The Declining Church in Australia and New Zealand

I don’t wish to alarm you, but…. The church in Australia and New Zealand is in decline. Attendance is down, in real terms, and even more so when contrasted with population growth. Congregations are aging. Regulars come less frequently. There are fewer newcomers in our pews. Volunteers are less willing to serve. Youth are walking away from their parents’ faith in unprecedented numbers. Our reputation is mixed. Where churches are growing, it is usually transfer growth. Where there is conversion growth, it is predominantly among a subset of migrant communities.

Why? Exactly what is the problem? And what ought we to do in response? What is the solution? This is the topic of several local books published in the past 12 months alone. This essay will compare and contrast four recent books that attempt to explain the problem, and map out possible responses. In the process, I aim to give an overview of the various explanations and proposed solutions, distil the issues, and offer a mud map of the context in which we happen to find ourselves.

Part One: Defining the problem (according to four authors)

Michael Frost – Mission is the shape of water

Frost is a well-published author speaker, and champion of what was called the emergent church movement. His title reveals the metaphor that drives his thesis – mission adapts itself to its host culture, just as water moulds to fit its container. The first eight chapters are a history of how the gospel has appropriately grounded and contextualised itself in various incarnations of history. The book reads like a popular anecdotal version of the seminal text Transforming Mission by Bosch.

For Frost, we are living through another season of cultural transition. So it follows that as our host culture changes its shape, our mission efforts must adapt to speak into the new context. Models of mission that fitted previous social eras are now outmoded, and will fail to engage and find traction. But this is not a problem, because our missional interactions are fluid. Our task is to read the times, and engage culture with the edge of the gospel that speaks into the present existential angsts.

Frost’s insight is twofold. Mission and gospel are above any one culture, and can speak life into any context. What is required on our part is situational awareness, followed by faithful adaptation.

The weaknesses in Frost’s approach are also twofold. To emphasise the adaption, the discontinuous – is to risk assimilation. Is the gospel message entirely fluid? And second, assuming we can find the appropriate presentation, is culture always receptive to the gospel?

Stephen McAlpine – Futureproof

McAlpine is a pastor/blogger cum social commentator. His first book (Being the Bad Guys) seeks to explain how we got here, and Futureproof outlines what we do in response to our new context. With Frost, McAlpine is keenly conscious that culture has shifted. Western culture has become highly individualised, seeking selfactualisation. People are chasing hard after identity, relationships and fulfilment. Ironically, what they find is anxiety, loneliness, and divisive tribalism, while their hopes remain fleeting and elusive.

For Frost, social change calls for missional adaptation. Not so for McAlpine. Our task is to outlast and outdo the culture. McAlpine believes that whatever good culture seeks, Jesus is somehow a more beautiful fulfilment of that hope than what they imagine. The church’s calling then, is to embody and express that hope as a compelling reflector of Jesus.

Mc Alpine is non-alarmist. The church has Jesus, his Word, and his Spirit, and is therefore futureproofed. Whatever the question is, Jesus is the answer. And we, the church, are his body. In this sense, McAlpine is also refreshingly corporate in his understanding of our identity, and the church’s mission. I love it!

The dilemmas for McAlpine are several. If the church is so futureproofed – why are we in such unprecedented decline? McAlpine is non-anxious and comforting, but perhaps also non-directive. Finally, it’s not obvious that the church is so prophetically different from culture. Christians have been infected by cultural consumerism, identity in self rather than in Christ, and anxiety. Is not all of this diluting our capacity to be light in the midst of darkness?

Justin Duckworth/Alan Jamieson – In-tensional

Duckworth and Jamieson are two New Zealand authors/practitioners. No doubt they are both conscious of social change, but it is not their focus. The problem for them is that the church is “idolatrous, compromised, flabby, and insipid (p.31).” Because the mainstream (or centre to use their word) church is introspective, it no longer speaks to “concerns of our time”, and has lost its prophetic voice.

