sobering statistics and uncover the roots of the problem, particularly the disconnection among the younger generation. Kristen, with her insightful observations and personal experiences, opens an intriguing discussion on the fundamental human need for belonging, an area where some churches appear to fall short.
Join us as we wrestle with the hard truths and navigate through the potential solutions. No stone is left unturned, from the stark decrease in church membership and religious affiliation to the shift in key cultural influencers like Hollywood, media, government, and academia. As we grapple with this challenging topic, we invite you to tune in. We may not have all the answers, but we're committed to igniting the conversations that matter. Through prayer and trust in God, we are hopeful to reveal a beacon of light in these seemingly dark times.
We're posing a question you may not want to hear - why is the Church in decline in the United States, and what can we do to address this unsettling reality? We're not here to sugarcoat the situation, but rather to explore the sobering statistics and uncover the roots of the problem, particularly the disconnection among the younger generation. Kristen, with her insightful observations and personal experiences, opens an intriguing discussion on the fundamental human need for belonging, an area where some churches appear to fall short.
Join us as we wrestle with the hard truths and navigate through the potential solutions. No stone is left unturned, from the stark decrease in church membership and religious affiliation to the shift in key cultural influencers like Hollywood, media, government, and academia. As we grapple with this challenging topic, we invite you to tune in. We may not have all the answers, but we're committed to igniting the conversations that matter. Through prayer and trust in God, we are hopeful to reveal a beacon of light in these seemingly dark times.
Alright, good evening everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Jordan and Kristen Rickers Show. We thank you so much for joining us. Today's topic why the Church is Failing and what we Can Do About it. Now, I know that sounds very negative. We always try to be positive and we always want to feel like everything's going just peachy clean. But you know what? We've got a real problem right now in American culture with the decline of the church, and it's not going to go away by us pretending it's not happening. So we're going to address it tonight, but first, Kristen, I want you to pray over everybody and pray over this message.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well, lord. We thank you. We thank you even though the world tells us that things are hopeless, lord, and things are falling apart. God, we rely on you. God, we know that your bright, your bright light shines in the darkness. Lord, in the darkest of nights, that's where you shine the brightest, god. Let us, lord, just just, we just give everything over to you. We ask that you fill us with your Holy Spirit, god, and that that would overflow in us to this whole generation, lord, and beyond, from generation to generation. We honor you when we praise you in Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:Amen, all right. So, guys, listen, we got a serious problem here. We know from all the data and from anybody who has opened their eyes and paid attention to what's going on in the world that the church is severely receding in terms of its influence. If you look at the culturally significant institutions in our country, it's things like Hollywood and the media, and the government and academia, none of which reflect a Christian worldview. And we see this in the data also.
Speaker 1:I showed you earlier, chris, and some data from Gallup which showed that from the 1930s all the way up to the 2000s, you know, 73% of Americans, over 70% of Americans, were members of a church. Now it's under 50%. Church attendance is down to about 31%, and among young people it's even worse, which is a big problem. It's not an even distribution, but rather about one third of Generation Z are religiously unaffiliated, and among millennials, which is ages 23 to 38, so your group they're almost as likely to say they have no religion as they are to identify as Christian. Okay, so we've got this sharp decline in Christianity, this sharp decline of religious affiliation in general, which cannot portend to good things. So my question to you, kristin, to start this off, is what in the world is going on.
Speaker 2:I love how you said. That's my group to let everyone know how young I am so well. You know, like we say in our intro, the world is falling apart. But you don't have to right that's what we talk about and that's what you're saying here that there seems to be a definite problem. And I don't think it's any one thing. It's a lot of different things, but I do think there are things that we can immediately address that are not difficult.
Speaker 2:And one thing that comes to mind for me is you know, in this world where everything is changing, there's one thing that hasn't changed, and that is people have a need for belonging.
