Cultural, Congregational, and Convictional Christians

Ed Stetzer offers a helpful perspective on all the recent statistics from polls and surveys regarding the Church in America in this Christianity Today blog post, The State of the Church in America: Hint: It's Not Dying.  He distinguishes between what he calls cultural, congregational, and convictional Christians. Here's an excerpt:

The church is not dying.

Yes, the church in the West—the United States included—is in transition right now. But transitioning is not the same as dying, particularly if you hold the belief that Christianity is represented by people who live for Christ, not check "Christian" on a survey form.

While I believe we need to understand reality inside our ranks, I don't believe the situation is quite as dire as many are making it out to be. Actually, no serious researcher believes Christianity in America is dying. Not one.

Instead, I believe this current cultural shift is bringing clarity that will assist in defining who we are as Christians, and that is a good thing in some ways.

[...]

Facts are our friends, and the facts do point to a cultural change. And, in the midst of that cultural change we do see that America looks more like a mission field. However, what we need is a mobilized—rather than demoralized—mission force.

Bad stats and hyperbole do just that—demoralize God's people.

Today, we need a mobilized mission force in the midst of this mission field. So, it's time to work for the sake of the gospel, and to live for the cause of the gospel, not run around proclaiming the sky is falling.

Click here to read the post in its entirety.

CT's Roundup of Post-Election Responses from Prominent Christian Voices

Christianity Today has a collection of quotes from different voices reflecting on the "new moral landscape" of post-election America.  You can read them here. 

Moore on "Farewell to the American Protestant Majority"

An excerpt from Russell Moore's reflections on the results of the recent Pew Forum study:

According to a new study by the Pew Forum, Protestants are, for the first time in history, not a majority in the United States of America. I don’t think that’s anything for evangelical Protestants, or anyone else, to panic about.

[...]

Frankly, we should be more concerned about the loss of a Christian majority in the Protestant churches than about the loss of a Protestant majority in the United States. Most of the old-line Protestant denominations are captive to every theological fad that has blown through their divinity schools in the past thirty years-from crypto-Marxist liberation ideologies to sexual identity politics to a neo-pagan vision of God—complete with gender neutralized liturgies. Should we lament the fact that the Riverside Avenue Protestant establishment is now collapsing under the weight of its own bureaucracy?

What we should pay attention to instead may be the fresh wind of orthodox Christianity whistling through the leaves-especially throughout the third world, and in some unlikely places in North America, as well. Sometimes animists, Buddhists, and body-pierced Starbucks employees are more fertile ground for the gospel than the confirmed Episcopalian at the helm of the Rotary Club.

Accordingly, evangelicals will engage the culture much like the apostles did in the first century—not primarily to “baptized” pagans on someone’s church roll, but as those who are hearing something new for the first time. There may be fewer bureaucrats in denominational headquarters, but there might be more authentically Christian churches preaching an authentically Christian gospel.

Read his reflections in their entirety here.