A five-year study of growing and shrinking churches in Canada revealed that theology is critical for church survival, and even for attracting younger people. Beliefs based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, the importance of converting people to Christianity, and the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ are strongest in growing churches, and weakest in churches on the decline.
“If we are talking solely about what belief system is more likely to lead to numerical growth among Protestant churches, the evidence suggests conservative Protestant theology is the clear winner,” David Haskell, lead researcher in the study “Theology Matters: Comparing the Traits of Growing and Declining Mainline Protestant Church Attendees and Clergy,” told Britain’s The Guardian. This declaration is powerful, but the numbers are even more striking.
A whopping 93 percent of clergy and 83 percent of worshippers at growing churches agreed with the statement, “Jesus rose from the dead with a real flesh-and-blood body leaving behind an empty tomb.” In shrinking churches, only 67 percent of worshippers and 56 percent of clergy agreed with this statement.
This finding echoes Saint Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 15:14: “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” This statement seems to contradict many allegorical interpretations of the resurrection of Christ in vogue among “liberal” Christians.
But the study goes even further in providing evidence that “conservative” beliefs about the literal interpretation of scripture correlate with growing churches. In declining churches, only about 50 percent of clergy agreed that it was “very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians,” while one hundred percent of clergy in growing churches agreed with this statement.
A full 71 percent of clergy in growing churches read the Bible daily, compared with just 26 percent of clergy from declining churches. This trend is the same among worshippers: 46 percent of those attending growing churches said they read the Bible once a week, while only 26 percent who attend declining churches reported reading scripture that often.
A full 100 percent of clergy at growing churches (and 90 percent of worshippers there) said that “God performs miracles in answer to prayers.” In contrast, only 44 percent of clergy at declining churches agreed. In a fascinating twist, almost twice as many congregants (80 percent) of pastors at declining churches believed in God’s ability to answer prayers with miracles.
These findings come from a large sample of mainline Christians in Ontario, Canada. The study surveyed 2,225 churchgoers, along with 29 clergy and 195 official congregants.
At a common-sense level, these correlations make sense. If Jesus literally rose from the dead, if it is important to convert non-Christians, and if God has the ability to answer prayers, attending church would have more spiritual value. If you believe that heaven exists, that Jesus’s death and resurrection allow Christians to go there, and that the only thing required to save someone from eternal torment is to convince them to believe in Jesus, you will find more motivation to go to church and to bring others with you.
And if clergy and congregations read the Bible less, they would likely be less committed to spreading the truths revealed by holy scripture.
Haskell told The Guardian that growing churches “held more firmly to the traditional beliefs of Christianity and were more diligent in things like prayer and Bible reading.”
Case in Point: “…Umar, now 40, suffered the “nightmare” of being “excommunicated” from his large Muslim family after deciding to follow Jesus. And having been taught to hate Jews, his heart melted when he understood from the Scriptures how much God loved them…”
from: ‘What Kind of God is This?’
“A Ugandan pastor severely injured by Islamic opponents of his faith has made a stirring appeal for British Christians to help their persecuted brothers in other parts of the world.”
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/30571/Default.aspx
That could be a blessing in disguise. Most of the anti-semitic obsession with Israel and pathological support for our common enemies is coming from the liberal churches. Fundamentalists are split but many if not most are pro-Israel and anti-Muslim. Also, good news if true among Black and Latinos. Devout conservative Christian communities there are peaceful, law-abiding, honest self-enforcing communities like the Jews. They played the leading role in the African-American life and all of the civil rights movements from the beginning. This was so moving:
FULL: Donald Trump Cleveland Heights Black Church Town Hall OH 9/21/2016 FULL EVENT & SPEE
https://youtu.be/m0yj7iX-jj4
The pundits puzzled at the fact that the pastor placed a tallis on Trump. No mystery. It was great.
By contrast, the libretto for “The Death of Klinghofer,” the anti-semitic opera which I and many others protested when it was shown at the Metropolitan Opera was written by Alice Goodman, a Jewish convert to the Church of England who was in the process of becoming a minister. There are many articles about both if you google it.
Also, there is a growing movement in conservative Christianity to focus missionary work on forgotten third world children. Which makes sense. Very few adults will change their minds about important issues. So, they are building schools and hospitals in Africa and Latin America. You also have the phenomenon of third world Christian missionaries trying to bring secular Europeans back to the church which they fear will be empty in 50 years and replaced with Islam. They do some stuff in Israel but it’s not their main focus.
“The child evangelism movement is a Christian evangelism movement that was begun in 1937 by Jesse Irvin Overholtzer who founded the Christian organization Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). It focuses on the 4/14 Window which centers on evangelizing children between the ages of 4 and 14 years old.”
Child evangelism movement – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_evangelism_movement”
They also do very dangerous work in Muslim and Communist Countries. Listen, all of the formerly Muslim anti-Muslim writers I know of became Christians. Christianity is the way out of Islam for most of them. That should be supported, so long as it remains philo-semitic* and not Dhimmi.
*Arabs are not semites. There is no such thing. There are semitic languages. The semites were the distant, nomadic, primitive ancestors of all of the peoples and languages of the Middle East. Very little is known about them. Anti-semitism means hatred of Jews. Period. It was coined to mean that by that Arch-Anti-Semite Wilhelm Marr in 1879. He founded the anti-semitic movement which spread throughout Europe and elected people to parliaments. It evolved into Nazism. It’s under A in the dictionary. No actual connection to the word “semite.”
@ Edgar G.:
Yes, but your point led to my point…
@ Edgar G.:
Yes their growing proclivity for missionizing shouldn’t be ignored.
But I was making another point.
@ Ted Belman:
I don’t find iot interesting I dfind it horrifying. That a demonstrably fake religion, based on myths, should be reviving to such a huge degree. We shall soon have clouds of missionaries descending on us. The Medieval Christian believed like this, althpough I do not mean to suggest that the same obscene practices would follow.
I find this very interesting. Christians don’t want religion lite. They want more substance. I think the same applies to Jews. Orthodox Jews take their religion seriously and embrace all the laws. Reform Jews can take it or leave it and thus their membership is declining.