What Happened To The Kids!
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- Опубліковано 18 кві 2024
- Not only has adult attendance in the Church of England decline drastically but the kids are also leaving with more than half going in 20 years!
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Why should anyone attend a church that doesn't have anything to say on the great moral issues of the day? No prophetic voice (i.e. saying what the bible says) to a generation that is falling apart, lost in subjective emotion. Nothing to say on the ethics of work, or building strong families. Not addressing the immorality, greed, lack of integrity of a country and its leaders.
A deafening silence!
Instead much of its leadership actively promotes the very things the country most needs to repent of.
What happened to the C of E of John Stott, Dick Lucas, Michael Green, John Collins, David Watson, Michael Harper?
My children have left the CofE and have gone to churches that are more Orthodox. When I lived in Philadelphia after 2004, the church went into decline, and many families left the church because of same sex blessings.
The CofE leaders should call a day of prayer and fasting before the Lord in repentance for not standing on God's word, and asking Him to give each member His wisdom on how to tackle this problem.
Only *one* day? Shouldn't the C of E take note of Ninevah's reaction to Jonah's prophetic warning?? I'm not sure even 40 days will do it, despite the fact we just had Lent, which I do not keep because it achieves nothing, because it is a church tradition, not a true act of corporate repentence.
When a church becomes nothing more than a social organisation which goes along with all the latest cultural shifts and social movements then it loses its point of being. The Church of England is a "church" in name only, because the Gospel is not taught or proclaimed in any serious way (excepting a few Biblical ministers such as Rev Dan who still try hard). But on the whole people who go to church want to hear the Gospel and the Word of God in an undiluted way without the nonsense and the apostacy and other such things. This is why the Church of England is dying and will continue to die unless the leaders at the top repent and start proclaiming the Gospel as it is in its fullness again.
The C of E needs to get back to Gospel basics, to teach and live the FULL Counsel of G-d, not the watered-down apology of gospel that we are seeing pushed from Canterbury. In the end, only a Remnant of the True Bride of Christ from across the Church Politic will be taken in the Harpazo. That means many dog collars are going to be staying behind and be wondering why...
@@chrismaguire3667 I am in full agreement with you there.
Go to a meeting of the Diocesan Evangelical Fellowship in your area and you'll meet plenty of Bible-believing brothers and sisters in the C of E, keen to be faithful.
If home education was normal , certain agendas wouldn’t invade synod/church
@@andybray9791 I partially agree, however my view is that for the vast majority of people, the disadvantages of home education far outweigh the advantages. There are a few for whom it works - at Primary level anyway - but I'm glad that my sons were taught at a traditional school by professional teachers (even though my wife is an ex-teacher). Isolating your kids from those agendas only delays the time when they do need to confront them, be it at Secondary school level, at University or in the workplace. In a normal school, children are more likely to meet a diverse range of people including those who may be gay or lesbian, for example. Surely it's better to meet, socialise with and understand those people - besides getting a Christian perspective from home and Church on the issues - than to be ignorant.
Secularism, consumerism and individualism are massively strong (spiritual as well as social) forces with many factors behind both. Praying is a good idea!
Many parishes have either give up on children or do not have the resources to reach out to the young.
Left C of E 10 years ago & didn’t attend any church at all. It was a very dark time for me. Reconnected during Covid after my mum passed. Watched many different church’s on line.For passed 2 years have been attending an evangelical church (not C of E). Praise God! The church I attending is growing with many different generations including children & youth. The main difference is the music is modern & the message is biblical & taught at a level that is understandable.
Lack of pastoral care , love , compassion and church family have led people to walk away from the church. Also the church has gone away from the Lord
Maybe if the church returned to biblical Christianity then the decline would be reversed.
That would help, but the man at the top is more interested in same sex rubbish and rainbow flags instead of the Bible!
The gospel of Jesus Christ needs to be preached, that the blood of Jesus washes our sins away and we need to repent. It is time for the church to bring back the full fat message and lovingly and gently as we can, warn people about the Devil and Hell. My worry is that when we are on the other side of life countless people will ask WHY didn’t you warn us. The Church of England is bringing only half the message, we need to remember the Rich man and Lazarus.
