This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://spectrummagazine.org/node/8410
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://spectrummagazine.org/node/8410
1 Like
“An object in motion stays in motion at the same direction and speed unless acted upon by an outside force” - physics 101.
There are a few generations between the millennials and myself, but the revolving church door has picked up even the older generations along the way. their exit is mostly based on long time experience, some in some very prominent positions. Once the sustentation kicks in, they just disappear from view, quite often, popping up at various reunions to share the stories. It’s interesting to see who’s still in and who’s out.
The physics analogy simply says that, unless something drastic happens, nothing is going to change. When my generation was in college, complaining that we, the up and coming leaders of the church, weren’t included enough where church policies were being hatched, we were sure things would change once we reached the helm. That was a while ago and we are still moving in the same direction. It’s education that has any chance of changing direction for the church; but when the educational institutions are accountable to the church that is focused on keeping the status quo, education becomes brainwashing.
It used to be that it was the youth in any society that had the optimism, the energy and the dare to speak out and work for change. But this can happen only in an open society where there is a respect for truth, at any cost.
3 Likes
Thank you, Matthew.
Will even ONE church administrator respond to this article, either to affirm or reject it? Not likely. And that’s a big problem: employed leaders are either afraid or indifferent, and forthright, PUBLIC exchanges rarely happen. Actually, almost never happen.
I just read an ad for a book on Hasidism, in which the reviewer said it “captures the vibrancy and innovation of a thriving multifaceted movement.” Just now, we are not such a movement. That’s pathetic, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Chuck
This and the others who have assessed this book are all from the west, and all have a more liberal view.
The western church is growing slowly at best. The third world, on the other hand, where there is much less angst about WO is doing just fine, thank you. So this view of the church as ‘terminal patient’ is a rather one sided and actually narrow one. How could someone even argue that it is “dead” when it is one of the fastest growing Christian churches in the third world? Does support for WO blur a man’s sight that badly?
Again, it is not third world youth that are leaving so much as western youth. And I don’t know a way to stop it. Certainly adopting WO will not. It is more a generalized western turning away from religion that is the problem, not WO per se. The Methodists have been ordaining since the 1960s, and have a steady loss of western membership while the overseas membership, mainly African has boomed.
The same is happening with the SDA church. Any embracing of a more liberal position will not increase the membership of Millennials or any other groups in NA. The end is near. I can get a bit apocalyptic myself!
What an absolutely slanted view! If the church doesn’t do WO, it is Christ that is denied! The third world is growing well, the Spirit is manifest there, but we here are the real people of God, and since we seem to be stagnant, it must be God is leaving the church. But WO would solve the whole thing! Sort of a self-referential view, don’t you think?
What really might help this depressing view would be a visit to a third world country where a vibrant church is doing fine without WO.
Hope just might be revived.
Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick."
You may indeed be right that Western Adventism, at least, is dying, Matthew.
But where is the sensibility of systemic sickness? I see none. If Adventism were “in the hospital” there would be some hope.
What I do see is the struggle for the moral high ground, no matter what the cost.
You tell me where the moral high ground is in Laodicea. It is an illusion.
There is a fundamental dishonesty in the Adventist DNA that goes back to its inception and is so deep-seated and reflexively hidden a disease as to be “the ghost in the machine.” It is like a possession. It has a life of its own.
This has gone on so many decades, and the momentum is so great, that the therapeutic dose and the lethal dose of the Medicine are so dangerously close together, that human wisdom could never titrate what is needed.
Blind optimism is not warranted and could prove fatal.
This is a dangerous time. There is abundant Hope, but the cost will be extraordinarily high.
If the vibrant young people leave, can an elderly, hidebound, polarized, moribund people make these dry bones live?
It’s tempting to say that sometimes death is the best thing, as it makes way for new life to find a new niche.
1 Like