According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the shape of religion in America is changing.  (Article from Houston Chronicle)  People are likely to change religious affiliations from what they grew up with, and a growing immigrant population is shifting the numbers away from protestant churches.  There is a growth in eastern religions as well as the Catholic church, reflecting the growth in immigration and the diversification of America.  Many in mainline denominations continue to move away from those denominations either into non-denominational churches or into a completely different faith.  In general, the landscape of American religion is changing.

The question now is, what are we going to do about it?  Looking at the history of the church we have seen times when the church has become complacent.  The only way the church has changed is through reform.  This is true of the protestant reformation, the Wesleyan revival, and the great revivals of America.  The church came alive through radical change in practice.  George Barna proposes that the shape of the church is shifting from the “mega-church” model that dominates the culture now to a more localized small community model (similar to the 1950′s).  He even goes so far to suggest that the house church model is the real future of the church.

Is he right?  Are big buildings and big budgets going away?  And if so, what does the new church look like?  How do the ordained fit into this new model and should there be a shift in how clergy work and are compensated?  Is a modernized form of circuit riding in our future, with a pastor overseeing a number of house churches?  Certainly there needs to be a shift in how we work, but what that shift looks like is still to be determined.  Right now, we need to be aware that the church that we remember growing up is probably not the church that we’ll see in the future.  We need to change if we are going to meet the needs of a changing world and impact society for Christ.