Drawing on ideas pioneered by the RCA’s Robert Schuller at the Crystal Cathedral, Hybels and Warren chose to do church differently. Five years later, Rick Warren launched Saddleback Church in southern California. In 1975, Bill Hybels founded Willow Creek Community Church in Chicagoland.

Over the next couple of decades, the average slowly declined 5%.Īt the same time that religious service attendance began to decline, a new approach to church arose. In the late 1960s, religious service attendance in American was about 73%, a level that had held steady for over 50 years.

Religious service attendance had begun to dip before 1999, beginning in the 1970s. This is a precipitous drop, to say the least. Gallup reported that as of 2020, 47% of Americans regularly attended religious services (of any faith). The decline of the American church is well-documented. I owe much of my faith journey to this ministry model and my time in this movement has given me a unique vantage point into how it is aiding in the decline of the American church.Ĭhristian Decline and the Rise of the Church Growth Movement Throughout my ministry career, I have been a pastor in three churches using the church growth model, one of them a (formerly) RCA congregation in Idaho. Later, during my high school years, I attended a different church, one which prided itself on being the Willow of West Michigan, modeled after the famous Willow Creek Community Church outside of Chicago. I grew up in a full-gospel megachurch with over ten thousand in attendance each week. I owe much of my Christian formation to the church growth movement. A strategy intended to grow the church has done the opposite.īefore I dive into why I believe this is true, I must say something briefly about myself. How has the church done this? The church growth ministry model of the last fifty years deserves much of the blame. Is it possible that American Christianity has, at the very least, aided its own decline? I believe this is true-the church itself has contributed to the dwindling numbers of those who identify as Christian and regularly participate in the life of local congregations. Yet it’s hard not to think institutions do bear at least some responsibility for the state of things, particularly when one looks inside the American church. It’s hard to name one civic institution that is not in decline, whether the VFW or the Masons. America by the day is becoming more individualistic. Many would agree that the decline of American Christianity is due to factors external to the church. The decline is evidence of much larger cultural problems-a combination of postmodernism, the rise of hyper-individualism, and the influence of those who have an axe-to-grind with the church. One of the common responses to the decline of Christianity in America is to note that it is not our fault.

Mere christianity book 3