In essence, if decline is the symptom, then institutionalisation is the problem. Like any other social movement, churches had a charismatic moment, but over time the dynamism is routinized and lost, and the church becomes stuck in a rut. A new charism will come from the edge, not the centre. Inasmuch as the centre can engage with and learn from the edge, it will find renewal and new hope.

Duckworth recites a list of historical moments where an institutionalised stuck church has been revitalised from the edge. Agreed, the (desert Father) Anthony, Benedict, Francis and Dominic came from the outside and nudged the church back on track. But Donatus, Pelagius, George Fox (founder of Quakers), and Joseph Smith (Mormons) also came from the edge, and took the church from centre to heresy.

In other words, not all movements from the edge are positive. Nor do all new positive movements originate at the edge. Some movements, such as Alpha (Nicky Gumbrel) and City to City (Tim Keller) are examples of gradual evolutions originating from within centre church.

There is insight in the basic hypotheses of this book. Much of centre-church is in self-maintenance mode, having lost its missional impact. (Some) Edge church has that – and the two can be a blessing to each other. History testifies that edge ministries can be the Research and Development department of the wider church.

Andrew Heard – Growth and Change

Heard comes at the problem from an altogether different angle. God created a good world, now fallen and separated from him. God is redeeming people to himself through Christ, using us – his church. Therefore, the church ought to be growing as more people come into the kingdom. We need to change in order to grow.

The problem is that the church is not growing, and its leaders are not leading change. They have settled for being faithful, but their faithfulness is not resulting in fruitfulness. In contrast to the other authors, Heard is not concerned with the social historical milieu. For him, our context is that death and judgment are coming for all. People’s greatest need is forgiveness. God’s heart is that none should perish, so we need to God-like, change and focus on gospel growth.

We need to get our house in order. We need right theology (not hyper-Calvinism, but responsible human influencers) a heart for the lost outcome driven strategic ministry practices and old-fashioned hard work.

I agree that faithfulness that is not fruitful is a problem. In fact, faithfulness that is not fruitful might not even be faithful! With Heard, we need to look hard at our lack of outcomes, and consider how we might change our ministry models so they bear more fruit.

Are the present problems fundamentally about flawed theology, non-strategic ministry, poor leadership, and a lack of hard work? Do the massive cultural shifts we are encountering have nothing to do with the decline?

Four Perspectives

When laid out above, it becomes obvious there are competing explanations as to the problem and the solution. Each account has differing strengths and weaknesses in terms of its capacity to explain. Before we go there, I will note the points of consensus, and then attempt to model the various explanations.

All accounts agree that something is wrong, and we ought to respond. McAlpine is the least alarmist. He is attempting to be a non-anxious voice and remind us we already have the answer. But even he encourages us to be better – to out-do the world. All assume we have a degree of agency, and all propose a way forward.

Yet each has a distinct core to its explanation of the problem and the ensuing solution.

An attempt to diagrammatise

I will attempt to use a linear communication model as a framework to diagrammatise the various explanations. I think this model aids us as it captures the key elements to mission, and their relationship to each other. [1]

The key elements to mission are as follows

A messenger – someone attempting to share the gospel
A message – an explanation of the gospel, encoded in words and symbols
A receiver – the recipient, the person(s) to whom the gospel is being explained
A context – the culture with shared beliefs and assumptions, in which the interaction takes place

Put together, it all looks like this:

Let us now consider each of the authors, in (almost) the reverse order.

Heard

For Heard, the problem and solution centre on the sender and their capacity to encode the message. Is the sender outcomes focused? Are they God-like in their heart for the lost? Do they appreciate they can influence outcomes by being strategic and hardworking? Have they got their priorities and principles right? Do they speak out the truth?

Heard downplays culture and its influence. The gospel is eternally true and has the power of God to save everyone (that is – any receiver). God’s word does not return to him empty. Too much accommodation risks being “sinner-driven” (p.22) Christians stand “against or outside the cultures of our time” (p.32).

Duckworth

For Duckworth and Jamieson, the problem and solution centre on the capacity of the church not to be self-absorbed, but to love and serve the world. The church does not exist for itself, rather it is an instrument through which God loves his world. The church’s core business is to respond to and speak into the needs of the world with the love and hope of Jesus. This generates missional engagement, conversion, and discipleship.

