The End of Evangelicals

I just received an email with a link to an essay by Michael Spencer about the death of the Evangelical church in America. He expects the Evangelical church to follow the Mainline denominations that have all but disappeared in any contributing form in the past few years. He is expecting the Evangelical church to all but disappear in 10 years. Yes 10 years!!! I do not know what to think about his article (which you can read here in essay format or here on his blog), but some of what he said stirred my soul and made me feel very uneasy. Here are some of the highlights/lowlights

• "We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith." speaking of the fact that more Christians can articulate their Biblical stance against abortion and gay marriage, than they can articulate the Gospel to a non believer.


• "This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good."


• "We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it." Not much to say about this, it just makes me step back and say hmm.?!


• "Evangelicalism doesn't need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral." when answering the question if this is a good or bad thing. His stance is not that it is good, but then again he sees some things that will only change when the churches fail.


• "We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture."

Once again, I have not fully processed what I have just read, but I know this should shake us a little. Even if Spencer is not accurate in what he is saying he is accurate in some of the problems he is seeing. As long as Evangelicals are joined at the hip with political conservatism in a world turning away from political conservatism Evangelicalism will not flourish. We need a movement that is not focused on politics, but rather on winning souls. A movement that is more focused about the kingdom we will live in than the one we do live in.

I am afraid that Spencer that the best way to reach the world in the future may be through another medium than the Evangelical church.