Post-moderns & Evangelism

[there buster]

Quote:

In the developed world we are reaching hardly anyone except immigrants.

Precisely!

And affluence is relative. Low and middle income people in the developed world are affluent by the measures of the rest of the world. And relatively well-educated as well.

And here's the kicker. NA supplies 90% of the world budget. What happens in 10-20 years as the membership ages and then dies?

If NA will not financially support churches with different approaches to worship FOR THEIR OWN CHILDREN--and they have demonstrated they do not and will not-- how long before they cease to support missions, where people very different from them worship in ways which may seem quite different?

And, here I am probably too blunt, but here it is. I believe there is a strong racist (unspoken and unrecognized) component. In NA caucasian churches accept a more, shall we say, demonstrative worship for African Americans, becauase "that's just they way they are," but don't try to bring that into a caucasian church.

There, I've said it. Probably the end of my (nonexistent) career as influential. But it needs to be confronted.

We're perfectly happy to watch the "natives" in their quaint apparel in mission videos, but try to bring some of their worship music or customs into our worship, and you'd have a mutiny. Calls would go to the conference office, chains would be jerked.

We think they'll "learn" and "grow" to become more and more like us. Heaven help us, sometimes they do. It never occurs to us that we might learn from them.

[Dr. Shane]

So what can be done to change this?

[there buster]

Quote:

3 married couples under 30 who have children

2 unwed mothers under 30

2 married couples under 30 with no children

12 unmarried youth between the ages of 18-25

That's a total of 24. What is the official membership of your church? The 17-35 yos represent generations larger than the baby boom. What are the numbers of those 42-60? and over 60?

Sure. I-M has approximately 10-12 churches in the St. Louis (2million) and K.C. (1million) areas.

But the vast majority of NA churches are not in metropolitan areas of that size. Nor are they near large Adventist institutions.

The population of the two metropolitan areas above is roughly equal to the entire population of Iowa.

According to the I-M website, there are only 10 churches in the conference with more than 200 members.

There are 25 churches with between 89-199 members.

That's 35 churches with 90 or more members.

But there are 78 churches smaller than 90 members. Fifty-four of those are 50 or fewer members. Yet almost 64% of all I-M members are in those 78 churches.

I assure you, young couples are just about as common as unicorns in those churches.

[Woody]

"In my conference 23 out of 24 new churches in the last 5 years were Spanish. "

Laz ... are the affluent or not affluent?

[Dr. Shane]

We don't live near any Adventist institutions. However our church is now looking at building a new sactuary at the urging of our Conference. But we live in a hispanic culture in the deep south.