Things are Better Now

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One thing I've never liked about "old people" when I was young was the way they were always comparing their day with my day and saying my day was worse than their day...that things are worse today and getting worser. :-)

Now that I'm "old people" I haven't changed my perspective. I think things are better now on almost every front, especially spiritually. Way better! I just have to think back to life in the 1970's to thank God we came out of that decade. What a waste. (Aside: Ever been to Woodbury Days? We thought things like that were a thing of the past in the 1970's. Even small towns couldn't get anybody to show up for anything but sports. People stayed home in droves and just watched TV.)

A college friend and I were talking about this last spring. He agreed with me. He told me of attending chapel with his daughter who is in college and being moved to tears as the student body worshiped passionately together. He said, "We didn't do that when we were in school" (the same school his daughter now attends). He was right.

I had the weekend off from preaching so Lois and I checked out a church that meets at Fridley High School on Sunday. The church is called Substance. We know some people who go there. It's about three years old and running well over 1200 in attendance by my calculation. A sea of young adult faces. Passionate worship and mission. (I learned some stuff there that I'll bring home to Five Oaks.) That didn't happen when I was in my 20's. And there are Substance-like churches popping up all over the place.

And now here's some data to support my point from the MMI blog.

...some of Baylor’s research findings really fly in the face of what we’re hearing in most polls coming out of the Christian community. Here is one of the declarations of this book:

The percentage of Americans that belong to a local congregation is actually INCREASING in the country. In fact, church membership is much, much higher in 2008 than it was, even in revolutionary times.

Stark shares research done for the book “The Churching of America, 1776-1990,” which went through an elaborate study to actually see what church membership has looked like throughout American history. Here’s what they found:

% of Americans Who Belong to a Local Congregation
1776—17%
1850—34%
1906—51%
1926—56%
1980—62%
2005—69%

Stark says that the Puritans were actually a very small minority of the people who settled in the new world.  European church attendance was dismal, and many settlers brought their religious habits with them.  Thus, only 17% were connected with the church in the early years of our country.

Church attendance isn't really the most important sign of spiritual vitality, but I don't think most of us would have guessed this about our country's history.

In any event, I'd never trade today for yesterday, and I'm so hopeful when I see the passion of our younger generations.

Here's one last thought: A lot of young adults are traveling from our end of town to Fridley. Some of them grew up in our church. Can we start something here that captures the vitality, spirit and youth of Substance? Possibly a Sunday evening venue at the Woodbury campus?