Faith Intensity

I believe that the Bible is all-sufficient for living our lives and to help us increase our devotion to God - we can be motivated to grow spiritually and to draw closer to Him. James 4 states:
8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

Through our fellowship with the Lord around His Word, we can experience the Spirit's inward work. Our passion for Him is expressed not by our outward appearances, although participation in church activities and Christian service are important, but by our response to what He is doing in our hearts, enabling us to live as His disciples.  We have the capability to walk with Him daily and know Him better.  He is calling us to a more devoted walk.

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When we read Revelation, we see that God speaks to seven churches, each with unique characteristics, and many of them not good.  In Revelation 2, He addresses the church at Ephesus, saying:
2 I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars;
3 and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name's sake and have not become weary.
4 Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place--unless you repent.

Sure, I would think that there are those in this world who would just like to see Christianity go away. Be assured: it's not going to happen. The Church, built on the strong foundation of Jesus Christ, will, as Jesus promised, withstand the gates of hell.

And, of course, you hear the statistics.  A recent Pew Research Center study summary declares:

The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.

Well, that certainly is heartening, isn't it?  Do we run for the hills, find ourselves a quiet place and just admit that we are no longer relevant?  After all, Pew reports:

Over the last decade, the share of Americans who say they attend religious services at least once or twice a month dropped by 7 percentage points, while the share who say they attend religious services less often (if at all) has risen by the same degree. In 2009, regular worship attenders (those who attend religious services at least once or twice a month) outnumbered those who attend services only occasionally or not at all by a 52%-to-47% margin. Today those figures are reversed; more Americans now say they attend religious services a few times a year or less (54%) than say they attend at least monthly (45%).

Recent Meeting House guest Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family says, in essence, wait a minute.  He writes for The Daily Citizen, which is a website from Focus:

In fact, research conducted jointly at Harvard and Indiana University reports that “intense religion in the United States is persistent and exceptional in ways that do not fit the secularization thesis.” What they are referring to is the kind of Christianity where people live their faith very seriously, take the Bible at its word, and allow Jesus to shape their lives. Their worship is passionate because they truly believe a real Savior rescued them from real sin on a real cross over two thousand years ago. Thus, these scholars say the U.S. is indeed not going the way of much of Europe. There is a good deal of additional research from leading sociologists of religion revealing similar things, as I explain in detail in my new book The Myth of the Dying Church.

And, even Pew's own research shows the impact of this passionate faith.  Stanton writes:

The percentage of Americans who identify as either “born again” or “evangelical” has not changed that much, showing just a slight decline since 2009, from 28% of all U.S. adults down to 25%. But again, there are a number of factors to consider here.

One of the factors he outlines is this:

Pew explains that “the share of all Protestants who are born-again or evangelical is at least as high today as it was in 2009.” Their graph on page 22 however shows the percentage of all Protestants increased from 56 to 59 percent. This is again, because those leaving Christianity are the liberalizing mainliners, not the bible-believing evangelicals.

He also explores race and what he calls "faith intensity."  And the nones?  Well as Stanton writes:

While Pew, and nearly every other report and news story, says the nones are growing at a remarkable rate, nearly all major sociologists of religion agree these nones do not represent a new group of unbelievers. Rodney Stark, one of the most respected scholars in this field, explains it very crisply, “The entire change (toward none-ness) has taken place with the nonattending group”, those who’ve previously said they belonged to a particular Christian tradition but are merely CEO Christians (Christmas and Easter only). “In other words,” Stark adds, “this change marks a decrease only in nominal affiliation, not an increase in irreligion.” 

And, as Michael Foust points out at ChristianHeadlines.com:

The 2019 Status of Global Christianity report shows there were 2.5 billion Christians in the world as of mid-2019 – a major increase from the 1.98 billion Christians in 2000 and more than double the number of Christians (1.2 billion) in 1970. Christianity is growing worldwide at a rate of 1.27 percent each year and outpacing population growth (1.20 percent).

There are 138 million atheists, which is a million more than 2000, but less than the 165 million in 1970.

It is clear that one of the fallacies of polling data on religion is the lack of a measure of intensity, that component that Glenn Stanton points out.  And, the surveys rely on a person's self-identification as a member of a certain faith group - or lack of faith group.  This analysis actually digs a bit deeper into the faith commitment of the so-called "nones."  George Barna had it right when he developed a multiple-point test to measure the degree to which someone practices his or her Christian faith.

And, we can consider our own intensity.  If we were to compare where we are now spiritually to where we were 5 or 10 years ago, if we have been a Christian that long, are we going forward or backward?   The Lord chided one of the seven churches in Revelation because the church as a whole had lost its first love.  We can be passionate about pursuing spiritual things and make sure that we are doing what it takes to eliminate distracting thoughts and destructive practices so that we can regard Christ at the pinnacle of our lives.