What an indictment on society is this.
I will pray for England to return to our Lord as it was
Why ? There's nothing in my King James Bible about ' going to church '.
You're defying the scriptures.
@@colvinator1611 20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” Gospel of Matthew 20:18
@@colvinator1611
John 6
Children don’t leave the church! Children only attend if their parents attend! If you don’t give the parents what they require, you will have no children! So; question, why is independent church attendance growing? Answer, because they teach from the bible! The church I attend regularly has over a hundred children at Sunday services. They are being given age appropriate bible teaching and seem to love every minute of it. It really is very simple!
I agree so much with you Fr Dan the decline in attendance at Church has declined & the implications for this Country is frightening as it is being taken over by non Christian belief & life style. However my experience is that even when I was a child (I am 80 now) so it was a long time ago but we had very few people attend church & indeed very few Children in our rural Parish then. The C of E is in desperate need of better leadership that follows the Holy Scriptures & stops all this Woke nonsense etc. MP’s also have no interest in supporting the Christian faith they are more interested in following the popular way & not lead. I think the Church would hold more influence if it was disassociated with Parliament who via the PM appoint our Bishops & Archbishops. Currently we have very real problems with the Bishops not following Our Lord’s teachings as stated in the Holy Scripture thereby devaluing the Christian way of life as taught in the Scriptures.
If kids are leaving then it looks like young families are going elsewhere. Apart from the parishes that are still teaching the bible, can we blame them?
Hey Anglicans who still go to church: have one more baby than you were otherwise planning to. It will help. A lot.
Yes, and fathers, take the lead in their catechesis.
We in our Baptist Church have not lost the kids. And to my amazement 4 primary school girls started sitting on the front row. They don't have smartphones yet. They've all 4 a Bible and they search all bible texts that are read and read them in their own bible. Not from the beamer screen. And they sing! They sing so well that I gave them a separate microphone standing beside the pool pit. And I put their singing loudest in the songs I put on youtube. God loves children.
Do churches keep databases of their congregations? If so, then perhaps a 'courtesy phone call' during the week from either the minister or a church leader, to those who haven't attended for a while, enquiring if all is ok with them? Maybe this will boost attendance and keep what few there are from leaving? It certainly worked at a church where I worked pre Covid.
On the whole, yes we do. Or at least as far as we can without contravening GDPR. And I know that our Vicar encourages people who appear to be drifting to remain as active members. As do mid-week Fellowship Group leaders. But you can only bring a horse to water, as I've done with people drifting away. But f the horse refuses to drink, what else can you do?
I grew up in church and i HATED it!!!!
All these rules and restrictions and i was never told WHY or WHAT FOR. I was told id go to hell if i wasnt good so i got stressed and depressed
I knew nothing about the bible even though i was in church every sunday
Had no idea that it was a timeline narriative of 1 family from the beginning of creation and how everything was linked together
Had no idea the people in the bible were not perfect paragons of uunreachable standards, that they were ALL FLAWED
I didn't know that nobody is good enough to go to heaven, and that's what jesus did
I also had none of my questions answered
I fell away from God for years in part because the church failed me
Sadly, it is not only the Church of England that has few children attending church. I would say it us across the spectrum of mainline churches. I am in South Africa.
That said, I must admit all black churches/services regardless of denomination are thriving.
The CofE has had a demographic issue for nearly 100 years. My church is lucky if it has 2 or 3 children on a Sunday, and I'm in the inner city! Less attending means less provision. It's a spiral problem. People have been living longer, having fewer children, and marrying later. The pool of churchgoers with children has then naturally declined. Consider the natural 'drop off ' of those who don't do church as adults, and that's where we are. The CofE is 30% over 70, so they won't have young children. Many of the older people I know who attend church have families that don't want to. They're not interested. It's a broader cultural issue. The church is toxic to some but irrelevant to most.
