Posted on November 11, 2009
Eric Swanson is speaking on cities this morning. Drawing from Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City, he avers that we should understand contours of our cities in order to renew it. Five areas to fill in.
- Paths – streets, walkways, transport
- Edges – boundaries that shape the city landscape
- Districts – neighborhoods
- Nodes – gathering points in the city
- Landmarks – clearly marked areas
Do you know your city? Do you know how to engage the nodes and districts in order to renew it. Or are we haphazzardly on mission? How can we make a sustained social and cultural impact in our cities?
Check out Kevin Cawley’s talk right now for more nuts and bolts on this topic.
Posted on October 29, 2008
The following stats on church in American are culled from The American Church Research Project, which is endorsed by the Lausanne Movement and led by David T. Olson.
- According to George Barna, 47% of American adults attended church on a typical weekend in 2005. This is not accurate. Only 17% of the US population attended an orthodox Christian church in 2007. Nine percent of that is evangelical church attendance. The rest is Roman Catholic and Mainline attendance. Of course, church attendance does not account for all believers, but these figures are staggering nonetheless.
- While the US population has increased, church attendance has remained the same, resulting in a net loss of church attendees. Numbers from actual counts of people in orthodox Christian churches show that 20.4% of the population attended church on any given weekend in 1990. That percentage dropped to 18.7% in 2000, and to 17.0% in 2007.
- Evangelical church growth slowed down significantly in the last year – from an average growth throughout this decade of 0.8%, to a gain of only 0.3% in the last year.
- More Catholics and Mainliner are switching to Evangelical churches than vice versa, meaning that Evangelical growth through the conversion of the unchurched is limited.
- The church plant rate declined until 1937, then grew until it had doubled by 1957. Then it entered a period of steep decline from 1957-1970, reaching the lowest point in history. Since then it has increased marginally. Many, many more churches need to be planted in the U.S, just to keep up with population growth. These statistics also show that the strongest ratio of church attendance is in the South. Two thousand five hundred additional new churches are needed per year to keep up with population growth.
For more info go to www.theamericanchurch.org or download this presentation.
The American Church in Crisis answers the questions church leaders are asking: Why are these trends occurring? What can our church do to reverse its pattern of decline and decay? How can we make the gospel story come alive again to new generations? How must Christian leaders change their values, habits, and priorities for the American church to grow in health and influence? By following a four-step process of observation, evaluation, introspection and action, readers will find hope in the possibility of God rebuilding and restoring his church.
