The quiet exodus of women from church

                                

                                        

Take a look at the history of Christian missions and you will notice a consistent pattern:

From the beginning — and I’m talking about the Book of Acts — women have been among the strongest mission supporters, the most faithful prayer warriors and the most generous mission givers. Against daunting odds, they also have proven to be some of the boldest, most committed missionaries sent by churches in more recent times. Think Lottie Moon and her heroic co-workers in the formative stages of the American mission movement.

So what happens to missions tomorrow, or 10 years from now, if significantly fewer women vitally participate in the life of local churches?

That’s one of the worrisome questions raised by new research released in June by the Barna Group, a Christian research organization. The findings show an increasing percentage of American women, even among those who self-identify as believing Christians, joining the current social shift away from church involvement.

“Historically, men have been less likely to regularly attend church than women,” Barna reported. “Just over a decade ago, the gender gap was three men for every two unchurched women. In other words, fully 60 percent of unchurched people were men. Today, only 54 percent of the unchurched are men. In other words, the gender gap has narrowed from 20 points to just eight points in the last 10 years.

“Here is the landscape of women and their churchgoing: While just over half of all adult women have gone to church in the past week or past month, nearly four in 10 have not been to church in the past six months. This last group represents the majority of unchurched women — they are the dechurched. … It’s not that most of these unchurched women are unfamiliar with or inexperienced in church, but rather that at one point they decided church was no longer for them.”

They aren’t necessarily abandoning the faith or rejecting the church. Most are just slipping away. Barna identifies five trends in the quiet exodus:

n  Competing priorities — “When asked to rank several priorities in their life, women far and away ranked family relationships as their top priority (68 percent),” the report said. “Church or religious activities did come in second — but a very distant second (11 percent) and only marginally inched out personal time/development (10 percent).” Surprisingly, work or career ranked as the top priority for only 5 percent of respondents. Unsurprisingly, it was the second-highest time commitment. In other words, whether women love their jobs or not, they’re spending a lot of time at work.

n  Busyness — “In the end, many women today are just busy. Really, really busy,” Barna concluded. “And they are experiencing a tension between things they might want to do and things they actually have time for. … [More than 70] percent of women feel stressed out, 58 percent are tired and 48 percent say they are overcommitted. The percentages are even higher among moms with kids at home. Nearly nine in 10 women say they want to improve in at least one area of life, and what is the area they cite the most, over work, family and friends? Church. [But] the simple fact of the matter is many women — and especially moms —feel like they just don’t have time for church in today’s busy, fast-paced life.”

n  Lack of emotional engagement and support — Only 17 percent of women responding to the survey said they feel “very” supported at church. More than 40 percent sense no emotional support at all there. This isn’t some vague, touchy-feely thing; it is a “relational disconnect,” according to Barna. Faith is about relationships with God and people. If women don’t form strong relationships with others at church, they will look for them elsewhere.

n  Changing family structures — Most churches are geared toward traditional family structures: husband, wife and kids. Singles of both sexes have long felt like an afterthought in many church settings. Most American women are marrying later (mid-to-late 20s); many of them want to establish themselves as self-sufficient individuals before even considering marriage. What does the church offer them?

n  Changes in belief — More than 60 percent of unchurched women overall say they are Christians, even if they haven’t attended church in at least six months. But only 46 percent of unchurched Millennial women self-identify as Christians. Two of every 10 American Millennial women now identify as atheists, according to the report.

“Many women — particularly those still identifying as Christian — may want to believe that they can hold to their faith even as they find less and less time in their life for church,” wrote Roxanne Stone, Barna Group vice president, in an article for Today’s Christian Woman. “However, Barna’s research over the years has shown that people who are disconnected from church — even those who self-identify as Christian — are less likely to engage in other faith activities, including Bible reading, prayer, volunteering and charitable giving. … Whether we want to admit it or not, church attendance roots believers in regular faith rhythms and increases many other related faith practices.“

Those “related faith practices” include the chief purposes of the church in the world: to love and worship God, to lift His name everywhere and to make disciples of Christ among all peoples.

Counteracting the movement of women away from vital church involvement will be a huge, complex challenge in the days ahead. But if you’re a church leader, here are a few questions that might help you get started:

Can busy moms and working women find real relationships in your church that help relieve the stress and isolation of their frantic lives, while drawing them toward God? Can young women searching for personal identity find encouragers in your church who will help them find their identity in Christ? Can women looking for deeper life purpose than their endless to-do list find exciting ways through your church to serve Christ and share the gospel in your community and around the world?

Lottie Moon was once a young woman — notorious for skipping chapel at school — searching for purpose in life. When she found it, she changed the world.

(Explore ways to participate in God’s mission at http://women.imb.org/)

Inspiration and perspiration

                                               

                                                  (Bill Koehn at Jibla Baptist Hospital)

Inspiration only gets you so far.

