The evidence is plain: church attendance and participation are in decline in America. It’s been that way for a few decades now, and some trends project that as few as 30 percent of Americans will receive their primary spiritual direction from a local church by 2025. In fact, some data indicates that as many as 2,000-3,000 churches close every year (source).

As fewer and fewer people participate in church activities, the church itself has tried many different approaches to stem the tide. Google “Church Growth Strategies” and marvel at the number of (mostly very expensive) programs that are available. We have mega churches, micro churches, house churches, restaurant churches, warehouse churches, and, yes, even pub churches.

But are we just trying to feed an irreparably broken model for what the church is and how it works? Are all our “new” ideas really just ways of pursuing the Einstinian definition of insanity, trying to do the same thing to achieve different results?

Or are there ways to redeem the church? To reinvent it for new generations of people who view the world through much different lenses than those who came before?

This week at New Wineskins we’ll look into our collective crystal ball and talk about what a new kind of “church” might look like, act like, and feel like. We’ll look at the question from each of our unique local contexts, and discuss ways we might begin to spark the conversations that will lead us forward.