The modern church has in many ways not only declined in membership to but to a greater degree in relevance within the United States. Each generation is seeing decline of attendance and membership growing at an alarming rate. Many want to blame this problem on the evolution of natural science and archaeology that has made the biblical claims less believable or the change in cultural views that do not align with what is considered archaic beliefs. However, in reality the challenge to biblical claims of morality and truth have been challenged for as long as there has been a Scripture. Each successive generation finds new ideas and changes that call into question the biblical teachings and reject its authority. In reality the modern church is not in a culture war it is in a spiritual war that has gone on since Adam and Eve rebelled in the garden (Eph 6:12). There is a plethora of books that address this growing issue with strategies to combat the problem, but one thing is assured and that is if the church is going to regain its lost ground it must finds its purpose and relevance once again. The church must rediscover God’s intentions for it and begin once again conforming to the example that Christ has left in his Word. Christ left the key to this in his departing address to his disciple when he called upon them to ”go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt 28:19-20). It was the intentions of Christ that the purpose of the church would be found in discipleship. This being true then the decline of the church, rather, than being found in culture, should be sought within the health of the local church. In other words, it is unhealthy churches that are failing to fulfill their purpose that is the cause of decline and not an ever changing world.
~Pastor Christopher Arnold