‘The Reason for Church’ is a profound reminder for church leaders and members how the local church helps us overcome the cultural narratives that threaten to derail our faith.
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When I started in pastoral ministry 15 years ago, the intellectual arguments of New Atheism were the most popular objections to Christianity. I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins to understand what I was up against. However, amid the great dechurching, there are new cultural narratives that are as effective as doubt at keeping people away from church.
I meet many people, especially young men, who don’t object to belief in God. Instead, they see participation in a religious community as superfluous and as evidence of a sheeplike mental disposition. There may be a “surprising rebirth of the belief in God,” but it hasn’t come with a rebirth in belief in the church. The frequency of church attendance has declined over the past decades, though the metric has been masked by the rise of live-streamed services. That mistrust in the church reflects an increasingly negative view of institutions in our tech-saturated culture.
