I often joke that I’m a pretty good minister, but not a very good Presbyterian minister. That being said, I am undeniably Presbyterian. So, on the weekends when I’m not in a pulpit, I’ve been a long-term resident of the back pews. (It may be that I’m a better Presbyterian than I give myself credit for.)

Over the past three to four decades, I’ve noticed something. You probably have, too. The back of the heads that I find myself trying to see past have been gradually going gray or bald.

It turns out that that anecdotal evidence is backed up but some pretty sobering numbers. A 2009 study out of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research shows that churches are indeed aging in terms of the average age of members. Some denominations, such as old-line Protestants, have a significant proportion of their congregations in which fifty percent of their members are over the age of 65.

Even as church membership is declining (and in many ways directly related to it), the percentage of any given church’s older population tends to be increasing. Because of this, the Hartford Institute’s research tells us that “one-fourth of congregations will lose half their memberships in 20 years.”

We have a problem. If the church is its people and not the building, the church is dying.

However, it’s not dying because its aging members are dying, at least not precisely. The seeming oncoming demise is related to the aging of the Church.

Before we look at that though, let’s look at how we got here, because part of this increase in the aging of the church is simply the mathematical outcome of the church losing its middle age members.

There was a time, frequently referred to as “the good ole’ days,” when the church was the center of society. A large percentage of a community’s life centered around the church. It was not only the moral compass and center for their lives, but it was the social and philanthropic center of their lives as well. It was really unlikely that people would challenge the status quo that was being established. Challenging the thing that defined your community and was the center piece of many people’s daily lives and activities would have probably been a really good way to make sure you were not accepted by those who had power in the establishment and ultimately you would probably be pushed out to the margins of the circle of society, if included in it at all. So, the status quo that’s being established goes unchallenged and ever-unchanging.

As you could probably guess, this kind of influence (and let’s just be honest: power) was somewhat intoxicating. The Church, particularly its leaders, began to believe the myth that they had established. The myth wasn’t that they were at the center of community, because in many ways they really were. The myth that they had begun to believe was that they deserved to be there, that it was by some divine right that they have so much influence and power.

It shouldn’t be surprising that an organization founded on resisting the powerful and on including everyone, can point to a time when they became powerful and began excluding those who didn’t believe the dogmas, as the beginning of their decline.

You see, over time, society began changing. The Church, in its perceived place of godly instituted influence and power, did not change even though it has a history of changing and, at times, doing so dynamically. The further society moved down the time line, the more society changed, and the more the church did not. With each passing year the Church became less relevant for a quickly changing society.

We’ve ended up in a place where society has moved on and, much to the surprise of the Church, it has done just fine without us. People, it turns out, are a reflection of a very responsive and ever dynamic God and are able to find other social centers, other ways to express their philanthropic needs, and other ways to fulfill their spiritual desires. This is particularly true of young adults and middle-age folks whose busy lifestyles and philosophical outlooks leave them little time to bother with organizations that are stuck in the past rather than building a bright new future.

The Church? Well, we didn’t fare so well. We continue to insist that we can repeat the things we used to do (maybe with a few minor adjustments, but certainly not with any changes that are significant or truly challenging) and expect to reap different results. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t work, and the Church not only continues to grow grayer and grayer, but more importantly it continues to be less and less relevant for more and more people under the age of 45. Our stubborn belief that we don’t need to significantly change has not only rooted us in the past, but, over time, it has created a significant age gap in our churches.

And now we are at the payoff of this article. It is that age gap and the typical lifestyle of older adults that is contributing significantly to churches dying.

Let me hash that out a little bit. Hopefully, it comes as no surprise that routines are very important for a high percentage of older adults. With aging can come a lot of unwanted change and the stress of deteriorating health. Also, you can become somewhat dependent on other people, which means you don’t always have control over how or when your needs are met. Routines help immensely with those issues. It’s not so unusual for seniors to begin to develop cognitive challenges, which of course, are easier to manage when your daily life is consistent and predictable.

Now, here’s why all of this matters and how it is connected to churches dying: Do you know the single most effective way to get people to try a church out? An invitation from a friend. As a matter of fact, a Lifeway Research study found that ninety percent of new church members first attended because a member invited them.

