Well, I never ACTUALLY got off the boat on the wrong side of the Tiber, but I sure got as far as the shoreline!
Of course, I miss the singing. Not necessarily the songs, but the fact that you could sing with gusto and not feel like a dope because those around you were actually singing too!
I wouldnāt be surprised if a full 1/4 to 1/3 of US evangelicals are ex-catholics. It was over HALF in the college group I belonged to (Navigators).
But evangelicals need to look closer to see why their apparent success isnāt really so great. The model of the typical evangelical church works like this:
- Fervent preacher āplantsā a new church and draws the attention of a small group of existing believers that depart other existing protestant churches to join this new one (usually churches that are NOT doing so great).
- This core group gets excited and works hard to spread the faith, evangelizing their friends and acquitances. Many to most of the first new converts are people who had moderate interest in God and spirituality before, but didnāt experience anything moving at the church they went to (often catholic).
- The conversions make the place seem even MORE annointed and the conversion rate grows, even attracting quite a few people who had previously been turned off by religion based on seeing the changes in neighbors or family members.
This is all very good, but it has a FATAL flaw. That flaw is that the success is largely based on enthusiasm. The young church has ONLY members who are āon fireā, none that were born and raised there. What this means is that the new āchurchā has effectively drawn all those who were close to conversion OUT of many of the local presbyterian, methodist, baptist, episcopalian, congregational and catholic parishes. In effect, the new church merely concentrates and isolates these new believers away from everybody else and sows the seeds of its own destruction. Once a generation has gone by and kids are growing up in the new church, many of them are only nominally interested instead of being on fire like their parents. Everybody that all the convert members knew BEFORE their conversion has either joined the new church or determined that they are not interested. The new convert rate plummets, the next generation has a cooling of zeal (as do many of the converts after a decade or so) and ALL of them lack the steady flow of Grace God intended all his people to receive in the sacraments which sustain us for the long haul. Meanwhile all those other churches are DEVASTATED by the fact that so many of those who slowly were coming along in the process of conversion had walked out, leaving (in many cases) only the pew sitters remaining. Those that otherwise would have eventually picked up the reins and provided faithful ministry and evangelization are gone. The reins are instead picked up by somebody NOT so converted (And protestants wonder why the mainline denominations have gone so loony leftist in recent decades).
Thus, in the long run, this new church becomes just another nominal protestant parish in town, but along the way greatly diminished the effectiveness of 5 or 6 OTHER churches in the process. It all seems very nice to the gathering of believers in the new church for a while. But it is really a ārun away and hide from the worldā strategy that has resulted in an EXPLOSION of denominations, further divided christianity and squandered the light of christ in a gluttony of self indugence instead of salting the entire community as Jesus intended.
As you can see, Iām not a big fan. I live just a few miles from Willow Creek Church in Barrington, IL, which is one of the original evangelical megachurches. It is the basis for much of my post-college observations.
it litterally falls squarely upon my shoulders for their instruction, which i do not feel i can do sufficiently. kinda like the idea of āit takes a villageā, KWIM?