I returned back home to Mount Holly several years back following two full weeks in Pittsburgh.  First of all, let me just say that it was so nice to be back.  The whole time I was there, Pittsburgh was covered in about a foot of snow.  Oh, it gets better.  The misery of near-daily snowfall was broken up only three times.  Once by sunshine.  The other two snowfall gave way to freezing rain.  Just about every hour of every day I was away, I yearned for the day when I’d be back HERE!  I was in Pittsburgh to do some continuing studies and I did learn a lot.  During the second week of classes, we studied the intersection between Christ and Culture.  Fascinating stuff really.  For the majority of that week, we talked about a book called American Grace.  Now, before you get to thinking it’s a book about faith, it isn’t.  American Grace is actually a book written by sociologists reflecting on a recent Faith Matters survey.  The Faith Matters survey is a comprehensive study done every 5 years which asks participants a multiplicity of questions about religion, values and ethics.   Within American Grace are hundreds of graphs tracing the current state of things on religion here in America. 

  Let me just say this, the data is fairly depressing.  There’s been nearly a 10% drop in people reporting themselves Christian over the past two decades.  Even the growth in the evangelical churches has clearly peaked and is on a downward turn.  Also, not to be overlooked is the fact that the percentages of people responding as having no religious attachment rose steadily.  Here’s what this means to us.  For the most part, fewer people are joining churches than are leaving and a larger percentage of younger generations are choosing never to start.  What that means is that for every Elevation Church growing to 10,000 members, the people they’re attracting are mostly leaving other churches to go there, not coming to Christ for the first time.  Now I’m not going to belabor the point that I’ve already made in past sermons beyond this simple statement of fact.  The Christian religion in America is declining at a rate where the statistical likelihood is that our children’s children won’t profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Using the present rate of losses and projecting forward, Christians in America will represent less than 3% in one hundred years from now.

  All that to say that I found myself rather challenged by the data, given the fact that for three weeks I rather audaciously asked you to join me in a dream to grow this congregation over the next five years.  Given the data, I tell you what...I ought to right now confess my ignorance to all those charts and graphs and offer a more reasonable goal.  Perhaps we should change our vision to simply having the same number of members we have right now in five years.  Honestly, that alone would be quite an accomplishment really in light of the quote-unquote facts.  But the fact of the matter I believe that despite that the numbers seemed to be aligned against us that we will do what here at Cook’s Church what, according to graphs and charts, would seem to be impossible. 

  You see charts and data and graphs don’t account for the power of God.  A God who tells us over and over again that what’s impossible for us, is in fact possible for him. A God who throughout history has equipped his people with everything necessary to accomplish his good purposes.   

  So, I ask you to continue to dream with me.  Believe that by the power of the Holy Spirit working among and through us, that we can grow beyond our wildest imaginations and not because it will make the church budget bigger or it’ll make us feel good to know that more people are here.  We’re called to grow this church for no other reason than in knowing the Lord Jesus Christ personally, that we feel the pain of the world and know that there’s a solution.  That there is a balm in Gilead.  That healing and hope come through a relationship with the Risen Lord.  Y’all, I admit, having a dream is a difficult thing.  To believe it possible is to be willing to pour the totality of your life into it even knowing in advance the only currency you’ll be paid in is hope and purpose.  But the only other alternative is simply not to dream.  To believe that all we can do is fight an uphill battle with the sole purpose of holding on to what we’ve got.  That’s terribly depressing.  It’s a place as bleak as the Pittsburgh skies in the dead of winter. You see, not to dream is, in a way, to die.  You may live, but it’s a wan and lacking life, it’s akin to a living death. 

  Folks, there hiding within the numbers of the Faith Matters survey are the seeds of the church’s re-growth.  The survey clearly shows that people still have spiritual needs.  They still ask religious questions.  Being created in the image of God means that all people wonder about things greater than themselves.  People still have existential queries “Who am I?  Why am I here?”  “What will become of me after I die?”  Those questions confront everyone, even those people who presently think little of church. 

  But here’s the thing, those questions can only be answered with love and hope both for today and the eternal future by a people of God claimed by Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit doing Christ’s ministry in the world.  But I don’t think we can’t do it simply slogging ahead in the same manner that we’ve done in the past.  There have to be new ideas, new ministries, greater involvement by the members of this church and those people travelling with us.  We must rededicate ourselves to being the Church of Jesus Christ doing the things God would have us do.