A few weeks ago, I asked whether the church was really declining. That may seem like an odd question, given the constant bemoaning of attendance and membership declines in mainline congregations, but I pointed to the unparalleled growth of Christianity across the rest of the globe as indicating that perhaps our vision is at times to narrow when we consider God’s work in and through the church. This time, I’d like to suggest that we also at times unnecessarily narrow our vision when thinking about God’s work through the church by limiting our imagination only to congregations. When we do this, we overlook the profound...

So what if all the decline our congregations and denominations have experienced in recent decades has little to do with a failure of leadership (what congregational leaders fear) or changes in theological or political stances (what more conservative church leaders assert) or a degenerate or disinterested generation of believers (what people in the pew too often feel) or with any of the other things we usually attribute it to. What if the decline is simply the result of a massive cultural shift? That is, what if we now live in a world where the emerging generation a) has tons of options for ways to think about and make sense of their lives,...