It’s great for starting a major task. As for finishing one — not so much. That’s where commitment comes in.

Winston Churchill, one of the greatest inspirational speakers of the modern age, understood this truth: There’s a time for words and a time for action.

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” Churchill told the British people 75 years ago in May. It was his first address to the House of Commons as prime minister. A fight to the death with the mighty Nazi war machine loomed. Years of suffering lay ahead. America’s entrance into World War II was in doubt, as was the continued existence of Great Britain itself. Many who heard Churchill’s stark words wouldn’t survive the struggle.

He knew what was coming, had no illusions about it. He’d been issuing warnings about it for years from the back benches of Parliament. So he didn’t try to sugarcoat it. His speech, less than four minutes from start to finish, is a stern call to victory at any cost (listen for a bracing lesson in leadership). He knew that solemn day was not a time for soaring rhetoric. It was a time for getting on with the task at hand.

The same applies to servants of a greater cause: God’s global mission.

Don’t get me wrong: As followers of Christ, we need His inspiration every day, every hour, every moment. We need the constant nourishment of His Word and the power of His Spirit to accomplish anything worth doing. We need to encourage and challenge one another.

But then we need to act. Obedience is the truest sign of faith.

Sometimes obedience is hard — especially after the glorious music fades away and the exciting speakers move on. Sometimes the people who raised their hands with you in those high moments of worship and inspiration change their minds when things got hard. They were willing to go anywhere, do anything, until they weren’t. What about you? That’s when you find out if you are serious.

Paul, the first great Christian missionary, didn’t sugarcoat the task for his young friend Timothy:  “You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. … Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1,3 NASB). And Timothy knew Paul was enduring great hardship.

Many centuries later, another great missionary had similar words. Writing to her friend Annie Armstrong in 1889, Lottie Moon had this to say about daily life in North China:

“Please say to the new missionaries that they are coming to a life of hardship, responsibility and constant self-denial. ... They will be alone in the interior and will need to be strong and courageous. If ‘the joy of the Lord’ be ‘their strength,’ the blessedness of the work will more than compensate for its hardships. Let them come ‘rejoicing to suffer’ for the sake of that Lord and Master who freely gave His life for them.”

Sometimes serving Jesus isn’t particularly hard or dangerous. Sometimes it’s just mundane. Boring, even. Blessed are the plodders who do boring stuff faithfully.

One of the most faithful plodders in Southern Baptist mission history was Bill Koehn. He died in 2002 after being shot point-blank, along with medical missionary colleagues Martha Myers and Kathy Gariety, by a Muslim militant in Yemen. Until then, Koehn, age 60, had spent 28 uneventful years running the Jibla Baptist Hospital as administrator. Relatively uneventful, that is.

The hospital faced the daily challenge of ministering to an endless stream of patients from all over the impoverished Middle Eastern nation. At its peak, the 77-bed mission facility employed several hundred workers, treated some 40,000 people a year, performed more than 400 surgeries a month and operated a busy outpatient clinic. Koehn and his staff also endured extended civil war in Yemen, occasional kidnappings, a disastrous fire, numerous financial crises, ongoing personnel shortages, political pressures and legal battles that threatened to shut down the hospital.

Other than that, it was pretty normal.

How did Koehn cope? The former supermarket manager from Kansas was quiet, predictable, a creature of habit. He operated on a strict daily schedule, starting with prayer and Bible study before dawn and proceeding with clockwork precision until nightfall. Unfinished projects, whether at the hospital or in his woodworking shop, irked him.

“You never called Bill after 9, because he was in bed,” said a longtime colleague.

Koehn’s highly structured style enabled him to handle the countless details and headaches involved in running the hospital. Yet he somehow found the time to make wooden toys for the orphanage he loved to visit, to assist needy widows in the community, to drink tea with Yemenis and listen to their struggles and needs.

Plodders get things done, even on the mission field.

The Apostle James said our lives are but a mist that will soon disappear (James 4:14), IMB President David Platt reminded listeners June 17 during a “Sending Celebration” to recognize 59 new missionaries and their sending churches at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Columbus, Ohio. None of us is guaranteed tomorrow, so we should make our lives count for God now — even in seemingly small things.

“May the urgency of this mission mark us,” Platt said. “May our light shine amidst the darkness, and may our mist count while we’ve still got time.”

Roger Cohen of The New York Times warns about using that precious time to “follow your passion,” as the cliché goes.

“Life is a succession of tasks rather than a cascade of inspiration, an experience that is more repetitive than revelatory, at least on a day-to-day basis,” Cohen writes. “The thing is to perform the task well and find reward even in the mundane. … I’ve grown suspicious of the inspirational. It’s overrated. I suspect duty — that half-forgotten word — may be more related to happiness than we think. Want to be happy? Mow the lawn. Collect the dead leaves. Paint the room. Do the dishes. Get a job. Labor until fatigue is in your very bones. Persist day after day.”

