The ‘E’ in ELCA is said to stand for Evangelical. We seem to be more intent on maintaining the status quo than spreading the Gospel. Were we truly evangelical church attendance should be growing rather than shrinking as it has been across all denominations. We seem remiss in our practice of spreading the Gospel to every creature. When my group studied Word and Witness we skipped over the Witness sections of the study guide.
Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the retention rate of our own offspring as members of our congregations. Each year we ‘confirm’ the fact that our youth have suffered through 3 years of classes and then we rarely see the majority of them again until they are prompted by parents to have a church wedding to legitimize co-habitation. Next appearance occurs when the grandparents present the babies for baptism to get them ‘done’.
Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Is engendering it in future generations a matter of nature or nurture? Whether or not church attendance and support is a mark of religious conviction and what the church should be doing to make worship relevant to future generations are meat for other discussions. Without sufficient bums in the pews churches cannot continue to survive.
Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the retention rate of our own offspring as members of our congregations. Each year we ‘confirm’ the fact that our youth have suffered through 3 years of classes and then we rarely see the majority of them again until they are prompted by parents to have a church wedding to legitimize co-habitation. Next appearance occurs when the grandparents present the babies for baptism to get them ‘done’.
Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Is engendering it in future generations a matter of nature or nurture? Whether or not church attendance and support is a mark of religious conviction and what the church should be doing to make worship relevant to future generations are meat for other discussions. Without sufficient bums in the pews churches cannot continue to survive.