Well said. I honestly think most people don't believe in God anymore. Everywhere on the Internet it tells you to do what you want and be what you want and be proud of it. It's very sad, but I'm hopeful that people will eventually get to a point where they notice there's still a void in their life that needs filling and put their faith and trust in Jesus. Thanks for your great videos! 👍
Spiritual leaders have abdicated their responsibilities and tried to entertain people. As a result, perverse ideologies have come in to fill the void.
You need to ask why Sunday School has been axed! I went to Sunday school as a youngster and it’s made me a Christian for life. I’ll always be grateful to my parents for this. I’m now 78.
Sunday school was just boring and a waste of time. They went over stuff as new material that my mum had already taught me at home. and they kept it really simple, unlike at home. I can't remember most of my Sunday school songs because we only sang them for one event, and then never again and some of the songs they picked were terrible.
While we did do some hymns, school, both high school and primary school, did a much better job at teaching us Christian songs. I remember the songs from school, not so much from Sunday school though.
If I had a kid I wouldn't necessarily send them to Sunday school.
I am a Christian, but the Sunday school I went to wasn't great, well maybe it was great if you weren't getting educated at home as well, but if you're mum was doing a good job teaching you the Bible at home, it was boring.
It hasn't been axed. In fact it's better done now than ever, with more professional, keen leaders (in our church at least), and more age-relevant material than my generation as kids received in the 1960s and 1970s. The lack of interest or attendance is due to other factors in society, theological or otherwise in nature.
@@timpearson5086 My Mum who went to Sunday school in the 1970s had a decent review of sunday school and distinctly remembers songs from it. I'm a lot younger and remember very few songs from Sunday school. Sounds like she had a better experience of Sunday school than I had from the 2010s.
Thankfully, when it came to songs, school did make up for what Sunday school didn't do throughout high school and primary school, but with our more secular society, many schools have either stopped or will stop being able to do this and Sunday school needs to step up.
It can't just cater to teaching kids from secular homes the basics, it needs to work for kids from Christian homes who are getting taught at home. Obviously maybe don't do Tamar being graped ( yes my mum taught me that story as a child) - the parents should do that one - but you can go deeper than David and Goliath and the parables, and you can go into more depth when you do cover those stories. And Sunday school can't shy away from the more difficult questions and slightly more unsavoury stories. Kids and teenagers have those questions.
@@FronteirWolf What you yearn for is exactly what's happening in Bible-believing C of E churches. Sadly we're a very small part of the population. Who was Tamar, other than the relatively small river between Devon and Cornwall, best known for Brunel's elegant bridge across its estuary? In my 60+ years I've never previously encountered the verb 'graped'.
@@timpearson5086 you'll find the story in 2 Samual chapter 13. And I've heard that UA-cam doesn't like the proper term so adding a "g" might make them less likely to notice it.
Good morning. Very interesting. For your next video could the subject be what specify, you do, to attract children and young families to your church
Our church is full of children from six weeks old. They are free to wander around all over the place as long as they do not cause a disturbance.
An American in Southern California chiming in. Over the years I've noticed that the majority of the young people I've worked with are regular church attendees but their churches aren't the so-called "mainline" Protestant churches (Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, etc). Generally they're members of one of the so-called nondenominational churches (Calvary Chapel, etc) or the Catholic church. There are times at work where our entire staff that day are Catholic. And these churches are bursting at the seams. The Catholic parish I attend has 4,000 families and 14 services a week, and Calvary Chapels and the various independent "mega" churches are full too, full of adults and teens and kids. Ironically it's the denominations that are attempting to broaden their base that are withering. I often attend other churches (working as a musician) and those "mainline" churches often have less than 50 people in the pews, all of them elderly. The United Methodist Church (which I was raised in) has lost millions of members this year alone. Compare that to standing-room-only Sunday services at the Catholic, Calvary Chapel, and LDS churches with plenty of young people attending.
"Jesus is the only hope for the world.... We need to get on our knees and pray .... We need to get out in the world.... We need to disciple, to teach the faith."
