3 Conversational Doors That Can Change Christianity’s Bleak Future in the US By SEAN DUNN for The Stream
Last week, USA Today reported that in a few decades, Christianity will no longer be the majority religion in America. Citing data from a recent Pew study, the newspaper reported that Christians could fall below 50% of the U.S. in the next 30 years. More alarmingly, the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation — those the pollsters call “nones” — could rise to near 50% by 2070.
The data is sobering, but the reality behind it is what truly concerns me. Both numbers point to a culture that will fall even deeper into discouragement, disappointment and hopelessness with fewer and fewer places and people to turn to in their search for answers to the questions that torment them.
Like Mitchell.
Now is your chance to support Gospel News Network.
We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
Thief, Cheater and User
A college student who was coming to the realization that the things he had been getting away with for years led him down a path that he was not pleased with, Mitchell was awakening to the reality that he was a thief, a cheater and someone who used people. When he found himself alone because of another failed relationship, he began to examine his life and that is when he realized he didn’t like who he was.
That is when he reached out to one of our online volunteers (Cindy) at Groundwire, the ministry I founded, and engaged in a conversation that pointed him toward Jesus.
After listening to his recent history and his internal disgust, she shared, “Someone once said that you can know the truth and the truth can set you free.” She followed it up with the question, “Do you know who said that?”
Mitchell did not. And, when Cindy told him it was Jesus who said it, the conversation helped him understand that God loved him, had a plan for him, and made a way so he could spend eternity with Him. Mitchell placed his trust in Jesus that day. He was not looking for spiritual answers, but he found them when someone helped him connect the dots.
Those kinds of conversations are our greatest hope to avoiding the bleak future predicted by USA Today.
3 Open Doors in Conversations
In our ministry to Millennials and Gen Zs that need Jesus but don’t know it, we have found a few tools that help to redirect the conversation. When these doors begin to open, the opportunities to introduce Jesus present themselves. With these tools, you can become part of the solution that turns the tide of the Pew data.