Speaker 2:I don't care who you are, who you talk to, what your personality style is. It is a critical need for people to feel like they belong, they're loved, they're valued. That's a core human need, and I've been off part of a lot of churches that do have things in place to make people feel like they belong. But I feel like even in those churches it can be done better, because we can always improve. And then I've been to some churches that don't seem to have anything in place. I have been to churches, I've visited churches where I've literally walked in, walked out and no one said a thing to me. Or I've been to churches that even have, you know, great greeting teams in place, but I've gone upstairs and people have been coming out of the Bible study and I remember just doing an experiment and smiling at every single person as they came out, and that one person even smiled back.
Speaker 1:Oh, I bet none of them were men, because the men always smile at you. They must have been a room full of women. Whenever someone scowls at you, it's always a woman, usually someone's wife.
Speaker 2:Jordan. Jordan, that's true, though. Okay, what was I saying again? Oh, yes. So my point is, if I know of had those experiences and I'm a grounded, rooted person in God I can't imagine being a person who's on the fence or going through a tragedy where they just feel you know that they're not, they're kind of struggling in their beliefs. I'd say I don't need to be here, you know, and I think to myself that, like when I'm a part of any group that I'm a part of, let's say, even an exercise group or something, if I'm not there, I feel missed. Somebody calls how are you, are you okay? Whatever? We need to do that in church and we need to keep doing it. And I know I've kind of gone on a tangent and just this one little thing, but I think it's so important. I mean, don't you think belonging in church, that feeling of belonging, is important?
Speaker 1:All right. So this is how you and I are a little bit different, because you are definitely an extrovert and I'm an introvert. So when I go into a church, in particular a new church, I really don't need people to greet me and that's fine or whatever. But the part that I dread the most is you know, when they welcome the new people and you have to stand up and everyone looks at you and they applaud and they hand you a thing and you got to fill out your name and your email address and everyone takes your hand.
Speaker 1:No, it's like that's. That's not what I need, and you know if I'm listen. Here's the bigger problem, and we're addressing a broader issue here is that the church relies too much on it being Sunday for people to show up, and for centuries people could do that. Right, you could get away with that. It's Sunday, everyone goes to church. Well, that's not how things are anymore. There are a lot more things competing for people's time.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:People will go to church if they get something out of it instead. And you and I have had this experience more times than I can, than I can count. Where you and I go to a church, we, we, we sit patiently through some hour long sermon that we get nothing out of. That has nothing to do with anything relevant to our lives. And afterwards we say to ourselves you know, I'm glad we didn't bring a guest to that church, because if that was going to be their one experience with the church, they would never go back.
Speaker 1:And I'm not saying there's anything wrong, necessarily, with an hour long sermon or a five minute sermon, but there's absolutely something wrong with a five minute sermon that drags on for an hour. Okay, that in no way addresses anything that that people are dealing with. You Go. If you're going to go to a church on a Sunday, it's because you got to get filled up to face the rest of your week. You're going to go and you're going to go into your, your your place of business and deal with difficult people. You're going to deal with doctors, you're going to deal with family members, and you got it. You have to be getting practical information that builds you up, not some esoteric sermon that drags on about you know who, knows even what, and that, by the way, doesn't address problems and is afraid to discuss important issues because they're afraid of alienating people.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, okay, sure, okay, I think this is your hot button. You know? No, you're, you're right. So I think this is what I I think about what you're saying. I think we have a great opportunity in this in this day and age, because you think of any time there was a revival, it was when people were desperate and the world was desperate. And when you think of revivals, I think of everyone getting together in a corporate body, worshiping and praying and being led by the spirit and just just overflowing in the spirit. And, yeah, a sermon's a part of that, but it's a lot more of just this, this whole movement of the supernatural.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but here's the thing, though that's not going to happen in a church where the pastor, or whoever is preaching, is afraid to confront sin for what it is. Oh, I know, if you're going to tolerate, if you're going to tolerate sin in your in, in your congregation, where you know that you know half the people there aren't living the way they should be, okay, then don't expect anything supernatural to happen there, because you're not. You're not addressing the sin, you're not addressing the problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know what's funny, it sounds contradictory to say we, the big one need is for people to feel belonging and then for us to say don't water down the gospel. But I don't think it's contradictory at all. I think it works hand in hand and I'll tell you why. Because loving somebody we can. We are called to love and bring people in. I'm not saying that we don't open our doors to everyone, but then at the same time we don't say, oh, we don't want to offend anybody, because loving them, truly loving someone, is telling them is being a shepherd to the sheep and telling them right from wrong and at the same time making them feel like they belong as they're going through the process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, these aren't mutually exclusive concepts. To give people useful information when they go to church and to give people a spiritually fulfilling exercise, and to tell them the truth. The truth, as Jesus says, not to be tried here. The truth is what sets people free. If you're not telling the people the truth, you're like a doctor who's deliberately not diagnosing a problem. Well, guess what? The people aren't gonna feel better then. You're not gonna have much of a doctor's office. You're not gonna have much of a hospital if you're not diagnosing the problem.
