The Church of Christ in Crisis

The future is uncertain for those of us who are both Millennials and members of the Church of Christ (CoC). Our collective social, national, and financial future appears deeply uncertain, and our religious future is perhaps even more so. Are we going to be able to revive our dying fellowship? Will the Church of Christ exist in thirty or forty years? Will the religious institutions we've come to see as features of our spiritual landscape continue to function as meaningful entities?

Demography is usually destiny, and the demographic trends look pretty catastrophic when extrapolated across the CoC's future. Church of Christ lost many thousands of members and congregations in just the four years between 2014 and 2018. The decline rate varies depending on the source but it's almost certain to accelerate as numbers drop further, the church bleeds younger members, and broader social trends drag the population further from traditional Christian values.

Additionally, the Church of Christ is fracturing along multiple fault lines. The unity we experienced during the nineteenth century and first years of the twentieth has given way to division, and the fault lines have grown deeper and more numerous since the 1960s. We're now in the process of dividing into at least three different bodies defined by varying levels of openness, innovation, ecumenicism, and other issues.

Our church identity is increasingly deluded and disappearing. The majority of students at our Christian colleges no longer identify themselves with the Church of Christ label. Our young people are increasingly identifying as generic "mere Christians" who embrace a broader understanding of church that includes various denominations. Many of my fellow Millennials are content with the CoC's collapse. They've given up on their childhood churches and even celebrate their deaths as progress towards greater unity with evangelical Christianity. Such sentiments certainly aren't surprising considering we trace our heritage back to documents like the 'Last Will & Testament of the Springfield Presbyter' and a group of men who sought to kill off the "party spirit" they felt defined their own groups. However, the death of our fellowship will definitely have an effect upon us all, and I'm of the opinion that it’s better to maintain continuity with the past rather than allow it to be erased. It's preferable to operate within a historical movement rather than starting over from scratch every generation. History can give us a sense of perspective.

No matter what the future holds, the Church of Christ is facing a period of crisis and transition, a kind of dark age, and yet almost no one is talking about it. There are now very few young voices, relevant blogs, or authentic new thinkers. What little content is being produced in our brotherhood seems to be the bland repetition of past ideas aimed at confirming the worldview of aging generations whose personal experiences are very different from those of us who are younger. Time has marched on, and its past time we addressed the new world.