Once again we are being flooded with a new crop of real Jesuses, real authentic Christianity, and ways we have to go if we are to survive. Today the Toronto Star weighs in with an article entitled: "Atheist minister praises the glory of good at Scarborough church" . A minister for the United Church of Canada (where else?) has who considers herself a "post theist" has abandoned God in her church and her preaching and uses her post as "a venue for criticizing traditional Christianity." She lost about half her congregation when she began, going down to about fifty people, but has since gotten her numbers back up- to seventy! With a median age of about seventy five! Now there's a church with a future!
Somehow, the author for the Star considers this to be a success story: "But with an average Sunday attendance of about 70, West Hill is prospering, relatively speaking, while churches throughout the Western world shrink and wither." 'Relatively speaking' is about the only way this is prospering. Relatively speaking, getting a congregation, losing about half of it, then getting about forty percent of the numbers that left back are somehow a great success- if you overlook the overall thirty percent decline. That is speaking relatively, of course, or to use the technically correct term, speaking a great load of BS. Objectively speaking, this is an abject failure.
The conclusion states the secret behind this minister's glorious 'success'- "All they had to do, it turns out, was get rid of God."
Oh, well done. Absolutely no political program here. This author- sorry, editor of The Star- went out of his way to find someone with a church who presumably suits his views, spun their utter failure into a success, and then turned it into a program for all churches to follow if they want the same relative success. Very good sir.
We'll be sure to get right to work on that.
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