Following your passion is great, as long as your passion is following God. Day by day. One foot in front of another, faithfully. God will multiply every step you give to Him.

(Explore ways to follow God in His global mission.)

Where gang rape comes from

Listen to an audio version of this post at
http://media1.imbresources.org/files/100/10023/10023-53806.mp3

A 15-year-old girl steps outside of a school homecoming dance and guzzles alcohol in a hangout spot on campus.

She collapses. She is robbed, beaten, stripped. She is raped — not once, but again and again, allegedly for at least two hours. More than 20 people reportedly participate or watch. Nobody tries to stop the attacks. Nobody calls the police.

You’ve probably heard about the incident, which occurred Oct. 24 outside Richmond (Calif.) High School. It made national headlines because of the sheer cruelty of the assault — and the fact that so many bystanders did nothing, or joined in.

“There’s something about the coldness of it ... the attitude of both the people involved and the people who saw or knew about it,” said Dara Cashman, of the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office, after the Oct. 29 arraignment of three young suspects in the attack.

“It’s just very cold.”

When a crime this chilling captures the attention of a society already saturated with violence, explainers get into the act. Why didn’t a bystander or witness call the police? Communities ruled by crime and fear don’t tolerate “snitches,” law enforcement officials say. Liberals often point to the brutalization caused by generations of poverty and racism. Conservatives tend to talk about the breakdown of law and order, families and traditional values.

Such explanations often “presuppose that humans are basically good before society messes them up,” observes Collin Hansen in Christianity Today. “So we need to identify and fix those dimensions in our society that lead people astray. Surely factors such as the bystander effect, poor schools and broken families testify to what happens when cultures forsake common goods that restrain sin. But the Bible depicts a more realistic view of human nature.”

The Old Testament, in fact, frankly recounts several gang rapes (read Judges, chapter 19, for one heartbreaking instance). “The biblical writers do not seem surprised” by such abuses, Hansen notes. “Rather, they identify the crimes with rebellion against the Lord … .”

Sin, in other words.

Willful rejection of God’s commands leads to worship of self above all else and evil against others. It’s an old, old story. It was the main problem then. It’s the main problem now.

The vicious abuse of a 15-year-old girl for group entertainment is cold, to be sure. But it’s no colder than trafficking a child into the sex industry for profit, or ignoring the cries of the poor, or systematically destroying someone’s life with whispers and lies.

If all the bloodbaths of the last century have taught us anything, it’s that the more things change (technology, social mores), the more human nature stays the same. We are sinners — individually and collectively — and the only solution to sin is Jesus Christ.

Simple? You bet. Simple truth. You don’t need an advanced degree to understand the Gospel. Here it is: The world is lost in sin. We need to repent and return to God. He offers mercy and redemption, through Christ alone, to all who worship and follow Him as Savior and Lord.

Charles Mwangi is staking his life on that truth. A Christian in Nairobi, Kenya, he believes God has called him to reach hurting people in the tough slums of the city.

“Charles has remained faithful in the face of intense persecution from a local gang,” reports a Southern Baptist missionary in Nairobi. “His house has been vandalized and one of his Bible ‘storying’ groups was recently attacked, resulting in the robbery of the attendees’ cell phones.”

Charles prayed he would have a chance to share the Gospel with those who mistreated him. The opportunity came, Charles shared — and two of the gang members repented and accepted Christ as Lord and Savior. They now attend the same Bible group they robbed.

Law enforcement didn’t change the gang members’ hearts. Nor did community programs (although local believers and missionaries participate in social ministries in Nairobi). Jesus changed their hearts.

When enough hearts change, communities change. Whole societies and cultures change.

We need to remember that in a hyper-political age. I occasionally tune in to certain “Christian” radio programs that used to offer inspiration, teaching and global missions information along with a biblical perspective on social issues. Now it’s all politics, all the time, with barely a nod toward missions and evangelism. Even if I agree with the politics, the single-minded emphasis bothers me.

Don’t get me wrong: Christians have a sacred responsibility to speak out for what they know is right in an increasingly hostile public square. But we need to keep our priorities straight. We are citizens, first and foremost, of the kingdom of God.

His priorities are as simple as the Gospel: Love the Lord with all your heart, mind and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Glorify Him in your community and among the nations by proclaiming His salvation. Make disciples among all peoples.

I sat recently in a church association meeting and heard a shocking statistic. In a representative survey of the almost 500,000 people who live in the region where my church is located, a grand total of 14 percent affirmed this statement: “My faith is important to me.” That’s right, 14 percent — in central Virginia, home of Lottie Moon, guiding star of Southern Baptist missions.

I’m a lot more concerned about that statistic than who’s voting for whom.