Let’s put the puzzle all together. Getting stuck in its dogmatic adherence to how things have always been while society moves forward created a significant age gap in the church. The predominate age group in the church is now older adults, ages 65 and above. Not only do a majority of folks in that age group prefer their days to be predictable and full of routine, it is safe to say that because of it they don’t tend to meet many new people.

On top of it, most of the people they do know either already go to church or have decided over their lifetime that it just isn’t for them. Even if our older adults do find someone they can invite, the person is also likely to be an older adult, which isn’t going to help with the reality that “one-fourth of congregations will lose half their members in 20 years.”

The Church is in a membership crisis more than most people are willing to admit. It’s not just that our numbers are dwindling. The problem is that we think that if we just put some effort into it, we have the tools and structure to turn it around. Frequently, this is even expressed as “if we just did (fill in the blank) like we used to, everything will be alright.” That is exactly and precisely wrong.

We must recognize that we are now perfectly set up to not attract young adults and middle-aged folks. We are perfectly designed to get the results that we are getting. It’s going to take doing some things in radically new ways to turn the tides. We’ll have to embrace technology and social media more deeply than ever before. And, we will have to be intentional about breaking out of our routines. We will need to be deliberate about finding new ways to positively interact with younger folks. Nobody else can do it for us. There are no magical books or seminars that can make this easy.

This is simply about the church (remember, the people are the church) breaking out of its safe routines and dogma, and deeply and lovingly engaging the community it is in.

~ Rev. Mark Sandlin

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About the Author
Rev. Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on “The Huffington Post,” “Sojourners,” “Time,” “Church World Services,” and even the “Richard Dawkins Foundation.” He’s been featured on PBS’s “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and NPR’s “The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin

Q: By Andy

I read Bishop Spong's fine book Unbelievable; in one chapter, he talks about advances in science (such as the size of the universe) that have forced us to reconsider the tenets of our faith that were codified before those things were understood.

I also read Neil Degrasse Tyson's most recent book: he says the universe is estimated to be 90 billion light-years across and contains 100 billion galaxies.

My question: where is God in the universe? Is God bigger than the universe? How can God be both so big but small enough for us to have a chance of comprehension?

Dear Andy,

Without pretending to know the precise answer to your question I’d like to consider a crucial element that helps me better understand this paradox you’ve focused on; that element being the subject-object paradigm that we are slowly transitioning out of.

One of the key findings of quantum physics is that the mind is not separate from what it observes as its object. Quantum physics shows that the processes of our consciousness (what we use to know anything) are not separate from the world we see. It is partly showing us that every act of observation and knowing is an act of God creating. Human consciousness and what it interacts with are deeply entangled, constantly creating with one another. As such, we cannot define God as universal but then inquire about God as if God is an entity separate from us, or the process by which the inquiry arose. That’s where the confusion is brought in.

The subject-object paradigm that existed when we thought we were separate beings, knowing of things as objects, is challenged because of these advances in science and quantum physics. It is indeed making more room to experience God beyond knowledge alone, making God more than an object to be known by the human subject. This is a liberating shift that will bring us to a fuller understanding of our intimate connection with God. However, the old paradigm is so deeply engrained that it will take us lots of practice and continued questions, like the one you posed, in order to work out the kinks and appreciate the paradox that God is both small enough to be felt within our beating hearts, and large enough to stretch to the outer edge of a universe we struggle to fully imagine. It makes God not a mere matter of comprehension but also of direct experience in the present moment and it frees us from assuming a type of power over Creation that we do not in fact have.

These advances are showing us how logic and knowledge alone cannot grasp the fullness of God. These scientific advances in the understanding of our relationship to the universe are helping to heal us from a subconscious separation from God. This separation has caused us to think of ourselves as objects seeking God by our intellectual efforts, without surrendering to the magnificence and awe of what is here and now – of what is within and without all at once. The sciences are in some way bringing us back to the mystery of appreciating God, despite all the related knowledge and ideas we can gather. At the points where our minds seems to hit a limit and experience takes on a less logical yet deeply meaningful quality, God still exists. One may even say that the name “god” starts to hold less power over these experiential revelations, breaking us open to new names, symbols, and stories with which to better connect with the Divine.