As opposed to Heard, Duckworth and Jamieson believe that the receiver’s hopes and dreams matter. The world has spiritual longings (p.31), and it is up to the church to explain and demonstrate how the gospel is the answer the world is looking for (p.29).

As opposed to Frost, the problem according to Duckworth and Jamieson is not that the church has an out-of date formulation of its message. Rather the church has become introspective, no longer concerned with loving the world, or making and sending radical disciples out into the world.

Frost

For Frost, the problem and solution centre on the fact that the message must be receptor orientated. Just as Paul is Jew-like to Jews, so too we must be 21st Century like in our formulations and expressions of our mission. This looks like the Global South reaching out to the West (‘remissioning’ Ch. 9) and ‘unearthing’ compelling renewed-creation kingdom expressions that resonate with post-Christians (Ch 10).

Like McAlpine, Frost believes Jesus and his Kingdom is what the world is looking for (though this is not to say they have the same account of the gospel). Unlike McAlpine, Frost is at pains to demonstrate that we have a responsibility to adapt our mission modes so they scratch where culture itches. For Frost, we need new and now variations on eternal themes.

Unlike Heard, Frost believes there is no one fixed way we must faithfully present the gospel. For Heard compromise is the great risk. For Frost it is irrelevance and non-engagement.

McAlpine

For McAlpine, the problem and solution centre on the fact that the message must be embodied by a church that exists in a cultural context. On the surface, it looks like McAlpine’s second book is unconcerned with cultural trends. The church is to be non-anxious, have deep and diverse relationships, forgive, and live for something bigger than itself. These are eternal mandates for the church, nothing new here.

But this list is not exhaustive, rather it is selective. McAlpine is reminding the church that they have and are the very things that this present culture values most. We are to out-perform this culture and it chases its yearnings. At other points in history, McAlpine might highlight how we out-performed in other ways – perhaps knowing the truth, or having an objective morality.

In this sense, there is more continuity and less fluidity about McAlpine’s emphasis when compared to Frost. The church is always a city on a hill, shining light in all directions. The world wanders around in darkness, finding itself in new (but still dark) places. A different dimension of church life shines light into the new dreams and aspirations of the world.

Like Frost, but unlike Heard, McAlpine affirms the need for contextualisation. If Heard fears compromise, and Frost fears irrelevance and non-engagement, McAlpine fears both. Faithfulness and contextualisation both matter, and it is the intersection of those two that will result in fruitfulness.

Part Two: Imagining a solution (assessing our four authors)

Who is right? And how do we decide?

This is the point in the essay where I give my opinion about whose perspective carries greater insight. The problem is that Christianity is presently very tribal, and differing tribes have divergent yardsticks for measuring truth.

You could proof text any of the above approaches with Bible verses, or theological arguments. You could also cite historical precedents for any. This is not to say all biblical, theological, or theological-historical arguments are equal, or simply a matter of opinion. They are not. Rather it is to make an observation. It’s possible to make a biblical and/or theological argument for any approach, and that approach is likely to persuade existing adherents.

Evangelicals tend to make a biblical argument, claim the theological high ground, side with Heard and/or McAlpine, and dismiss others. The progressives tend to drift the character of God as loving, of Jesus as coming to serve, claim the moral high ground, and side Duckworth. Still others will highlight the ministry model of Jesus and Paul as highly contextualised, claim a kingdom ambassadorial calling, and side with Frost and McAlpine.

As an evangelical, I am committed to the foundational dimension of biblical and theological moorings. But in this instance, I will not choose to start there. Rather I will begin with phenomena we must explain. Christians of all convictions can agree that God is alive and active in his world, and that the church is called to bear fruit and make disciples. If this is so, why are we seeing the decline as summarised in my first paragraph?

For me, no graph summarises the present predicament as much as this one.

