Yet we can not ignore them. But they may not indicate the failure of our program and message so much as they do the adjustment of the church to the monumental shifts and changes that are taking place in the world. One that I find particularly insightful, Loren Mead, finds us in the concluding days of Christendom, a form of the church that has persisted for 1700 years. We are returning to a context more reflective of the apostolic church, a minority community in a sometimes supportive, sometimes hostile but mostly indifferent world. The church has been at these crossroads before.
Endings are never easy and are always accompanied by grief and pain.
But let me give you back something that I learned in the Church History Department at Princeton Theological Seminary many moons ago. In the Christian church endings have always been at the same time, beginnings. The pain of the demise of one form of the church has been at the same time the birth pains of the new spirit filled community. And I, but more especially you, are not so much the last of the Mohegans of the Christian church, so much as are the privileged children of God, who are called to be a part of the transition of the church from what we have been to the new church of God's making and doing. So though we may be confronted with a loss of members and dollars in this church, there is no excuse for a loss of vitality in the church.