Andrew Allis, Granville

A recent survey of one of the largest mainline Protestant denominations in this state was just released yielding alarming statistical results. Over the last 10 years, the percentage of congregations with fewer than 50 people has doubled. In fact, presently 58% of its congregations now have fewer than 50 people. From 2015 to 2023 they lost 834 congregations, 520 closing, 131 merging into other congregations, with 142 leaving the denomination, and 41 being removed from the denomination.

The Church’s aging pastoral staff has created a major shortage with 400 pastors retiring each year, but only 200 pastors being ordained yearly to replace them. Currently this major mainline denomination has over 600 churches seeking a pastor and 45% of congregations shrinking to the point that they cannot afford a full-time pastor.

What’s happening here is not unique to just this particular denomination. God is cursing, as Jesus cursed the fig tree, these apostate liberal mainline “churches,” which are not true churches because they no longer believe, or promote, the cardinal doctrines of the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3), such as the virgin birth, the incarnation of the 2nd Person of the Triune God, Jesus Christ, the God-man, fully God and fully man in One Person, a literal bodily resurrection and bodily 2nd coming, Jesus Christ as the only way to God the Father and salvation (e.g. John 14:6; Acts 4:12), man as born, not “basically good,” but rather a corrupted sinner abiding under the wrath of God (so hell-deserving), desperately in need of redemption by Christ and His substitutionary work for undeserving lost sinners who are His enemies before conversion, with all other religions false and vain paths of attempted salvation that only lead to everlasting destruction, a real heaven and hell, the Bible, Old and New Testaments, as the infallible fully (plenary) inspired, God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16) inerrant Word of God.

Instead, these pseudo-churches advance the leftist agenda of Cultural Marxism, anti-white racism in the form of the promotion of critical race theory (CRT), sexual perversion, the murder of the unborn, illegal immigration, and actually hold up as models at their youth rallies self-confessed sexually promiscuous women (who see nothing wrong with their fornication) and transvestite (there is no such thing as transgendersim) youth leaders.

If there are any actual bible-believing Christians left in these denominations, now would be an excellent time to get a Real Estate Attorney to see if you can pull out of these bible-rejecting ecclesiastical bodies and still keep your church property. If you find out you can’t retain the property, leave anyway rather than support this mockery of God and His Holy Word, for finally it is you alone, not your pastor and/or denomination, who will stand before Christ on the last and Great Day of Judgment.