What's Next for the Church of Christ?

I've written before about the Church of Christ's coming collapse. The demographic data doesn't look good. Our fellowship is largely held together by shared institutions of higher education, and these institutions are losing their distinct Church of Christ identities in favor of more ecumenical or even secular atmospheres and student bodies. The Church of Christ is splitting, or has already split, into two or more mutually exclusive groups. Most importantly, young people are leaving in record numbers. The Church of Christ is shrinking in both absolute terms and as a percentage of the population. Furthermore, we're increasingly isolated to a specific geographical region (Southeastern United States).

Can these macro-trends be reversed? It's difficult for me to imagine a renewal scenario. If our only problem was young people leaving, that alone would accelerate our decline irreversibly. However, that's not our only problem. We no longer even know how to define ourselves. As "Churches of Christ" have begun worshiping with instruments and installing female leaders, our definition is no longer clear. We've lost our identity. Unlike hierarchical denominations governed by councils, we have little to hold ourselves together except the universities, and they're increasingly divided between and within themselves.

Harding University is planning to introduce female preachers and song leaders into chapel services. This will separate them from the mainline Church of Christ, and that will leave only Freed Hardeman and Faulkner University in alignment with the main body of our congregations. If the Church of Christ is being held together by its universities, but its universities are abandoning or redefining it, how then does the "Church of Christ" continue to exist as a functional fellowship?

I've increasingly come to think that, at least among the Millennial generation, the Church of Christ has already ceased to exist. I don't mean that in a strict literal sense. Of course, there are still Millennials who attend conservative mainline congregations and believe in our traditional doctrines, but they constitute such a thinly spread layer that they exist only because the older generations are still propping up our collapsing institutions.

I was recently talking to a friend who attends Freed Hardeman University. He recalled a conversation with a professor who said she attends a conservative congregation because she finds it acceptable and wants to keep her job. She said her sons will likely leave the Church of Christ, but that doesn't bother her. She doesn't think the Church of Christ is particularly special. On paper, her two sons are Millennial Church of Christ members. In reality, their affiliation is almost accidental, the product of a familial habit. This phenomenon is widespread. I personally know over 20 Millennial graduates of Harding University. Only one of them specifically identifies with the Church of Christ. The others, if they even attend, have little loyalty to the Church of Christ and often fellowship ecumenically.

To answer the title question, I think the Church of Christ will increasingly blend into the broader generic ecumenical Christian movement that we're seeing across our society. Younger generations can't understand the doctrinal battles fought between denominations over the past decades and centuries, and they definitely can't understand why Christians are still attacking each other while persecution is rising against traditional Christianity. Of course, history is unpredictable, as the coronavirus has shown, and the Church of Christ may yet find a way to revive itself.