100 Churches Dying Each Week…

100 Churches Dying Each Week…
Any institution needs resources in order to survive, and churches are not any different

endoftheamericandream.com/archives/between-6000-and-10000-churches-in-the-u-s-are-dying-each-year-and-that-means-that-over-100-will-die-this-week

America is littered with thousands upon thousands of church buildings that aren’t being used anymore. As you will see below, between 6,000 and 10,000 churches are dying in the United States every single year, and that means that more than 100 will die this week alone. And of course thousands of others are on life support. All over the country this weekend, small handfuls of people will gather in huge buildings which once boasted very large congregations. At one time, America was widely considered to be “a Christian nation”, but that really isn’t true anymore. As an excellent article in The Atlantic has noted, even though most Americans still consider themselves to be “Christian”, the numbers are telling us a very different story…

Many of our nation’s churches can no longer afford to maintain their structures—6,000 to 10,000 churches die each year in America—and that number will likely grow. Though more than 70 percent of our citizens still claim to be Christian, congregational participation is less central to many Americans’ faith than it once was. Most denominations are declining as a share of the overall population, and donations to congregations have been falling for decades. Meanwhile, religiously unaffiliated Americans, nicknamed the “nones,” are growing as a share of the U.S. population.

In fact, the “nones” have risen from just 6 percent of the population in 1991 to 25 percent today. That makes them the single largest “religious group” in the United States. Today, less than 20 percent of all Americans attend church on a regular basis. As a result, churches are dying in very large numbers, and this is a trend that appears to be accelerating. According to Thom S. Rainer of Lifeway, when you break the numbers down it means that “around 100-200 churches will close this week” Any institution needs resources in order to survive, and churches are not any different. As attendance has declined, so has giving, and at this point the percentage of charity donations going to religious institutions is at an all-time low. So when churches die, what happens to their buildings? Well, some are torn down, some are renovated for residential or business purposes, and some are being put to other uses…

A large number of abandoned churches have become wineries or breweries or bars. Others have been converted into hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, and Airbnbs. A few have been transformed into entertainment venues, such as an indoor playground for children, a laser-tag arena, or a skate park.

A similar thing is happening in Europe, only on a much greater scale. Over there, hundreds of churches have been transformed into Islamic mosques, and this has generated quite a bit of controversy.

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100 CATHOLIC and PROTESTANT churches.
Become Orthodox.

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Well maybe if they didn't compete with one another.
Seriously there are 65 churches in my town of 12,000 people. So, maybe 6,000 of them regularly attend services and 2,000 regularly pay tithes. Why spread that thin? Because people like their pastor or it's denomination drama or they're used to that location, etc. So you have a bunch of churches that would rather split apart for comparatively petty reasons and then they starve because building expense isn't a straight linear scale of cost.

What church was that?

And? So the west is getting less and less Christian by the week. We already knew this. (pic related)

With 350,000 churches across the USA, closing 10,000 in a year isn't impossible.

This.
Some 325,000 shared amongst protestants, who make up some 160 million murkins, twice as many as Cathbros. So, there's a healthy average 3,450 people per Cathodox congregation, and 497 per protty one. And given so many protty congregations are 1,000 strong, there must be a lot of mainline that are 30 people. Or six as in my old Prezzy church. Unsustainable.

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The truth is Pastors want power

Any whitepills about Catholicism? It doesn't necessarily need to be European or Western, but just about how Catholicism is doing globally?
Also I'm pretty certain the following countries have stable catholic populations in Europe (Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Malta, Austria). The orthodox have many of their own issues, but I'm not so worried about them. The one thing they have going for them is the revival of orthodoxy in Russia and parts of eastern europe.

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All things happen for a reason. Perhaps the reduction of the body of the Church in the West is for a reasonable purpose. Those that have abandoned the faith in pursuit of materialism and new-age secularism were weak to begin with. Losing them is like trimming the fat from a perfectly-cooked steak.
If the time came when we christians had to defend our way of life, do you think these lukewarm "christians" would come to our defense? No, they wouldn't. They have abandoned the Lord, and it is their own selfish choice. The Evil One has too much power in the West, and since the beginning of the 20th Century, the world itself.
The reduction of true christians in the West is perhaps a lesson that we should preserve quality, over quantity. While Christianity grows immensely in China, Indonesia, India, and Sub-Saharan Africa, it becomes more compact and dedicated in the West.

Checked
I agree, but would like to add that the west has lost faith in itself, the closure of churches is nothing more than a reflection of this on the cultural landscape. The same thing happened in Britain during the 1960's, driven by collapsing industries and a generalized post-imperial despair that hasn't ever quite gone away.

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It just so happened at the same time as the marxist long march through institutions - the deliberate effort to undermine marriage and the church so that people can't turn to them and instead have to turn to government in times of adversity. What a coincidence.