{"id":295,"date":"2010-08-25T21:17:09","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T21:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/?p=295"},"modified":"2010-08-25T21:17:09","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T21:17:09","slug":"change-how-you-do-church-or-watch-your-church-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/?p=295","title":{"rendered":"Change How You Do Church or Watch Your Church Die"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"3\"><em>\u201cYou do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If you do, the skins will burst, and the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. What you are to do is pour new wine into new wineskins. Then both are preserved.\u201d<\/em> \u2013 Jesus Christ<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">I happen to think that every generation needs (and deep down, wants) the message of life that Jesus Christ offers.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">Who doesn\u2019t want life to the fullest? The desire for life explains every single thing a human being does. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">But not every generation seems to want to join the group that attempts to live in and live out that message of Christ (the church). According to a Thomas Rainer study: <\/font><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font size=\"2\">65% of the Builder generation attends church<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\">35% of the Boomer generation attends<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\">15% of Generation X (my generation) attends<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\">4% of the Millennials attend<\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><font size=\"2\">The vote is in. At an exponential rate, the way we do church is not working as a wineskin for delivering the greatest message the world has ever known. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">As you can see, the way we do church worked great for my grandparents generation. Most of them still go!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">But 65% of my big brother\u2019s and parents generations have stopped. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">85% of my peers have, too. And a whopping 96% of young adults are just not having their hearts captured by the community of Christ the way they are offering it right now. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">You can see why, generally speaking, the younger generations of people who have stuck with church are hungry for something new, and the older generation is usually more cautious about changing things.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">More to come on this\u2026but let me end this piece with the clear pronouncement that by CHANGE THINGS I do NOT mean anything as superficial as changing the worship style, or preaching style, or name of the church. If that stuff would work, it already would have. There is every worship &amp; preaching style known to man available in the relatively small town I live in and it has NOT put a dent in the stats. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">We must change much more meaningfully than that.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cYou do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If you do, the skins will burst, and the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. What you are to do is pour new wine into new wineskins. Then both are preserved.\u201d \u2013 Jesus Christ I happen to think that every generation needs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christ-vs-church","category-on-transitioning-church"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pO6nf-4L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}