Andy, your question and readings on these things is putting you in touch with God in a deeply meaningful way. I hope you find deep nourishment as you continue to explore the elasticity of God-both within and far, far beyond yourself.

All the best,

~ Toni Reynolds

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About the Author
Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni’s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni’s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality.

Thank you for being a part of this community!

In the fourth installment of my fall series on the miracles of the New Testament, I suggested that the healing miracles attributed to Jesus in the gospels might have originally been composed not to be tales of supernatural power at all. They served rather to demonstrate signs of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom attached to Jesus after his life had ended, when people began to understand him as “the one who would come,” “the expected one,” or “the promised messiah.” For evidence of this, I pointed to a story told only in Matthew and Luke where John the Baptist, in prison, sent messengers asking Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come or do we look to another?” Jesus told these messengers to tell John that all the signs the prophet Isaiah said would accompany the arrival of the Kingdom of God were present now in his life: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the mute sing. In that episode, these signs were not descriptions of events that actually happened; they represented, rather, language being used to interpret Jesus as messiah. I concluded that column by saying that if that were a true reading of this story, as I believe it is, then two conclusions would follow. First, for far too long, we have been reading the gospels as literal books, when that was not what their original authors intended. Second, clues should be present in these miracle stories themselves that would make their original meaning obvious. I promised to demonstrate what I meant by that by looking next at the various “sight to the blind” stories where the accuracy of this proposed reconstruction should be visible. So let me now begin to bring into focus the gospel stories in which sight is restored to one who was blind and see if there is a dramatically different way to view them.

When all the relevant biblical narratives that portray Jesus as giving sight to the blind are isolated, it appears that there are six distinct stories in the gospels. Two are in Mark (8:22-26 and 10:46-52), two in Matthew (9:27-31 and 20:29-34), one in Luke (8:35-43) and one in John (9:1-41). Since we know, however, that both Matthew and Luke had Mark before them when they wrote, it is interesting to note that all of the “sight to the blind” stories in both gospels appear to be nothing more than variations of Mark’s second story. To complete this narrowing process, the single “sight to the blind” story in John appears to be based substantially on Mark’s first story. So, in reality the six stories can be reduced to only two.

To be fair there are other generic references to the miraculous recovering of sight on the part of those who were blind in the gospels of Matthew (15:31 and 21:14, 15) and Luke (7:21), but they contain no narrative content. So we note that while the claim of restoring sight to the blind is regularly made for Jesus, a careful study of the gospels reveals that only the two narratives in Mark appear to be the source of this claim. Everything else is a variation on one of these two stories. The first thing we need to embrace is, therefore, that very little data actually stands behind this dramatic claim. In this column and the next one in this series, I will search within these two primal stories from Mark for illumining clues.

I begin that task with a detailed scrutiny of the account of the healing of the blind man from Bethsaida. (Mark 8:22-26). It is filled with hidden messages and enigmatic words. An unnamed blind man from Bethsaida is brought to Jesus begging for his sight. Jesus takes the blind man by the hand and leads him out of the village of Bethsaida. Then, we are told, Jesus spat on the blind man’s eyes and “laid his hands upon him.” Jesus asked him: “Do you see anything?” The blind man responds by looking up and saying, “I see men but they look like trees walking.” Once more, Jesus lays his hands on this man’s eyes. This time we are told that it was only when there was an intense stare between Jesus and the blind man that his sight was restored and he saw everything clearly.” The story ends with Jesus sending the newly cured man directly home.

