Record and Landmark Article June 24th 2011

                Church attendance is on the decline, church membership is on a downward slope to nowhere. Where are we headed as a church? Many have said that we are headed to the dark abyss of history, that one day our children and grandchildren will reminisce about the days that their parents went to church. They, in turn will be spending their Sunday mornings not in church and doing something else. 

                Church is no longer what it once was. We took advantage of the fact that we were like food and water, or even the very air we breathe. We examined church as a necessity within society. The implications of such are grim. We now have a problem, it’s like the church is running out of air. I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase; “dying breed” well we are exactly that, on our way out.

                I’m sure you didn’t start reading this for the grim reality that is the church’s future. Well, I didn’t start writing this for that grim reality. We all must come to the table together, and work towards the solution. It doesn’t help any of us to talk about the death of the church, because it hasn’t happened yet. We are still fighting the disease of apathy within the church. We are still alive!

                I have a minister friend in Charlotte by the name of Jim Trollinger. He is currently in a battle of his own. He is fighting stage 4 brain cancer. He keeps telling people that he is not a statistic or a textbook example of what happens when someone gets cancer, he is in fact, very alive.

                I don’t know about you, but as a part of the church community, I am very much alive! I fight every day for justice, peace, and reconciliation within the community of faith and beyond. That is our mission, not to sit and whine about our eventual downfall but to make the years we have count. I went to see the movie Super 8 not too long ago and at one of the pivotal moments in that movie the protagonist declares in the midst of doom, “bad things happen, but you can still live!” Church you can have bad things happen to you, but you are still very much alive!

                It is my challenge to you to take the future of our church into your own hands, be like my friend Jim and fight the very fight of life! That is what we must do, that is what we are called to do. God is present in the midst of our struggle.