CHRISTIANITY'S rest THROES

CHRISTIANITY'S rest THROES

CHRISTIANITY DYING, MEGACHURCHES CLOSING FOR CHRISTMAS

Some Mega churches Closing for Christmas

By Rachel Zoll, AP Religion Writer The buttociated Press Tuesday, December 6, 2005

This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several mega churches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day. Critics within the evangelical community, more accustomed to doing battle with department stores and public schools over keeping religion in Christmas, are stunned by the shutdown.

It is almost unheard of for a Christian church to cancel services on a Sunday, and opponents of the closures are accusing these congregations of bowing to secular culture. "This is a consumer mentality at work: `Let's not impose the church on people. Let's not make church in any way inconvenient,'" said David Wells, professor of history and systematic theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a leading evangelical school in Hamilton, Mbutt. "I think what this does is feed into the individualism that is found throughout American culture, where everyone does their own thing."

The churches closing on Christmas plan multiple services in the days leading up to the holiday, including on Christmas Eve. Most normally do not hold Christmas Day services, preferring instead to mark the holiday in the days and night before. However, Sunday worship has been a Christian practice since ancient times. Cally Parkinson, a spokeswoman for Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., said church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources. The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was 1994, and only a small number of people showed up to pray, she said.

"If our target and our mission is to reach the un- churched, basically the people who don't go to church, how likely is it that they'll be going to church on Christmas morning?" she said. Among the other mega churches closing on Christmas Day are Southland Christian Church in Nicholasville, Ky., near Lexington, and Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, outside of Dallas. North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga., outside of Atlanta, said on its Web site that no services will be held on Christmas Day or New Yearâs Day, which also falls on a Sunday. A spokesman for North Point did not respond to requests for comment. The closures stand in stark contrast to Roman Catholic parishes, which will see some of their largest crowds of the year on Christmas, and mainline Protestant congregations such as the Episcopal, Methodist and Lutheran churches, where Sunday services are rarely if ever canceled.

Cindy Willison, a spokeswoman for the Evangelical Southland Christian Church, said at least 500 volunteers are needed, along with staff, to run Sunday services for the estimated 8,000 people who usually attend. She said many of the volunteers appreciate the chance to spend Christmas with their families instead of working, although she said a few church members complained. "If we weren't having services at all, I would probably tend to feel that we were too accommodating to the secular viewpoint, but we're having multiple services on Saturday and an additional service Friday night," Willison said. "We believe that you worship every day of the week, not just on a weekend, and you don't have to be in a church building to worship." Troy Page, a spokesman for Fellowship Church, said the congregation was hardly shirking its religious obligations. Fellowship will hold 21 services in four locations in the days leading up to the holiday. Last year, more than 30,000 worshippers participated.

"Doing them early allows you to reach people who may be leaving town Friday," Page said. These mega churches are not alone in adjusting Sunday worship to accommodate families on Christmas. But most other congregations are scaling back services instead of closing their doors. First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., led by the Rev. Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, will hold one service instead of the usual two. New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., led by the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National buttociation of Evangelicals, will hold one Sunday service instead of the typical three.

Pastors and priests are facing ever more empty pews in 2006 Many churches failing to meet spiritual needs Members prefer experience of God to dogmas, creeds

Eric Shackleton Canadian Press Dec. 17, 2005. 01:00 AM

Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world crowded into St. Peter's Square in Rome last April to greet the election of a new pope.

The rest of John Paul and election of his replacement, Benedict XVI, drew worldwide attention to the Catholic Church.

But behind the headlines, some experts say, mainline Christian churches - Catholics included - are mostly failing to meet the spiritual needs of members. Heading into a new year, pastors and priests face ever more empty pews.

By 2061 - in just 55 years - "the last Anglican will leave the church" if the present decline in membership continues, says Tom Harpur, a Toronto Star columnist and one of Canada's best-known writers on spirituality.

