Why is it happening?

The English Church Attendance Survey revealed that the rate of decline in church going has accelerated with a loss of around 22% over the past decade. It also showed that congregations are aging with the age group 15-30 being the least represented. Fewer than 8% of the population now go to Sunday services, a figure that will, on present trends, drop to 2% by 2020.

Some observations on the reasons for this are as follows:

• Anti-christian spirit in our schools
  Back in the early 1970s when I first became a Christian I worked in a school in Brixton, an inner city area of London. I taught Religious Education and had a fairly free hand and so most of my lessons were based on the Bible. A number of boys made professions of faith in Jesus and we had a lively Christian Union going. Today it would be impossible to operate in the way I did then. At a similar school where I was teaching in the 1980s I was told that to teach that Jesus is the one way to God is a racist view (and therefore totally unacceptable). As our children are indoctrinated with the multi-faith view of religion, Jesus has become one of many options, all or none of which may be true.
  
  
• Assault on family values
  Along with the attack on the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus has come the attack on the biblical order of the family. Things have reached such a pass that we have now reached a state where children are taught that heterosexism is a form of oppression institutionalised in the family, culture and law (Avon Health Promotion Service video, Beyond a Phase. A Practical Guide to Challenging Homophobia in Schools.) The Grampian Health Board publishes guidelines on sex education for schools that teach homosexual liaisons as equal to sexual relationships within marriage. It also rejects strongly the idea that Aids can be prevented by sexual fidelity: Resources which advocate monogamy / marriage as a solution to HIV should be avoided.
  
  
• Media attacks on the Christian faith
  Positive testimony to Christianity is generally censored out of the media. A member of our church who had been a drug addict and was set free from her addiction through her faith in the Lord Jesus was invited to speak on a radio programme on drugs. But she was told not to say anything about God helping her. I was invited to take part in a documentary about Christian beliefs on the Second Coming. I gave what I considered to be a reasoned presentation of this subject and the person interviewing me was pleased with the content. However my contribution was not used. When the programme was shown all those whose contributions were chosen were extremely weird and made to look idiotic. I realised that the purpose of the programme was to ridicule the idea of the Second Coming and so they did not want any contributions which made it look reasonable. Before Christmas Channel 4 produced a programme called The Real Jesus which was an attempt to undermine the historic basis of Christianity based on speculation with no real evidence at all. I wrote a reply and sent it to Channel 4 with a request for the opportunity to answer the points made by the programme, but with no success. (This article is available on our website).
  
  
• The Unbelief of Christian leaders
  A.N. Wilson, who writes regularly in newspapers and is a fierce critic of Christianity, observed in an article in The Express (21/10/99) that Christianity will decline yet further in the next thousand years - decline I would predict to the point of near extinction because Christians no longer believe it to be true. Sadly we have to agree that he has a point when he says that in most places where the clergy are trained you would find only a minority of these scholars professing old-fashioned, orthodox Christian belief. He cites liberal theology and Darwins Origin of the Species as the main reasons for the collapse of faith. When future Christian leaders are taught to disbelieve the Bible it is no wonder that the response to the assault on Christian values in society is generally such a pathetic compromise. (For those who have problems over the Evolution / Creation debate, we have available the video A Question of Origins (£12 + postage) which shows how evolution takes much more faith to believe in than the Genesis account - in fact it is scientifically impossible!).
  
  
• Confusion amongst Evangelicals
  Today the Bible believing churches have been invaded with an outpouring of confusing teachings, mostly coming from North America. I was talking recently to a friend who attended a large charismatic church which had a growing congregation and four Bible classes going. Then it embraced the Toronto Blessing and the Bible was exchanged for experience. The Bible classes closed down as people waited to be zapped by the Spirit. Before long many were disillusioned and left and now the church is a shadow of its former self. The same story can be repeated all over the country. As many turn to fads and gimmicks in a vain attempt to turn the tide, the Bible is less and less taught and so Christians are ill prepared to face the crisis which is coming on the world. The push towards union with Roman Catholicism is also affecting all denominations of the church which means further inevitable compromise on vital Biblical doctrine.

Conclusions

Jesus himself warned that there would be false prophets and false messiahs in the last days who would lead many astray (Matthew 24.4-5). He said that the way to life is narrow and few find it, but the way to destruction is broad and there are many on it (Matthew 7.13-14). The fact that the majority of Christendom is in some kind of apostasy is very sad, but does not undermine the truth of the Bible or of Jesus claim to be Messiah. As he was despised and rejected by the majority of his own people in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 53, so he is despised and rejected by multitudes of professing Christians today. Those who hold to the truth of his word will be rewarded with eternal life. Those who reject him will be eternally damned. The challenge for the true church in these last days is to hold firm to the truth as delivered to us once by the Apostles and not to be swayed by the opinions of men or dismayed by negative statistics.