Speaker 2:And you're just going through the motions and then the spirit is not there, and then it's too structured where we're not even allowing the spirit to come in, and you know it's really. You see the extremes where you see people I at least see these. It seems to be extreme. Either people who say don't allow those people into the church, which is not right, because we need to, we're called, we want people to come in and get saved okay. But then the other extreme well, don't offend them, so don't say anything. There is a happy medium here, you know there is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's just speak in real terms. Okay, a lot of people are having difficulty in their relationships, in their romantic relationships. Now, this is a hot button for me because I'm an attorney. I do a lot of divorces, but we know that half of marriages end in failure, and that's the people who get married. We're not even talking about the people who engage in medium and long-term relationships. That also fail, okay, well, I got news for you.
Speaker 1:If you're in a church and you know that a third to a half of the people there are, you know, engaging in premarital sex or they're living with one another and you just don't want to address it because well, then you're gonna lose half your audience, then you're doing things wrong. Instead, maybe you should address it because half your audience needs to hear that. Okay, and maybe you are gonna offend people and you're gonna lose some. Maybe it does result in attendance going down in the short term, but in the long term, if you're actually addressing problems people are having and I'm not saying you do it in necessarily a judgmental way, like you're a bad person if you're doing this, but rather in a way, this is behavior that is not likely to lead to long-term successful relationships okay. You have to be able to address the problem in order to solve the problem, in order to give people a meaningful experience that they're gonna come back for. That's going to then that's gonna then bleed over into the culture and actually help reverse this cultural entropy that we're experiencing.
Speaker 1:You know it's funny because in what we're saying, about Can you tell me a little bit emotional about this.
Speaker 2:I know I feel like I have to hold you back from the microphone. The visual is even better than the audio today. You know it's very much of a thing where we're saying about church attendance, but we need to actually, in order for the church to grow and revival to start, we need to stop concentrating on how many people are in the church. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Well, it is, and we have to be providing a better product, and I would just this will be the last thing I say, I think, on an individual level, what we can do. They say that the best sermons aren't sermons at all, that it's the way you live your life. And so you know, as Christians, we need to be living our lives in such a way that other people who aren't Christian look at us and say, yeah, but I wanna live like that guy. I know that he's the most reliable, he's the most generous, he leaves the biggest tips, he's the best worker, he's the one that gets the office on, you know, first, he leaves the latest. He's the person that I know. If I have a problem, I could rely on that person. I think that's the best sermon.
Speaker 2:You might be the only Jesus someone meets. Have you heard?
Speaker 1:that.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, that's true, I think we need to do a part two on this.
Speaker 1:I have so much more to say but I guess I can cut off. Let's quickly close out in prayer before we get cut off.
Speaker 2:Oh, dear Jesus, thank you, god, for all of your blessings. Thank you that we are. We have everything we need in you, god. We pray that people flock to churches and we pray that churches are filled with your spirit, god, for people to hear the message, and we pray that we are your spirit out and about everywhere we go. In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:All right, guys. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again next week. As always, be blessed and be a blessing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you so much for listening to our rants today.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.