SkyFall

In case you were hoping for another James Bond movie review, sorry for the fake-out.    Pew Research Center makes a living doing surveys of what is going on in churches.  They released some findings this week that the sky is falling for Christianity and reported an 8% decline over the last 7 years in people claiming to be Christians.  That certainly sounds like something for all of our churches to be worried about.  Seeing the growth at my church in Braselton and the growth of other churches around the country, the statistic surprised and concerned me.  I was happy to find this counter point by Ed Stetzer which was published in USA Today and sure hope that he knows what he is talking about.  In case you don’t have time to read the full article, his theory is that people who were raised in a Christian home that used to check the “Christian” box on surveys, are now checking the “None” box, indicating that they are not really practicing any religion.    The percentage of people going to church has actually remained fairly stable with the number of people identifying themselves as evangelicals increasing by 2.4 million people.  All of the survey questions pale in importance to the one question that matters the most: “What am I doing to become more like Jesus today?”