when the roof fell in....

"There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance. Miss that moment - and you start to decline."

Andrew Grove

I'm a reasonably positive person in general. I see through my own life experiences that "Life" has proven itself to lean heavily on the side of optimism rather than pessimism. The glass tends to be half-full most times when I look at it. But despite my "learned" optimism there are times when I wonder if my lifetime may actually be seen from an historical perspective as the great decline of Christendom in the Western World.

Despite these occasional morbid thoughts, normally when I look at Christianity in the North Atlantic cultures I tend to hope that we are merely realigning ourselves to another new epoch in human history.

But occasionally I wonder if I should perhaps be wondering when the roof will fall in and if the congregation actually has noticed yet.

The picture at the top of the post is of an old Irish Church that is a relic from a time when Ireland, and almost the entire European continent was Christian. In the Europe of today Christianity is a novel historical footnote of a secular society that matured enough to leave behind it's adolescent need for Christianity.

While my homeland is devoid of a cultural Christian influence, many of my American brethren continue to speak of their nation as a "christian" nation despite the shards of daylight pouring in from the spaces where the roof rests.

While I find church ruins to be moving and incredibly aesthetically beautiful, I would confess that their utility as a gathering place for a community lacks a certain credibility.

Because of my job and my personality I am asked when, or if, the Church will begin a great decline here in America as it has in Europe.

I'm cautious to be seen as a bearded Cassandra in regards this question, but I do see much to be alarmed about just on the edge of the horizon.

In my limited opinion Complacency and Conceit helped destroy the credibility of the 7 churches of Asia Minor of the first century and also the myriad churches of Europe of the 19th century. Will these ugly twins add yet another culture's churches to their long list of victims?

Perhaps a long look at the rafters of American Christianity might provoke a tendency to pessimism no matter how positive one's normal outlook is.

Before anyone leaps to the reasonable assumption that some horrifically disappointing event has taken place in my life recently, let me hasten to explain that the opposite is the case. I've had some incredibly encouraging experiences in the past weeks. I've been exposed to some extraordinary individuals and groups within American Christianity.

But despite the extraordinary, my eyes are still forced to return their gaze to the ordinary in American Christianity. I've come to the conclusion that occasional clumps of extraordinary examples of Christianity in a society can't reverse the decline if the majority of our people are intensely ordinary in comparison to their non-Christian neighbors. A few extraordinarily strong roof beams won't hold a roof up if the adjacent beams are almost rotted through.

I know some of my younger friends in Christian ministry have noticed the same shocking lack of extraordinary roof beams around them. But many of them tend to take the long view that the congregation of Christianity in America will indeed pay for a new roof only when the old one has finally landed on their heads. The danger with this long-view is that perhaps the falling roof might actually kill so many members that the remainder won't have either the will or weight of numbers to replace the roof.

I'm just another one of the small remnant of European Christianity that survived the falling in of our own roof and the generations of wandering in isolated clumps of shocked survivors trying to grasp the enormity of the disaster that befell our churches.

So my rumination this weekend has been about the state of my host nation's Christianity.

The one comfort for me in looking at the image of my ruined Irish church is that the foundations are still fine, it is just the roof that needs replaced.

What do you think?