Religion in America
Al Mohler comments on a massive study by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life on Americans’ religious affiliation. The results have huge implications for the way in which the church carried out its mission in the culture.
Three things I find particularly interesting: 1) the study shows that Protestants no longer possess a majority status, and 2) a significant portion of the population have changed their religious affiliation at least once in their lives, and 3) many who have changed religions, and over a quarter of 18-29 years olds claim no religious affiliation.
Taken together, these three facts show that the church must radically alter its approach to mission. Simply trying to attract people who are already members of our tribe was never biblical; now it’s not even practical. However, people’s openness to change religious affiliation–combined with results of another study which found that “78 percent of [people] said they would be willing to listen to someone who wanted to talk about their Christian beliefs” (”The number rose to 89 percent among adults 18-29 years of age”)–should present a tremendous opportunity. Mission and evangelism will have to be much more relational and organic than the way we have typically approached it.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Wow, those statistics are really fascinating, especially that somewhere between 78-89% of younger adults are willing to listen to someone talk about their Christian faith. I suppose the challenge is how to move beyond simply sharing one’s “experience” to illustrate as well that it is truth. That’s encouraging, though, when considering how to evangelize.