Christian orthodoxy and church growth

You may recall that early last year, Dick's Sporting Goods announced it would no longer sell "assault" weapons and would require age 21 for buying any kind of firearm. Just this quarter, Dick's CEO admitted that the move cost the company a quarter-billion dollars.

Another example of the pithy observation, "Get woke, go broke."

And so it is with American churches: "Go left, become bereft" (a phrase I admit I just made up). More accurately, American conservative churches grow and liberal churches shrink, according to Canadian Prof. David Millard Haskell, who presumably does not have a dog in the hunt regarding American churches.

While most mainline Protestant churches are declining, there's been no consensus as to why. Hoping to solve this sociological riddle, some colleagues and I conducted a study. We tracked down an elusive sample of growing mainline congregations and compared them to a sample of declining congregations. We surveyed more than 2,200 of the congregants, half attending growing churches and half at declining churches, and the clergy who serve them.

We found, without exception, the clergy and congregants of the growing mainline Protestant churches held more firmly to traditional Christian beliefs, such as the belief Jesus rose physically from the grave and that God answers prayer. The clergy of the growing churches were the most theologically conservative and the declining church clergy the least.

What is the difference? Those of us in the clergy business already know:

... all the growing church clergy in our study, because of their theological outlook, held the conviction that it is "very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians." As theological conservatives, these pastors believe Jesus is the only way to salvation and that they must "Go and make disciples everywhere."

Conversely, half the clergy at the declining churches held the opposite conviction, believing it is not desirable to convert non-Christians. As theological liberals, these pastors believe there are many paths to salvation and that it's culturally insensitive to peddle your beliefs on those outside your religious community. Comparing the two theological outlooks, which do you think is more likely to generate church growth?

This characterization of liberal clergy is correct. A few years ago, when the Obama administration began admitting Syrian refugees into the United States, there was a broad discussion within the UMC (my denomination) on how to support the refugees and give them aid. I posted and emailed a suggestion that we should give them not only clothing and personal-use supplies and the like, but also Arabic-language New Testaments(Gideon's prints them). The shocked and energetic rebuttals from my liberal/Left colleagues was immediate and unambiguous. My suggestion was termed insensitive, oppressive, culturally inappropriate, irrelevant, and offensive.

Methodism's founder, John Wesley, had it right: