DUE TO THE REBUKE AND CHASTISEMENT OF THE LORD OF THE JUDAS-LAODICEAN CHURCH OF TODAY, WHICH IS RESPONSIBLE ALSO FOR LOSING THE MILLENNIALS AND GEN-ZERS BECAUSE OF HER UNFAITHFULNESS AND HYPOCRISY, THE CHURCH AS WE KNOW IT IS FALLING DRASTICALLY IN ATTENDANCE; THE SMART CHURCHES ARE CHANGING TO STAY RELEVANT BY HAVING SERVICES IN NON-TRADITIONAL WAYS WITH MANY PEOPLE WORSHIPING AT HOME AND EVEN SOME MEETING AT FARMS, GARDENS, AND COFFEE SHOPS; THE CHURCH AS WE KNOW IT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME GOING FORWARD
It’s Sunday morning and a small group sits around a fire pit in a community garden under the limbs of an expansive box elder tree. Church is about to start. And it’s cold.
“God our Father, we are just so thankful for this time that we have to share this morning,” says Pastor Chris Battle, a big man with a pipe clenched in his generous smile. “And we really thank you for fire that keeps us warm even as we sit up under this tree. We just pray that you would bless our time together.”
Three years ago, Battle walked away from more than three decades leading Black Baptist churches and turned his attention to Battlefield Farm & Gardens in Knoxville. They grow vegetables and sell them at a farmer’s market. They also collect unsold produce from around the city and deliver it to people in public housing once a week.
Battle says he left because traditional church was not connecting with people. He felt they were turned off by the sermons, the pitches for money, the Sunday-morning formality of it all.
“So I said to myself, maybe we need to begin to do church differently. But what does that look like? And I didn’t know until I got to the garden.”
American Christianity is in the midst of an identity crisis. Attendance is in steep decline, especially among millennials and Gen Z who say traditional church doesn’t speak to their realities.
In response, religious leaders are scrambling to experiment with new ways to offer meaning in peoples’ lives. Most of the folks who show up at Battlefield Gardens on Sunday mornings say they’re looking for a faith community, but they’re burned out on traditional religion.
“Generally, I’m here because I want two things out of church,” says Kelly Sauskojus, a 27-year-old PhD candidate in English who says she’s a refugee from fundamentalist churches.
“I want time to sit down, like we do on Sundays sometimes or around the fire, and, like, pray and re-center and figure out what we’re about in the world. Because the world is very noisy. And then I want a church to get s*** done with your community and for your community.”
Typically, Battle delivers a brief sermon on the teachings of Jesus. They talk about it. Then, instead of altar calls or holy communion, his congregation — such as it is — tends to the 50 raised beds of kale and eggplant, string beans and squash, tomatoes and greens, the chicken coop and the compost pile.
“People, when they come to the garden, they’ll have conversations with you,” Battle says. “But you tell ’em you’re a pastor, the conversation changes. They hide their liquor. They quit cussin’. I mean, everything changes.”
He guffaws. “But you tell ’em you’re a farmer and they start tellin’ you what color their thumb is. And I’m like, wow. Developing relationships with people in the garden. And it’s not happenin’ in the church. People are running away from the church.”
Indeed they are.
Last year, Americans’ membership in houses of worship fell below 50 percent for the first time since Gallup started its authoritative religion survey. In 1937 — the year the Gallup poll began — seven out of 10 Americans attended church. In 2020 — before the pandemic — only 47 percent of Americans belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, according to the survey. It’s been trending downward since 2000. Young people are rejecting organized religion and some churches are facing an existential crisis.
Battlefield Farm offers a different kind of spiritual community: people can show up for Bible lessons, or they can simply dig in the dirt.
“We’re trying to create this community that people can learn to love each other, and ultimately love the world and transform it. Through collard greens and okra!” he says with another hearty laugh.
This impulse — this urgency — to try something new is being felt throughout the Christian church. Once-booming evangelical churches are worried about declining numbers. But liberal mainline protestants like the Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians are hemorrhaging members.
Consider Knoxville’s Marble City United Methodist Church. The stained-glass windows are still there, but today the structure houses an architectural firm and a Golden Roast coffee shop.
The house of worship closed a couple years ago because people stopped coming and tithing. Now they’ve returned, this time to the altar of caffeine.
Source: NPR, John Burnett
To read more, click here:https://www.npr.org/2022/12/10/1141010320/as-attendance-dips-churches-change-to-stay-relevant-for-a-new-wave-of-worshipper
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