Getting the stats right...?

If you look on the Net for the phrase, 1500 ministers leave the ministry every month, you'll find result after result saying that this is a sad statistic and what can be done about it. (This is a US stat, of course.)

The other stat that seems to go along with it says 7000 churches close each year.

The only problem is, no one seems able to quote where these stats come from.

They're ascribed variously to George Barna and co, or Focus on the Family, in the latter case dating back to 1998. According to a rough calculation this would mean 18,000 ministers were leaving the ministry every year, and, if the 1998 figure is correct, 216,000 ministers would now be ex-ministers. 84,000 churches would now have closed. (Though in some versions of the stats, 4,000 churches open each year!)

Can these figures really be true?

I would dearly like to see the original figures, find out who they came from and what they were based on. In the meantime, this post will no doubt add to the search results on Google, almost all of which assume without any reference that these stats are correct.

Update...check out the comment from the Barna Group that appeared after this was posted yesterday.

Presbyopia

Presbyopia is a noun, and means the inability of the eye to focus sharply on nearby objects, resulting from loss of elasticity of the crystalline lens with advancing age.
[New Latin : Greek presbus, old man; + -opia.]

What has this got to do with the Presbyterian Mission Resource site? It just struck us as amusing that the word relates to a lessening of our eyesight (insight?) as we get older. It's common to all people, not just those who have trouble with their eyes.

However, Presbyterian as a word doesn't have the same roots. The 'Presby' bit of it isn't derived from 'old man' (as is Presbyopia) but from a Greek word, presbyterion, which was used by the church to mean elders long before the Presbyterians themselves took it up.

In a pamphlet on the subject of Presbyopia put out by the NZ Association of Optometrists, we're told that normal healthy young eyes have a wide range of focus, and the lens are very flexible. As we get older, the lens of the eye thickens and slowly loses its flexibility.

Does this have any connection with Christians (not just Presbyterians) as they get older? Do they lose their focus and their flexibility? It's a question we older Christians need to keep asking: have I lost my focus on Jesus and his mission to the world? Am I no longer as flexible as I was when it comes to doing what He asks?

Photo courtesy of Bex Shaw from her Eyesight series.

A time to be simple

Simple Church: Returning to God's Process for Making Disciples, by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger.

Based on case studies of four hundred American churches, authors Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger prove that the process for making disciples has quite often become too complex. Simple churches are thriving, and they are doing so by taking these four ideas to heart: Clarity. Movement. Alignment. Focus. Each idea is examined here, simply showing why it is time to simplify.

One Amazon reviewer noted: The only part of this book, or the genre, that ought to give the reader pause is that the authors presume that ministry requires a strategic process through which people are funnelled on the way to spiritual growth. While that is the reality of modern, institutional church management, it seems to overrule the fluid and organic (if not disorganized) ministry of Jesus and the disciples while co-opting their names. This is not a major critique of the book, just the observation that business management principles are governing the church whose founder had very little to say about business management.

Responses to this book vary from considerable enthusiasm to some concern about the way the authors ideas of ‘decluttering’ tend to throw some babies out with the bathwater.

The Truth Project

Focus on the Family's The Truth Project is a direct attempt to reverse the troubling statistic that only 9 percent of professing Christians have a biblical worldview. It's a stunning fact that backs what many believers have already seen and felt-that worldly values are increasingly taking hold and causing havoc among believers.

To help counter this slide of beliefs, Focus on the Family is launching their The Truth Project--a DVD-based small group study that clearly and concretely re-introduces believers to the truth claims of God. Supported by Dr. James Dobson and Christian worldview authorities Ravi Zacharias and Oz Guinness, FOTF believes it holds the potential for exponential change within the body of Christ.

The series is led by an energetic Dr Del Tackett. Tackett is president of the Focus on the Family Institute and Senior Vice President of Focus on the Family. An adjunct professor at New Geneva Theological Seminary and Summit Ministries, he served more than 20 years in the United States Air Force. As a professor, he's taught more than 30 undergraduate and graduate courses at three different institutions, over a 12 year period. He's also an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.

You can see a trailer of the series here; I recommend the four-minute version rather than the 30 second one, which is cut into such short shots that it's only just comprehensible.