Ryan Burge

which is certainly not good for the future of a church.

But I was also in a community that's the same size today as it was in 1950.

So we're not growing.

Christianity is not growing.

It's like we had all these things working against us.

And there are tens of thousands of churches in those exact same positions right now.

They're just like holding on for dear life as they slide toward closure like my church did.

Yeah.

So there's an article written by J.P.

Demirath in 1995 in Scientific Journal where he basically makes the argument the mainline declined because it succeeded so well.

It got the average American to accept their worldview of religious pluralism and individual freedom and free speech.

And it used to be the mainline stood apart from the average American as being different.

And then when the average American adopted all these mainline principles, there was no differentiating factor between the mainline and the average American.

And that's why evangelicalism has done so well, by the way.

Because it's clearly stood apart from the rest of the culture and says, there's us and there's them.

We are not them and they are not us.

Let's have these distinctive beliefs on gay marriage, on female pastors.

And some people are drawn to that difference.

A guy told me once, he goes, listen, I went to a mainline church for a long time, but it felt like a country club with Jesus.

I'd rather just go to the country club.