Jason's Blog

Perhaps you have seen earlier this week the publication of the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). This study is based on 54,461 American adults who responded to a survey conducted in Spanish or English. This is the third installment of this research group’s findings.

The best interactive charts and graphs of it can be seen at the USA TODAY site. Some highlights include:

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation

In Texas, Catholics gained (9%) a nation high since 1990.

In Texas, “other Christians” have fallen by 20% since 1990.

many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists (which are 25.1% and 15.1% respectively).

This last item is their most significant observation. American culture seems to be more and more open to a group that has no interest in religion at all.

This information is not “new” really, but every Christian should take note of the reality that it reflects.

In the book, The Forgotten Ways, Alan Hirsch has already observed that the majority of evangelical churches are fighting long and hard to recruit members from an ever- shrinking pool of people. He includes this stirring analysis by Sally Morganthaler:

“Despite what we print in our own press releases, the numbers don’t look good. According to 2003 actual attendance counts, adult church-going is at 18 percent nationally and dropping. Evangelical attendance (again, actual seat numbers, not telephone responses) accounts for 9% of the population, down from 9.2% in 1990. “

As an illustration of this trend, check out the Christian Chronicle article “Is Christianity In America losing ground?” The worries of many seem to be focused on losing children of Church members to “denominational” or “Bible church fellowships.” This is an issue, but we should be clear, the water is draining from the bathtub. Do we notice the pool is getting shallower?

Some of you know that I teach a class on religion in America for Austin Graduate School of Theology once a year. I’ve retooled that class from Chrisitanity in America to religion in America because of this phenomena. The days where we could simply understand what other Christians think is well past. We have to engage a larger religious world that is growing around us.

One last parting comment. I read a blog from time to time called internetmonk.com simply because it’s interesting. Its comment on the ARIS report is stirring:

“This is the stage for the coming evangelical collapse. It is the dawning of an America where Christianity is generic or declining, for the most part. It is the stage where serious Churches and theologically/culturally conservative churches have a first century style mission field. This is the stage where many of us will watch our children and grandchildren identify a generic Christianity when they are young, but never join a church and eventually drop into the ranks of the non-religious.

This is the stage for a cultural disengagement from the Christian memory of America. It is the dawning of a new American religious landscape. Give our culture 25 years. How much faster will this happen? How much deeper will it go?

If you are an evangelical and you aren’t enthusiastically supporting innovative, cross cultural, missional church planting, you might want to go pre-plan the funeral. The future isn’t the megachurch.”

This post is a bit negative (and over the top) but the point is well taken. Many are unplugging from church. The days where we can have a great product on Sundays and rely on that for our growth are surely numbered. We (and I) have to become better missionaries able to learn from our culture, engage it, and share the gospel in concrete ways.

The Great Awakening (in the 1740’s-1760’s) was among the most significant periods of religious change in American history. Two of the great preachers in this era were George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent. They sparked controversy with almost every word that they spoke, and their sermons deserve a critical reading. In looking at them we can better appreciate the preaching that we hear every Sunday.

Below are some links to their sermons on-line. I’d encourage you to browse them—not to agree with their convictions entirely but to see their outlines, the topics they spoke about, and the overalll calling that they made to their audiences.

How are they similar and different from what you hear on Sundays?

George Whitefield’s Selected Sermons at Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org)

Gilbert Tennent’s The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry (1740)

Two other good on-line sources are Thomas Kidd’s Great Awakening A Brief History With Documents and Christian History.net’s brief biography of George Whitefield.

Over this weekend only (Friday the 6th- Sunday the 8th), 20% of the sales at the Barnes & Noble in College Station will be donated to the capital campaign for Twin City Mission.  This is a great opportunity to buy books, or a cup of coffee, or lots of other stuff and have it help our local mission. This was announced last night at the Twin City Mission Fund Raiser.

The featured guests were Ron Hall and Denver Moore, authors of the New York Times Best Selling book Same Kind of Different as Me.Ron made a powerful comment during his speech. He noted that of 200+ missions that he has seen around the country, ours is one of the poorest (if not the poorest) facilities for the homeless. The capital campaign will really change this reality. Click Here to see more about the Twin City Mission and its project.

“We must recognize that divine intervention is nowhere near as simple a thing as we might imagine. For it to sustain us and give us staying power- to help us remain firm and see God’s hand at every stage of our lives—it must look quite different from what we would usually prescribe for ourselves. . . To allow God to be God we must follow him for who he is and what he intends, and not for what we want or what we prefer.”

This quote is from a good book on vocation that I read last year by Ravi Zecharias entitled The Grand Weaver (2007). A dictionary defintion of the word “vocation” calls it a “regular occupation or profession for which a person is particulary suited.” As a secondary definition, a “vocation” is a calling – and for many- only clergy have callings. Regular people, if you can call them that, have jobs. Clergy pursue a vocation.

But this seems all wrong. Everybody has a vocation and not just the preachers. Everyone is being called by God and is subject to a universal calling.

Kelly Nemick describes our universal vocation as the “how we are to become who/what we are meant to be” (Mystical Journey, 44). Consider these words carefully. A vocation is the special way in which we live out the universal appeal that God makes to us.

To create a vocation, God takes our personality, our lifestyle, our giftednes and weaves that all together to draw us into a future life with Him. The resulting mix is rather amazing and unique blend. God can even absorb our efforts to fight our true calling.

Shaine Claiborne has it right when he observes our following the voice of God (the divine call to Love God and Neighbors) results in radically different form of discipleship. Zachaeus and Matthew were both tax collectors, but their face-to-face encounters with Jesus led to different callings. This means that “some will leave their jobs and others will redefine them” (Claiborne, Irresistable Revolution, 140).

How has your vocation affected your job, your personality, and your life?
True vocation leaves its mark. What mark has it made on you?
Do you genuinely like how you are living out your vocation?