No, this didn’t start last month. It’s a 50-year trend.

In many churches, synagogues, mosques across the US American landscape, people began returning to their houses of worship this summer and fall. Those that have returned look around and notice something. They see a third of the people that were present back in January of 2020. The Pandemic accelerated trends that were already in place. The high watermark of most institutional expressions of faith was 1967. Yes, that’s the peak in worship attendance in my own denomination. Other traditions will have similar dates. In other words, this decline that took up speed in the Covid19 era has been in place for some time.

What’s the future look like? Increasingly, I’m less interested in statistical trends. I wrote and spoke with others who have made predictions in an earlier podcast. What I’m more interested in now is how we shift to entering into the new expressions of faith, spirit, and service.

I think there are two.

The first is in the area of faith in action. The following paragraph from an online article in ministry matters captures this well.

That’s what we asked ourselves at this little, old church in Metamora, Ohio. We put our energy into throwing barn parties, creating third spaces for the community to gather, starting a food cooperative to support local farmers and producers, and offering opportunities to be and learn together that reflected the context of where we were and who we were with. We stopped trying to do the normal conception of church better, and we started imagining how we could do church differently; which wasn’t about being new or cool or exciting. Rather, we embraced the ancient art of being meaningfully adapted to our place as thornbushes.

Basically, we are talking about the church as a networker or collaborator with others in an effort to serve people particularly people in poverty, but also in areas that concern us all, such as climate change and racism.

The second is in recovering religion as a center for deepening and exploring the numinous, the sacred, the holy…what I’ll call God. My previous blog post on Contemplative Prayer is in this direction. Following its release, I heard from two congregations that have regular contemplative prayer groups. Another is the growing practice of small groups working with Dreams and Spiritual life. Spiritual Direction is a growing movement, and while quite varied in its form and structure (and likely needing some criteria for credentialling) nevertheless offers a way to think about how religion can reconnect to its roots.

One thing is clear, there are no easy answers and the road ahead is very challenging from an institutional perspective, but there are opportunities as well. I’d be curious to hear from you. What’s the new/old thing emerging in your world?