The Nutters Are Declining Rapidly

[Mister Agenda]

I love the idea of the church just slowly dying out due to the natural deaths of the participants. But, my experience is that it's a particular kind of church that's dying in that way. It's the old mainstream moderate churches. There are many churches full of young people. They are the bat-shit crazy millennialists. So while we are seeing a decline in church goes, we are seeing a rise in the number of crazy church goers.

A good book on the subject is Shopping For God which tells the story of how, while old mainstream denominations are waning, the mega-church phenomenon is booming.

Here's the thing though: mega-churches are a symptom of the decline. What would have been a dozen little churches is now one big church that tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Mega-churches aren't a growth of Evangelicism, they're a consolidation of it.