Much has been said about the changing religious landscape in our culture over the last several years. Society as a whole is becoming less religious. Among those who continue to practice religion, many are attending worship services less frequently. There is a rising number of “nones” – those whose religion is “nothing in particular.” This has led to the coining of a new term to refer to those who are leaving their churches. They are the “dechurched.”
In a new book – The Great Dechurching – authors Jim Davis and Michael Graham tackle this issue. In the opening paragraph of the first chapter, they highlighted this statistic: “About 40 million adults in America today used to go to church but no longer do, which accounts for around 16 percent of our adult population.” They added, “This is not a gradual shift; it is a jolting one.”Continue Reading
Last year I reviewed a book by Chris Martin – Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media – about how social media affects us and how we can avoid its pitfalls. Since I finished that book, I’ve been recommending it to others (
In our modern culture, nearly everyone we meet has a phone in their pocket and/or a computer in their home (and likely more digital devices than that). Anyone reading this will be reading it on a screen. Anymore, this is simply the easiest and quickest way to access information and see the content we are interested in.
This book is about restoring a sense of community in the local church. While many churches do a good job at engaging in Scriptural worship and following the New Testament pattern for their organization and work, the sense of community is missing in many places. Being part of a local church ought to mean being a bigger part in one another’s lives.
The internet is arguably (and I would say almost definitely) the most significant technological advancement in the history of mankind. Yet as it is still relatively new, we are still learning how to use it. There are many ways we can use the internet for good, but there are also a lot of negatives that it has introduced to our lives and the world around us.
With the rise of the internet and the instantaneous communication and continuous stream of information that is now available to us through our computers and smart phones, there is a real danger that we may be consuming too much of what is harmful, frivolous, inaccurate, and inferior, and not enough of what can provide us with the wisdom that comes from above. As we learn how to manage our use of such technology, we need to make sure we keep it in its proper place so that (1) it does not hinder our pursuit of God and His wisdom and (2) we can actually derive some benefit from this technology. (Yes, both are possible.)
The world around us has changed immensely during the current generation. Some changes may be seen as beneficial (such as certain advancements in technology); however, we usually think of this in negative terms. The reason for this is because our society – as a whole – has departed from a Biblical worldview. This has made the culture around us more ungodly and the sins that used to be shameful even for the world to speak of have become prevalent and accepted.