“if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.“
2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV
1 Committed leader who will turn to God with a repentant and humble heart, fast, seek His face, cry out on behalf of the people and the church and be open to be changed and to be lead by the Holy Spirt, will turn all this around
IMO, people are seeing what is going on around them in world and asking, "Where is God in all of this mayhem?" Since they feel let down by God and the church, there is no motivation to attend services. Like the old Monty Python chirp, "What have the Romans done for us?" So to are people asking, "What has God and the church done for us?"
It's the parents who went to and hated going to traditional churches in the 90s that have fallen away. The 90s were a pivotal decade for worship style, not theology. With the growth of Vineyard and Kingsway music and bands like Deliriou5?, most CoE churches didn't just missed the trend but outright refused to engage.
The families which are coming back to church now often comment, in charismatic churches, that they didn't know church could be like this (fun).
Also, now, churches are obsessed about teaching children. That is a mistake. We need to be reaching those in their late teens early adulthood. They are young enough to get fashion trends and will attract the king of children's workers who get how to reach families. Aiming services at children put off the parents who think the service is not for them (millennials are often a self serving bunch - from me a millennial).
When I was a child, I was allowed to go to the local church as they had a midweek group for children, I was 9 and allowed to go by myself, then part of the club was going to Sunday School. These days the children aren't allowed or felt to be safe going out without their parents. The deeply regrettable safeguarding reports haven't inspired confidence either. As a Sunday School leader myself in the 80s, we had to apply to our youth group's governing body to drop the requirement for Sunday attendance as so many children were from broken homes, so Sunday sadly lost its central place. Thankfully our local schools are open to the church folk taking assemblies, Christingles etc.
There are too many other things for kids to do on a Sunday morning, like play football or go and watch Premier league football or play games on computers. My local Methodist Church has a good size congregation but they are all 60 years old and older, and the Sunday School has been in steep decline in recent years, which Covid accelerated is down to a small handful, and yet it's full on Christmas Eve.
Depends on the church. We’re working hard and making changes to help families with young people feel more welcome - and it seems to be working. But it means being prepared to make changes. A couple of older teens left to go to an HTB plant a few miles away that had a good teens group. They’re now at uni. That they wanted to attend a church and keep their relationship with Jesus is great! meanwhile we’re working from the bottom up again - but that’s often children’s and youth work.
Is the problem that of worship style rather than divisions of theology? In order to gain children a church has to attract young families. This means modern styles of worship, which is not to everybody’s taste, and an online profile. The church where I worship has 40+ children every Sunday. It CAN be done!
I think there's a place for everything, modern hymns and services as well as the old ones. What matters is the Church stays true to the faith and teaches clearly and in humility. When it starts doing something that isn't in the Gospel and isn't in Church teaching, then it's time to leave.
A friend of mine has repeatedly said what you have just said, to me many times in recent weeks, to attract young people and young families the services have to be modernised ! Don't drop all the older stuff, but it needs to be given an injection of energy to attract the young ! It's not too late but it needs doing ASAP !
Our Eastern Orthodox parish is full of children., and the most traditional worship style of all
My experience with CofE clergy is that they have NO idea how to engage with families.
The vicar at my church thought it would be a good idea to stand outside the school in the morning and hand out sweets to the kids as they come in (what the actual 🫣 I thought). Thankfully he didn’t try this 😅 (yet 😰).
My advice to CofE vicars. Stop worrying about attracting kids! Find a way to engage with fathers and young men (aka future fathers). If you get the Dads, you’ll get the whole family!
The Church walked away from Christ at Easter 2020 when it let Christ hang on the cross alone. Put your faith and trust in God? The Church ran like the disciples. I've not been to CofE since. Free CofE now.
I was looking into christianity a year or two ago. I attended the Catholic, Anglican and LDS (mormom) Church. In terms of church culture I think the LDS church was more appealing. It was easy to follow since the hymmn page numbers were at the front and you had a missionary sit next to you during Sunday service and guide you through it which was very helpful. I didn't get that in the Anglican or Catholic Church and I found it quite hard to follow the Sunday services. Also, I think a big problem is that mainstream Christians on average don't act that different from non Christians. I don't want to cause offence but I don't see them acting differently from non believers. Being different makes the religion appealing.