This graph comes from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. They have divided the world into 22 regions. This graph tracks regions where Christians become the dominant worldview (>66% of the population is Christian, nominally so at the least). When Christianity comes to have majority adherence in a region, it does not give up that status (except for Eastern Christianity, decimated by militant Islam finally in the 1300’s). That was, until very recently.

We are living through something radical and unprecedented. In several global regions, Christianity has shrunk backwards from being the dominant worldview. Put another way, from 2000 to 2020 the percentage of Christians in a country declined by 5% or more in only 17 countries, and 16 (or 14 depending on how you count) of them were in the West.

A cogent explanation of what is happening must be able to account for the fact that Christianity is in unprecedented decline – recently, and only in the West. Globally speaking, Christianity is growing slightly faster than the rate of global population growth. Historically speaking, it has either grown or plateaued, but never declined (except under extreme persecution and genocide). But it is shrinking now in one cultural setting – Western countries.

Here is a second graph that any position must account for.

Religion in Africa 1910 vs 2010

The first map show that in 1910 Africa was dominated by two religions – namely Islam and ethno-religions (understand indigenous animist spiritualties). After a century of evangelism, two religions again dominate the African landscape – Christianity and Islam. There could be several ways of explaining this, but my colleague who is a researcher at Gordon Conwell tells me this is a trend. Animist spiritualties are no match for any of the big five religions. Widespread cultural conversions happen where there are ethno-religions, away from indigenous spiritualties towards universal monotheistic religions (Christianity or Islam).

Notice another thing in the top of both maps. There is not widespread conversion away from Islam towards Christianity. Islam, in fact any of the major world religions, are stable and resistant to widespread rapid conversion. In other words, Southern Africans are open to gospel in a way that Northern Africans are not, because of their pre-existing belief system. Cultural receptivity is a significant factor in conversion success.

Put these two insight together, and I am making these two comments. Any explanation of the problem at this moment must account for the unprecedented decline in the West. Something is happening across the Western world recently, which is manifesting in a decline in Christian adherence. This is of a different order that other fluctuations that have occurred in church attendance over the 1000 odd years of Christendom history. What is happening? And how does it result in decline?

Second, any proposed solution must appreciate the significance of cultural receptivity and its relationship to decline and future evangelistic outcomes. Western culture has shifted away from Christendom, towards what we might call ‘expressive individualism’. To talk meaningfully about evangelism at this social moment, one must include an exploration of the receptivity of post-Christendom West to the gospel.

To summarise, there is agreement that the something is wrong now, and we have to respond. There are various divergent explanations of the problem and its solution. I am suggesting we have two core criteria against which to assess our contrasting explanations – both which are pertinent to this social moment. Namely, how to account for the present unprecedented decline? And how does the receptivity of post-Christendom impact our missional effectiveness?

Four perspectives reconsidered

Heard: We are not outcome focused. We must fix our theology, heart, strategy, and work ethic.

Is the problem essentially with us, our leaders, their lack of outcome focus and adversity to change? I agree that gospel confidence, conviction and clarity are important, as is being strategic and working hard. It has always been important, and remains so in the present.

Heard’s line of argument is that outcomes follow inputs. If attendance and missional outcomes are in decline, our theology, missional heart, strategic focus and work ethic must be waning. Conversely, if attendance and conversion rates were higher in the past, they must have had more competent and committed leaders.

Heard’s position is that the messenger and message formulation are essentially the problem and solution. If this is the case, we would anticipate that theology, missional conviction, focus and work ethic of Christian leaders suddenly declined across the entire Western world (and nowhere else) in the late 20th Century. This assertion sounds implausible.

Furthermore, regarding our two African snapshots, Heard’s position would theorise that the missionaries who went to Southern Africa who had stronger outcomes must have had better theology, a deeper gospel heart, were more strategic and harder working than North African missionaries. There is no evidence that this is the case.

Alternatively, Heard’s position could acknowledge the recent cultural shifts as taking us away from our Western Christian heritage. In other words, the problem is cultural drift, but the solution is good theology, missional heart, outcome focus and hard work. Given cultural shifts, the church needs leaders who will effect counter-balancing change. This is something close to the argument of Carl Trueman in The Rise of the Modern Self.

