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Showing posts with the label culture

Sunday Morning Church Rant

I didn't go to church today because I couldn't face another stripped-down summer liturgy. Bleh.  Recycled sermons, vacationing preachers, substitute organists, empty pews, last moment lectors, absent acolytes, no choir, no coffee hour. The church on vacation isn't pretty.  But that's not our only problem. We have a problem of relevance. We are trying WAY too hard to find it. When church leaders chase the latest opinion polls, and change their main Sunday liturgies to meet the "market," those who have been shaped by the liturgical traditions of the past are left to embrace the change or leave. What seems to have been left out of the rush to seek the seeker is that the Church was never more embracing or growth-filled as when it was the keeper of mystery, ritual, prayer and sacrament and served the community. (1st - 3rd Century CE) It will be a sad, sad day when a generation hence American mainline churches are empty (like Europe) and leadership wishes we had h

So What

For all the talk in America now and forever about how spiritually diverse we are as a nation, it seems that many people have been lying to the researchers. Or just maybe have been trying to spare their mother's feelings and no longer feel they should. Here are the surprising statistics I found as I was thumbing through my latest The Lutheran magazine (3/2012, p. 8):   44% told the Baylor University (Waco, TX) Religion Survey that they spend no time seeking out eternal wisdom.    19% said it was 'useless to search for meaning.'    28% told LifeWay that it's not a 'major priority' in my life to find my deeper purpose. One of the most striking trends in religion statistics in recent decades is the rise of the Nones , people who checked "no religious identity" on the American Religious Identification Survey. The Nones went from 8% in 1990 to 15% in 2008.  So, while America grows increasingly vocal on the edges of the religious landscape, t