Rev Fr. Dan.
I sometimes watch your videos. My journey to Christianity began with two attendances for Christmas service at an Anglican Cathedral; but I was not meant to join Anglicanism. I am now a Catholic and has been one for a good many years.
The Lord tells us that the Vine must be one; any branches cut off from the Vine will either and die, thereafter collected and put on the fire to burn. That's what I saw in the decline and fall of the Church of England. The death throe began right from the time of King Henry VIII.
The Lord is telling us a lot of things in our time but not many people take notice.
I appreciate your sincerity and genuine love for the Faith that we share. But as the Lord says salvation comes from the Jews - this being the fact that He came into the world through the Jewish People. And He also tells us that there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church - that being the fact that He came to establish the Church to be the Ark for the salvation of the whole world. He never came to establish all the numerous isolated boats each captained by any Tom, Dick and Harry.
The fact today is that we now have in the Catholic Church what is called the extraordinary Ordinariate for Anglican Catholics which has brought in lots of former Anglicans into Catholicism - the broken branches being grafted once again to the Vine and thus being nourished by the Vine itself.
I pray daily for England (UK) and I have seen things are changing. I want to believe that England will be Catholic once again - not mere wishful thinking, but I believe it's the Lord Himself Who desires it to be so.
Hence, you may like to consider becoming an agent for that good.
God bless and keep doing all that will bring abundant good to the England that has given so much to the world. Remember England is Mary's Dowry. And she's the Queen Mother - a powerful Protector for the nation.
If you believe in only one Church, why did you join the Roman Catholic church then? They are an offshoot of the Orthodox church.
I am sad, I think my morals would be bad if I hadn’t gone to church. But Church of England has lost its indignity, they want to make Britain a third world country with far left ideas and importing non Christian’s. Schools used to sign hymns and do prayers but you can’t when so many children have other faiths,
When the Roman Catholic church splits into trads and the rest, maybe the trads from the CoE can join them.
We ignored them and in the end they did the same
You can't clean a fish before you catch it, Rev. Dan...
Given everything that we now know about The CoE's historic failure to protect children from predators and their current failure to ensure that as adults, those same children are now treated justly... I am not surprised that people may be hesitant to return to church with their children.
What happened at Soul Survivor vis a vis the failure to hold ANYBODY else robustly accountable, especially as what was happening was apparently an 'open secret'... and hasn't this happened across The Church. A big scandal and suddenly 'nobody knew' what was happening. Why would you knowingly give such people access to your children.
In many secular contexts they HUNT predators. They don't cover for them.
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I spent two years within the CoE during covid. I do not have kids, but based on my experience, if I did, I would NEVER expose my children to the CoE. There was no comprehensive teaching of Scripture. Sadly, I no longer believe it is a robustly Biblical or Biblically led organisation.
Christians, Anglicans have stopped have families and children in the west.
I wouldn't send my Kids to many a CofE church if I'm honest. I love ours of course, but even in mine I don't recommend new Christians go to some small groups in case they get led down the garden path. Progressives/revisionists in with the wheat for sure. We also have a bunch of paid youth people in our Diocese, who drop in on churches to start youth groups and such where there are none - but I wouldn't be confident sending my kids there either since some of them are also revisionist, and it would be awkward to ask the questions.
accept heresy, as long as it’s not awkward
@@russ254 Not at all - more like there are many different shades of CofE churches.