What is the meaning of this strange tale? Why is the healing something that takes place in stages? What does “looking intently,” mean? Perhaps the clue to understanding this story is found in the next immediate episode in Mark’s text (8:27-33). Most people hear the Bible read in church only in brief segments with no attention paid to its context. Yet following this restoration of sight story is the account of Peter’s confession at a place called Caesarea Philippi, in which Jesus asks his disciples this question: “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples respond with a variety of possibilities. You are John the Baptist returned from the dead. You are Elijah. You are one of the prophets. Jesus then was portrayed as probing deeper into each disciple with his next question: “But who do you say that I am?” That was when Peter blurted out in his typical and aggressive style: “You are the Christ, the maschiach (the messiah).” It was a title that for the Jews was filled with a variety of images. Mark portrays Jesus as accepting that answer and imploring them not to tell anyone until the final events in his life occurred. One can hear in this narrative, echoes of previous discussions and debates about Jesus that surely go back to the oral period of Christian history, that is the time after his crucifixion in 30 C.E. on one side and the writing of the gospels some 40-70 years later on the other. There were two prongs to this debate. First, there was the conviction that Jesus was the messiah, for which they cited all the signs. On the other side there was the indisputable reality that Jesus had been killed, a fact that seemed to invalidate all messianic claims. For the Jews the messiah was to come in vindicating triumph. It was the destiny of the messiah to be victorious not to die. How can Jesus be the messiah and also be the crucified one? That was the debate. Peter has the first half right. You are the Christ, the messiah. I’m sure this Caesarea-Philippi story is written as if Peter expected some kind of emotional applause for his insight.

Jesus, however, is portrayed not as rejecting that designation, but as seeking to expand the meaning of messiah until it embraced the things that had in fact already happened to him. So Jesus is portrayed as explaining to the disciples what kind of messiah he was called to be, lest they misunderstand the reality of his death. That is the moment in which Mark proceeds to put on Jesus” lips the first prediction of the passion (v.31). He will repeat this two more times (see Mark 9:30-32 and 10:33, 34) to make sure that his disciples knew that Jesus had understood his destiny. “The Son of Man,” said Jesus, using the popular New Testament image of messiah, drawn from the book of Daniel that had added many supernatural connotations to that word, “is not coming in triumph.” Rather, “he must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priest and the scribes, be killed and after three days rise again.” In these words, Jesus was made both to challenge and to redefine the popular messianic expectations.

Mark’s narrative implies that this redefinition was more than Peter could embrace. Clinging to the popular notion of the victorious messiah, Peter was said to take Jesus “and to rebuke him.” Jesus, however, turned and challenged Peter severely, calling him “Satan,” and saying, “You are not on the side of God but of men.”

I believe the clue to understanding the juxtaposition of these two stories is that to both the blind man and to Peter sight comes through stages. The theme of Peter’s internal struggle to understand Jesus expressed at Caesarea Philippi will be repeated in the next chapter in Mark’s narrative of the transfiguration. There we are told that Peter had a vision of Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah on top of a mountain. In this mountain-top experience, Peter suggests the erection of three tabernacles, one for each of these participants. He is rebuked by the heavenly voice speaking out of the cloud, which states that Jesus is not to be regarded as one of three Jewish heroes, but as the one in whom both Moses and Elijah find their fulfillment.

Surely we recognize that all “after the fact predictions of things to come” are never history. Mark’s gospel was written some 40 years after the crucifixion. Predicting the future is quite easy if you have already lived it, but are writing it as if it is still to come. The purpose of this narrative was to suggest once again that Peter came to his understanding of Jesus slowly like the blind man came to sight over a period of time. When we add to this interpretative process a little noticed fact from the Fourth Gospel informing us that Peter came from the town of Bethsaida, the pieces begin to click together. The story of the blind man from Bethsaida was originally a story, perhaps a parable, about Peter’s conversion.

There is still one further connection. In this episode about the blind man from Bethsaida, Mark says that sight came only when Jesus stared at him intently. In Luke’s account of Peter’s denial of Jesus during the crucifixion, Jesus and Peter are pictured as staring intently at each other. Luke’s exact words are: “The Lord turned and looked at Peter.” That intense stare, which Mark says gave the blind man from Bethsaida his sight, is also portrayed later as giving Peter, another blind man from Bethsaida his sight. It took Peter some time to understand that messiah means giving yourself away even to those who will kill you. For if the nature of love is to be self-giving, then the nature of divine love must be totally self-giving.

Our first conclusion then is that Mark’s story about a blind man receiving his sight is not a miracle story at all, but a description of the process of bringing Peter’s blindness about who Jesus was into his ability to see. This “healing story” is thus about developing eyes that can see beneath the surface to truth. It is not about sight but about insight or second sight. Suddenly, what we once called a miracle story begins to open us to a very different meaning.

~  John Shelby Spong