Opening Insights
“The church today in America is in decline,” with “80 percent of houses of worship are either stuck where they are dwindling,” quote by Thom Schultz, CEO of Group Publishing and director of the film ”When God Left the Building,” in a blog by TheBlaze.com.
Shultz and his team spent three to four years following different churches and documented their decline: “one, in particular, in upstate New York that saw its attendance drop from around 900 to about 30.”
Informational Insights
In the documentary Shultz and his team compared the state of the Church and the fall of the Eastman Kodak Company. The Eastman Kodak Company, unwilling to follow the times and flow with the market crashed when the market became digitized. The ignorance and arrogance of the leadership kept the company stagnated in what “had worked,” instead of focusing on the market needs.
Research done by Shultz and his team cited a variety of reasons for the decline including “internal strife, a loss of mission and other ‘really petty stuff.”
Like Eastman Kodak Company, the primary problem is that many Churches and Church leaders have lost touch with their partitioners and put the legacy of the Church before the principles and practises they teach. Many have opted for a “bigger and better approach,” however, this approach is often onesided.
As Schultz said people have “really just lost their love, their first love of why they were a church in the first place.” he said, citing just one example of the disfunction. Many of the church members were really upset when the pastor took down pictures of past dead pastors.”
Speaking more generally, Schultz said that the problem of church decline is one that is being experienced across the board, and offered up a theory about a potential cause: the delivery mechanism that is being used to spread the Christian gospel.
He contended that, as times have changed, the traditional delivery mechanism is no longer as effective as it once was. Rather than a decrease in interest in faith, he said that there are simply fewer people who are hearing Christian messages due to the delivery mode.
The Principles and Practices of Christianity are very clear and concise and the way back to the Church is simple. We simply need to walk the path of Jesus, but in a modern way: Teaching Love and Engagement by example and in a way that people and especially youth can relate to it today. To do this we need a way to:
- Become Interactive with People and Youth.
- Deliver/Communicate Effectively– in a way that the message can be understood, believed, accepted and followed.
- Teaches Principles in a way that they can Be learned, applied and passed-on.
- Offer Models of Human Behavior, Thinking, Feeling, Attitude, Perceptions, Beliefs and Values so people can understand themselves and others.
- Provide Environments of Community and Engagement that invites people to take a proactive move with the youth and do it in a way that minimizes the infection of social media.
Pocket Wisdom Insights offers Churches, Leaders, Communities and Members a collaborative interactive online Co-Lab to create, engage and come together.
It offers tools and resources to bring communities together in a modern, interactive, engaging and innovative way that supports the times while teaches the principles of Christianity in a way that they can be heard, see, understood, believed and applied.
With advanced learning technology and app-driven content delivery Pocket Wisdom Insights have the technology to measure learning and change individually and collectively, as well as the flexibility to adapt content, apps and tools as required to meet the community needs.
The interactive process and environment invites members to participate and contribute not only to their learning process but to those of others – sharing the message, spreading the word, in a way that people today will experience interest, information, imagination and invitation (rather than obligation or judgement).
* Source: TheBlaze.com
Possibilities for Consideration
Take a moment and examine…
- As you reviewed the material above, what stood out to you?
- What is the potential impact, economically and/or socially?
- What action is needed to stop or support this idea?
- You may want to consider whether you:
- want to be aware of,
- should become supportive of,
- would want to be active in this topic?
Add Your Insight
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.
LEONARDO DA VINCI