The issues Dan identifies are not new. They were present in the 1970s when I was a child, and I share Dan’s perception that the churches which still attract good numbers of children - and in some cases are growing - are those which hold to Biblical values. However I’m concerned that amongst Bible-believing churches we’re facing a demographic time-bomb for another reason. Where are the young women? Without them, we simply won’t have any children - or even young couples - a few years from now. I cannot avoid concluding that the current support for ‘male headship’ thinking is largely to blame. Go back 20-30 years and in the evangelical wing we led the way in putting forward women for ordination, but in recent years we seem to have turned the clock back to the 1970s in our view of the roles men and women. Of course a ‘male headship’ approach is still appropriate in many circumstances, even if it attracts very little support amongst professional women. But it’s essential that we allow egalitarian and 'male headship' views also to be expressed, Biblically applied where appropriate, and that women play an appropriate and visible role in leadership. There is no ‘one size fits all’. A recent survey by the Evangelical Alliance showed 57% support for an egalitarian view, but this just isn’t allowed to be expressed in the most high-profile evangelical churches, from where we are losing young women at an alarming and unsustainable rate. In our church I reckon there are 14 unmarried adults under 35, 12 of whom are men. Only one appears to have a girlfriend. When I was on PCC 3 or 4 years ago and had access to full membership data, I gauged that there were twice as many professional men as professional women amongst our 250 members. I'm aware of similar patterns in other evangelical churches, and of two academic studies noting more or less the same pattern.
Tim, it sounds like you have a wonderful "problem" on your hands. Due to accidents of birth, there are about 3x as many young women as men in my church. The future is fairly obvious: they will find men in other churches and their generation with us will be hollowed out. Hey, perhaps they will match up the with plethora of men in your church.
Where men go and build, women will follow and dwell.
If you want to destroy the good in your church, support the expression of egalitarian views which are in their effect antinatalist, the cause of the problems highlighted in this video.
Do not expect to be taken seriously if you stay in an apostate church!
The Christian faith is so relevant and needed particularly in this very difficult time. However the main focus, which should be the sharing of the gospel message, is being drowned out or eroded within parts of the Anglican and other denominations. What has taken its place? A desire to fit the message to current day views ( and the disputes that come with that approach,) when infact the gospel message of love, repentance and redemption is timeless. It just needs to be shared with conviction by folks who live it out. Surely that should be the church's focus?
If you put the cart infront of the horse things come to a halt.
The church hierarchy need to set the example in prayerfully speaking out bodly and proclaiming the gospel. There are people who want to hear it. I could name one or two Bishops I have been fortunate to meet over the years who have done that , but lets face it, for members in a lot of churches Bishops are often viewed as visiting clergy who attend confirmations. There is little if any real connection between them and church congregations. Outside the C of E parishes in their Bishopric they are often totally unknown, except for the occasional mention ( perhaps due to a controversy) in the press. How can there be any meaningful communication in these circumstances?
We’re battling this same problem in some Methodist Churches… it goes wider than the divide between traditionalist and contemporary church assembly. There is a desperate need for the children who reach teens and beyond to confront modern day life problems and the failure of the churches to connect with them is the problem. On holiday last year we attended a COE Transforming Mission church service, held at 4.00pm on Sunday afternoon… the children accompanied with their families were out on a monthly outing, but the service still has an attendence of +60 Gen-Z, Millenials and Baby Boomers all responding to a modern day non-scripted ‘traditional’ worship style. Gen-Z’ers are desperately trying to come to terms with modern day life, search, enquire and participate spiritually whilst meeting with other like minded attendees. GenZ’ers don’t want to attend out-of-date high liturgy which doesn’t connect with their lives in 21st Century!
Following Christ is a 24/7 x 360 day faith which reaches beyond a Sunday morning service.
@Rev Dan, read my comment below. People can only be discipled if they *want* to be. Maybe explain just what being a disciple *really* means, and teach about what G-d the Father accepts as 'the age of accountability' in a child, which I believe is at 12 years old. Also, read Acts 2:36-40. Build on what you have - teaching, praying, intercessing, providing for your local Ekklesia - and let the Holy Spirit do the rest by *Him adding to your numbers daily!* Shalom!
Christians haven't done a good enough job of explaining why they believe.
Kids are way more skepitcal and curious than they used to be. "The bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" or "I've had a profound encounter with the Lord" doesn't cut it any more.
Raise your game, people.
Not surprised, you've done it to yourselves.
Perhaps they don’t like massages in their underwear and wrestling?