The logic of this position is, for me, flawed. It essentially argues that somehow recent cultural shifts have impacted upon the Western church so as to dilute its theology, gospel and self-confidence, which in turn has caused leaders to retreat into maintenance mode (aka faithfulness) and under-performance.

Cultural shifts have been happening for over a millennia (with Frost and Bosch). And the present cultural shifts are global in their reach – even if their intensity is greater felt in the West. Never before has cultural transition caused the church to lose its missional impact. Decline is only of recent, and localised in the West.

Cultural shifts will impact both senders and receivers. A more plausible explanation is that citizens of Western Christendom who were cultural Christians, have been slowly converted to what we might call expressive individualism (with Trueman). This new worldview is less receptive and more resistant to the gospel (or at least the gospel as we tend to present it).

To ground this abstract conjecture, in Christendom people felt guilty, and were concerned about their eternal destiny. When people are conscious of guilt and eternity, they are receptive to a gospel message that offers forgiveness of sin, and assurance of eternal life. In post-Christendom, your average person is not seeking to resolve guilt or anxiety about their eternal destiny. They are seeking other things – personal flourishing, pleasure and the avoidance of suffering. It is not immediately clear how the gospel addresses these yearnings. 20th Century gospel presentations are scratching, but not where people are itching.

The best explanation that fits our cultural moment is that listeners are less receptive to our message as it is presently formulated. Being a clear and confident communicator is and always has been important, but it is not the piece of the puzzle that has radically shifted recently.

Duckworth and Jamieson: The Church is introspective, and needs to re-learn from the edge how to love and serve the world.

My comments about DJ parallel those regarding Heard, with some twists. The church is always in danger of being introspective, and failing to be outward focussed – to love and serve the world. We see this already in the book of Acts, where the church is reticent to venture beyond Jerusalem and Judea. As Duckworth reminds us, we also see this repeatedly in church history. What DJ must account for, given this happened in the past, is why the present incarnation of introspection is having radically greater consequences than previous instances. Is our present self-abortion deeper and more endemic than previously?

Perhaps! In response to the widespread declines I noted in my opening paragraph, I observe the Western church to be highly anxious. In systems theory, anxiety and social change give rise to systemic homeostasis (lit. same state). It is plausible that the Western church, in response to unprecedented decline, is experiencing pathological levels of homeostasis. This fits with what Heard describes as “faithfulness” and his call for change.

Nonetheless, the fundamentals remain. The church has experienced change, anxiety, and homeostasis before – yet never declined at the current levels. Furthermore, DJ would need to demonstrate that if introspection and failure to love and serve is the problem, then we would expect that outward focused loving and servant hearted churches all buck the trend and grow. They are not.

More likely, if post-Christendom or expressive individualism postures Western individuals as less receptive to the gospel message, it also postures persons as less receptive to gospel-hearted love and service.

McAlpine: Out-do the culture by being non-anxious, forgiving, have deep community, and a shared telos.

McAlpine’s explanation of the solution appears to scratch where the culture is itching. In response to experiences of loneliness, shallow narrow community, echo chambers and cancel culture, people are looking for something more. We have in Christ and his body what people are looking for. They may not know it, and they may enamoured by fakes. But if we can be the people of God, the body of Christ as we have always been, this will shine and cut through the lies and counterfeits.

In other words, McAlpine has a solution that appreciates the significance of receptivity. This culture is seeking specific things, and we need to embody them in a compelling corporate kingdom way. McAlpine’s non-anxious encouragement to keep on keeping on is timely.

Ironically, McAlpine contextualised solution does not explain why we have a problem. Let me explain what I mean. McAlpine contends we have in Jesus what the world is looking for, and we are therefore futureproofed. When the world changed what it was looking for, it should have found that the church embodied the new longing as well. Whatever the disordered love seeks, God in Christ is true love. When the world sought a resolution of guilt, we had forgiveness. Now that the world seeks deep engaging community, we have that too. If we already have in Christ the ultimate expression of whatever the world is yearning for – if we are futureproofed – why have we experienced such decline of recent?

