Home / Faith & Spirituality /Featured / Mainline or the Ala Carte Line?
Author: Amy Thompson Sevimli
Over at The Barefoot Pastor blog, a local Lutheran pastor just blogged about declining mainline churches. She observes that fewer and fewer people wait around in the mainline but more often get their religious sustenance in the ala carte line. She even points out that she (like many other pastors I know) frequents non-Lutheran worship services.
To do all this, she is willing to name some pretty big fears that the mainline faces but rarely, if ever, articulates: shrinking congregations, denominational irrelevance, and fundamentalist theology. In the end, she claims that new generations of Christians don’t need denominations in the same way our forebearers did, and that young people are not just willing to worship differently, but that we are looking to worship with and seek spiritual wisdom from people who are much different than we are.
I don’t want to take away her thunder. She writes about this honestly and eloquently. But I am interested in hearing your thoughts, because she highlights what I hear a lot of people talking around but not always saying very clearly: the Church is changing, and that includes the role of denominations. But how? What will this look like going forward? What do you think? Does the mainline need to change and reform (a good Lutheran word)? Do we just need to improve what we are already doing? Or do you have another suggestion? Click over, read the blog, and leave a comment…here or there.
May 8th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
She makes some interesting points. I guess what I would say is that my main concern is not that the Lutheran Church in particular is in decline, but that many people are not even going in the a la carte line anymore and instead are just eating nothing. If I saw my friends at college experimenting at different churches in different weeks, I would be THRILLED. Yes, I am a committed Lutheran, but that’s not the point; it’s that the Good News gets preached from whomever possible. If we could trade getting rid of the ELCA for doubling the amount of believers in the world, I would do it in a second.
But I see the decline (in attendance) of mainline churches and the decline in participation in institutionalized religion as inextricably linked. We live in a more complex world than the 19th century, and some of the truths that science and growing awareness of other cultures have unearthed demand theological flexibility. It’s not that I have a huge problem with fundamentalism (although I certainly disagree with parts of it); it’s that I can’t even begin to imagine most of the people I know being comfortable in a church that advocates a fundamentalist theology–one that considers evolution heresy and allows itself to be defined by its zealous rejection of certain lifestyle practices. The main thing that we need is for our message to survive, even as our congregations may shrink.
Anyway, just my two cents. It was great to see you tonight, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning.