The monastic and religious orders are the foot soldiers of the Catholic faith. They are one of the most enduring and influential movements in human history. In Australia, and the western world generally, they are in serious decline. Numbers have halved in the last 25 years. The median age is 73. The death rate vastly [...]
Category Archives: 4. Decline
Perplexed but not discouraged
9 July, 2010 – 1:05 AM
Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of [...]
Drifting in calm waters
7 July, 2010 – 4:55 PM
Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death. Blaise Pascal I caught up with an old friend a few years ago over coffee. He confided in me that he wasn’t sure if he believed in hell any more. He was a church leader with an evangelical background. He didn’t seem concerned. After all, he [...]
A case study in decline
6 July, 2010 – 7:32 PM
There is nothing more important to the vitality of a movement than it’s commitment to its core beliefs. Dynamic movements hold both orthodoxy (core beliefs) and engagement with the culture in creative tension. About a year ago my denomination (Baptist Union of Victoria) reappointed its New Testament professor, Dr Keith Dyer. The appointment was supported [...]
Missional angst
3 June, 2010 – 9:44 AM
In 1997, Scott Adams the creator of the Dilbert cartoons, masqueraded as a management consultant to Logitech executives. He convinced the executives of the Logitech company to replace their existing mission statement with this one: to scout profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally and externally, in emerging, mission-inclusive markets, and explore new paradigms and [...]
The fall from greatness
21 April, 2010 – 4:07 PM
I’ve come to see institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages, easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages. An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside, dangerously on the cusp of a precipitous fall. [...]
How Brian McLaren lost his way
21 April, 2010 – 12:37 AM
Brian’s new kind of Christianity is quite old. And the problem is that it’s not old enough. Scott McKnight McKnight does an outstanding job of reviewing Brian McLaren’s ‘A New Kind of Christianity’ and explains why he thinks McLaren has drifted from both evangelicalism and orthodoxy and wandered wandered down the path of 19th Century [...]
British Methodists prepare to die
9 April, 2010 – 2:12 AM
We are prepared to go out of existence not because we are declining or failing in mission, but for the sake of mission. Rev David Gamble, Methodist Conference President (third from right). Addressing the Church of England’s General Synod, February 11, 2010. Once a world changing movement under John Wesley, the Methodist church has seen [...]
Missionary/Missions/Mission/Missional fog
1 April, 2010 – 10:17 PM
One major reason for a tendency to move away from a focus on mission as disciple-making and towards broader definitions has been a loss of belief in the eternal consequences of human lostness and in the uniqueness of Christ’s work as the means by which human beings are restored to the Father. Under those conditions [...]
Anglo-Catholics and Anglican decline
12 February, 2010 – 8:55 PM
Peter Corney is a leading evangelical Anglican in Melbourne. He takes a look at Anglican decline and especially the decline of the Anglo-Catholic movement within the Anglican church. Here is his (edited) list of trends that have contributed to Anglo-Catholic decline: 1. Anglo-Catholics drifted away from the credal and biblical orthodoxy of its founders and [...]