The former Anglican clergyman was commenting during an interview on a new study prepared for the church's bishops.

The Anglican Church of Canada has seen its membership fall by 53 per cent over the past 40 years, according to the report. Membership is declining by about 2 per cent a year, or 13,000 members.

The church likely won't be able to stem the decline anytime soon, says Harpur, author of The Pagan Christ. It's likely to be business as usual - "just as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be."

Meanwhile, after declining for several decades, especially in Quebec, the number of Catholics attending church regularly has levelled off at about 20 per cent nationally, the most recent statistics suggest.

Also in 2005, the Catholic diocese of St. George's in Newfoundland-Labrador became the first in Canada to declare bankruptcy.

The Catholic Church also continued to grapple with a huge worldwide priest shortage. The shortage is so great that the church "is in danger of losing its idenbreasty as a church centred around the eucharist," says Susan Roll, a professor of theology at St. Paul University, which is affiliated with the University of Ottawa.

Although the ordination of married men was discussed at a Vatican synod on the eucharist in October as a possible way to fill empty pulpits, a powerful appeal by a leading traditionalist, George Cardinal Pell of Australia, to retain the celibacy rule won the day, says Roll.

And where are spiritually hungry Christians going? "There are a whole lot of gurus" out there, says Maurice Boutin, a McGill University professor of theology specializing in contemporary religious movements.

"Eastern religions are blossoming very much in all areas of societies ... the new age movement, astrology and necromancy (witchcraft)," he says.

"People are trying to find out things to have control of their lives."

The crux of the problem, says Harpur, is that "people don't really want to be told anymore the same old (thing) if it contradicts what their mind and as well as their heart tells them."

People "don't want talk about God - they want God," says Harpur. They don't want creeds or dogmas - "they want experience."

While many Christian denominations try to come to grips with thinning ranks, religious diversity in Canada is growing. According to the last census, the number of Canadians declaring themselves Muslims more than doubled between 1991 and 2001, from 253,000 to about 600,000, says Statistics Canada.

People by the thousands are taking spiritual longings into their own hands

Among Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, the census numbers were all up by about 80 per cent in the same period. Canada, though, remains predominantly Catholic and Protestant, with about 13 million declaring themselves Catholics and 10 million calling themselves Protestants, according to the 2001 census.

About five million Canadians say they have no religion.

The United Church, says Harpur, has about "the same number of members that it had when it was formed in 1925, and the population of Canada has tripled in the meantime."

Membership in the United Church has been slipping over the past 40 years. According to the report to the Anglican bishops, it fell to around 638,000 in 2001 from 1.04 million in 1961, a loss of 39 per cent.

During the same period, membership in the Presbyterian Church tumbled by 35 per cent, Baptist membership declined by 7 per cent and Lutheran membership by 4 per cent.

Only the revivalist Pentecostal buttemblies of Canada appears to be growing, says the study. Its membership rose by about 40 per cent between 1961 and 2004 to 243,000.

The Anglican Church has been concerned about why its pews are emptying out. But the fact that this is just now dawning on them - one bishop says at their recent gathering "this is the first time we're addressing this issue" - shows that they haven't been very attentive, Harpur says.

People by the thousands, says Harpur, are taking their spiritual longings into their own hands. In The Pagan Christ, published in 2004, Harpur details how the early Christian church covered up all attempts to reveal the Bible as myth, preferring instead to stick with a literal interpretation of Scripture.

The liturgy the churches use "evolved in a pre-Copernican world when people thought that the sun revolved around the Earth and the Earth was flat. We still use a lot of those metaphors in our worship," says Roll.

"On the other hand, our collective scientific knowledge tells us when we speak of the grandeur of God, we're not just talking about a God who reigns over the flat Earth, we're talking about the infinite reaches of the universe."

The challenge, and perhaps a recipe for survival, she says, is "can we develop a vocabulary ... metaphors that are big enough to keep up with our scientific knowledge."

Jai Maharaj Om Shanti

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