There are various possible explanations. Perhaps the church ought to be more forgiving, and deeper, and serve something bigger – but it is infected by the individualism of the world. Or perhaps we already have all good things in Christ, but we need to be more receiver orientated in our communication. Or perhaps we do have it, but the world is presently more smitten by the fakes and does not appreciate who and what we are in Christ.

Because McAlpine’s deliberations lack clarity around the precise reasons for the problem, they lack an accompanying clarity around what we need to do differently to change the present outcomes. Other than being slightly better at out-doing the things culture seeks, I am unclear as to the response McAlpine proposes.

Frost: Practice mission in ways that engage with current culture, but remain true to the gospel.

Frost’s explanation best accounts for both the problem and its solution (in theory at least). His critique is that culture has shifted, and now has different questions and longings. Even if they are variations on a theme, the framing has changed. The solution then is to reframe our message so that it engages with current dialogue. For Frost, the gospel can remain in essence the same (two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen), but is fluid enough to mould its shape to fit the container it is in (any given culture).

This explanation is elegant, comprehensive, but not without its challenges. Frost’s argument is essentially not an argument, but an extended metaphor. Metaphors contain assumptions, and can only be pushed so far. The first assumption is that the metaphor fits, and therefore has explanatory power.

Allow me to illustrate. Do all paths lead to the top of the mountain? Or is there only one key that unlocks the door? These are two ancient metaphors about the afterlife. Neither is an argument per se. One assumes there are multiple pathways, the other there is only one key that unlocks the way forward. The metaphor sounds true, until you hear another and realise it’s only a metaphor.

So, now we must ask is mission like water? Are there insightful parallels between mission and water? The metaphor has a fixed and a fluid part. The essential components of water are fixed, and the shape is fluid. Is mission like that? I suspect so. The gospel has some fixed core components (grace, sin, forgiveness, justification, sanctification, dealing with God’s anger, shame, power, providence and so on). Any one presentation of the gospel can selectively pick and arrange components as befits the context.

Not all will agree. Some will argue certain elements of the gospel are essential, and other elements are secondary, or consequential. This is not the place to have that debate. All I shall say is that if one holds to a fixed essentialist view of the gospel, neither of the two above graphs is easily accounted for.

If we run with Frost’s metaphor, we still encounter further challenges. Why are we experiencing the current decline? There have been transitions between worldviews and mission models in the past. No previous transitions have resulted in steep decline, so why is this transition so impactful?

How do we explain our African maps? Is it that Southern African missionaries found the right missional shape, and Northern African missionaries did not? Frost’s metaphor implies that once we have found the right cultural shape, our mission will be effective. Whereas the African maps suggest that receptivity matters, while still appreciating that some worldviews remain less receptive to the gospel than other worldviews.

While I am drawn to Frost’s metaphor, I do not find his suggestions for how to frame our mission message, understand our audience, or posture as communicators to be instructive. His book jumps from eloquent anecdotes to vague principle, often paired with the dismissal of traditional methods and thinking. I am drawn to the metaphor, but I do not sense he lands its application in the present.

Conclusions

For me, each author has insight, but none of the four authors quite captures the dynamic or breadth of the present problem or its solution. I will conclude by collating what I believe are the core insights for this moment.

The declines we are experiencing are unprecedented.
The declines we are experiencing are across the Western world, but they are not universal.
Change is not new. Christianity has navigated change in the past and not receded into decline.
Christendom is no longer the dominant or default worldview in the West.
Post-Christendom or expressive individual is increasingly functioning as a worldview.
Citizens of post-Christendom are less receptive to mission than were citizens of Christendom.
A change of worldview that decreases receptivity is the cleanest explanation for unprecedented decline.
Communicating the gospel in ways that are both engaging and faithful, may increase receptivity.
Contextualised mission will likely see increased conversion – increased to what levels is unclear.
The church is anxious and under equipped for this season, yet in Christ has what the world seeks.

————————————————————————————————————————————————
[1] Ironically, I am not a fan of this model of communication. It is too linear and simplistic.