The Future Dying Church

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Sep 1, 2006 in Church, Culture | 2 comments

As I mentioned in my Five Trends for the Future of Church Planting , I foresee a quickening of churches dying in America over the next twenty years.  There are tens of thousands of churches filled with communities that have shrunk below 100, 70, 50 and are filled with an aging population.  Many of these churches will not know how to survive. 

American church statistics¹ have reported:

· In America, 3500 – 4000 churches close their doors each year
· Half of all churches last year did not add one new member through conversion growth
· Churches lose an estimated 2,765,000 people each year to nominalism and secularism

The question looms, what are all these churches going to do when they need to close their doors?  I believe there are three options:

1) Dying Churches and Denominations can become large REITs.

2) Dying Churches and Denominations can re-invest in the Kingdom by turning over their resources for the purpose of Church Planting. 

3) Dying Churches can be replanted through letting go of control and bringing in leaders who will get them back on mission. 

Church Technology & Mission

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Aug 30, 2006 in Church, Culture, General Technology | 5 comments

I presented a session, Technology & the Mission yesterday at a church planting bootcamp . Session Description: "There are numerous opportunities for churches to use technology to expand their reach, spread the gospel and gather people to your local church. Come learn practical ways to enhance your ministry and become incarnational-minded in how you do online ministry. Learn from case studies and best practices from churches that have been successful online."

The two main thrusts dealt with (1) how are you as the church communicating to the world online and (2) how are your reaching out incarnationally to people through the web.  For example, if:

• - American ages 13 to 24 now spend more time online than they do in front of the TV.
• - 64% of wired Americans have used the Internet for spiritual or religious purposes.
• - During usability studies, 88% of web users went to a search engine first to accomplish a task and 53% of searchers didn’t scroll down past the first 4-5 results above the ‘page fold’.
• - MySpace (in terms of market share) is the top site on the Internet.
• - 45% of internet users, or about 60 million Americans, say that the internet helped them make big decisions or negotiate their way through major episodes in their lives in the previous two years

What should the church be doing in response to this?  I presented 4 best practice cases where churches incarnationally used the internet to reach the lost and minister the gospel to them.  I'll post the mp3 of the session when it's ready. I'm thinking that in order for the mp3 to be effective I'll need to tie it in to my slideshow (I had 45 slides) or else it won't make much sense.  I used a lot of examples and case studies to demonstrate the point.  The presentation is all part of my plan to become a Church Technology Missiologist (You have to pick a niche since Ed Stetzer has wrapped up the missiology corner.)  

tags: church websites, church technology, web 2.0, sermon syndication, content management systems, online marketing

Young, Restless, Reformed

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Aug 29, 2006 in Church, Culture | 2 comments

Christianity Today's September cover : Young, Restless, Reformed – Calvinism is making a comeback—and shaking up the church. There is a resurgence in theology, as I mention why I think this matters in Five Trends for the Future of Church Planting. (Liberal churches that chunk theology for relevance will become social clubs.  Emerging churches who are in a conversation on a journey together as an authentic community walking a spiritual labyrinth without theological boundaries and a destination in mind will not make it.) More and more young people are thinking through this as a backlash to the postmodern mess we find ourselves in. There will be a whole new cadre of theologians that come from our generation. Or as Mark Driscoll says it,

"I like big books and I can not lie, You other brothers can't deny.." (think Sir Mix-A-Lot)

Here is a quote from the article:

"While the Emergent 'conversation' gets a lot of press for its appeal to the young, the new Reformed movement may be a larger and more pervasive phenomenon."

 Here is a list of some of the people mentioned in the article:

Alistair Begg, Don Carson, Bryan Chapell, Timothy George, Mike Horton, Tim Keller, John MacArthur, Tom Nettles and Phil Ryken, as well as the Acts 29 Network (Mark Driscoll), the Alliance, Covenant Seminary, Cyrene Ministries (go Anthony and Sherrard!), Ligonier Ministries, the PCA, Reformed Seminary, RUF (Reformed University Fellowship), Sovereign Grace Ministries and Westminster Seminary.

 Some other blogs mentioning this: Caveman Unleashed, reformation21

Gospel & Our Culture Network

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Aug 25, 2006 in Church, Culture | 0 comments

The Gospel & Our Culture Network re-launched their site.  It has a great new design.  The GOCN is a "network of Christian leaders from a wide array of churches and organizations, who are working together on the frontier of the missionary encounter of the gospel with North American assumptions, perspectives, preferences and practices."  Influenced by Lesslie Newbigin and led George R. Hunsberger it collects the writings many great thinkers on mission in our culture.  I've personally been influenced by many of their books including; The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, Foolishness to the Greeks, The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, StormFront : The Good News of God and more…  (HT: Reformissionary )

Discerning Reader

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Aug 24, 2006 in Church, Culture | 3 comments

The new Discerning Reader site is up for people looking for reviews "that bring glory to God and are consistent with a conservative, Protestant understanding of the Bible."  It is under new ownership (for those of us who had, umm…challenges with the previous management) of Tim Challies.  

Blocking SPAM from Outlook & Outlook Express

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Aug 11, 2006 in Church Technology, Culture, General Technology | 0 comments

I know many people have moved to Gmail as their primary email client.  I've stuck with Outlook because it integrates with other systems, my pda and such.  Many people are not satisfied with Outlook because of the SPAM filtering.  I've found one product very helpful, Cloudmark.  It is unique because over 2,000,000 people contribute to what email is considered spam.  This brilliant way of handling spam means when people mark a message as spam, your inbox is automatically protected.  Or as they say it:

Only Cloudmark has the power to apply human feedback in real time to block spam, phishing, and additionally many viruses and spyware. Leveraging a highly sophisticated Trust Evaluation System™ (TeS) and groundbreaking technology, feedback is corroborated in real time, so that only a few people ever have to see a spam email before it is blocked for everyone. Cloudmark Desktop is entirely transparent and requires no configuration, making it powerful, yet simple and easy to use.

Try a FREE trial of Cloudmark.