We go to where they are, don't expect them to come to us in church. Great if parents bring their children, but so many have sports events on Sunday mornings now, can't be in 2 places at once. Christian sports leagues perhaps? Christian coaches involved? etc. We visit primary schools in our area every Monday with Open The Book bible stories. They are at least getting bibled if not churched!
Try Every Nation, we have a flourishing childrens ministry, and follow The Bible, perhaps thats the secret!
Doesn’t help that people aren’t having enough kids!
Exactly. My son has been married 21 years. His wife absolutely refused to have children. 😢 My two daughters each have one child.
The Muslims are.
Churches with good local coe schools are full.
The school we attend is always full and its old type. We are catholic but we are glad to attend as its a friendly nice church. Very surprised by it as wasn't expecting it to be nice.
For some reason the more born again the coe becomes the less friendly the churches become but or course your experience could be different. I'm stating personal experience and Not universal facts here.
I quite agree with all that Dan, but a good man at the front can make all the difference in
the world.
As a Northern Irish university student here in England, I really do feel it’s down to the bishops, ministers and individuals within the COFE.
Not one COFE church I’ve been to in my University town has appealed to me. It almost feels like they try too hard to appeal to a faux-imagination of what they imagination university students to be. And the ones who are somewhat related to that archetype wouldn’t step foot in a church anyway.
They have done away with essentially all semblance of tradition, not even leaving hybrid mixed services behind. All I want (any many other norn Irish students) want is an organ and a sermon actually related to Christianity. Not this politics bashing which seems to have engulfed the COFE. A truly sad state of affairs.
We do have it good in Northern Ireland. But for how long? what's going on in England is probably our future unfortunately. You don't realise that we actually have it really good here when you've lived here all your life and it being a good situation for churches is just your life.
@@FronteirWolf Been telling exactly that to many mates back home at queens. Not just with the church but with crime and house costs. England as a society has became very vapid imo. Would say that were a lot better off and won’t reach anywhere near England level in a long time.
What happened to the kids? Parents have woken up to the fact that churches are NOT safe places for children. Safeguarding in CofE is a complete mess
1 Romans v 26 and 1Tim 1 v -9.ALL for Jesus. Arousing children pre puberty is a SIN. Sex is for Marriage. Moses instigated it, and Jesus restored it it Canaan. Preach Jesus not apostasy. Hebrew women taught their children and who quoted Psalm 103, 139 or Psalm 91. These Bishops are titled men. Clueless. We have been praying for the Nation. Teach children need to Learn to pray and Worship.
We need to get rid of the weak senior Archbishops and Boshops. We need senior clergy to stand up for the Christian faith. We also need the Anglican, Orthodox, and Church of Rome to fight side by side instead of continually fighting each other as to who is right.
Mark Driscoll was wrong about most things. But he was right about this: if you want full and multigenerational attendance, you need to preach to the men. And not feminist man-bashing, or exclusively, but sermons providing a positive vision which men can catch and run with. Children are, after all, an expression of hope for the future, "arrows" as one poet expressed it, and they will not magically appear where hope is gone and men are checked out.
And men bring in women, and fathers bring in their families. Fathers relationally express our experience of God in our most tender years, so forging and supporting that bond is absolutely vital. If fathers are not present and engaged, actively catechising the family in domestic worship etc, their is basically no hope for their children. Though it may be grating to your ideals, the religiosity of the mother just isn't overly connected to that of the children, _particularly sons_. It really does have to be fathers.
This includes preaching against divorce and for committed marriage, since divorce rips children from their father and practically means the only time the depressed divorces have their children is Sunday, which they would rather spend interacting with them rather than at church (wrong but understandable). Several Girlguiding leaders have told me the decline in Church Parade attendance for the uniformed groups is largely because of divorce.
Those are not the only factors, but a sine qua non of a change of course, perhaps.
if you want support for marriage, be sure to support reform of divorce laws - men are fools for getting married with current divorce laws
The decline may not be to any specific innovation, but the theology that allows for those innovations. This means the gospel is not being taught. Then you look at the various new-fangled things done to attract people, most of which don't work. However, many of those seem like they are designed to attract a young single adult not a child or young family.