{"id":1637,"date":"2010-07-14T13:32:01","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T17:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ispeculate.wpmudev.host\/main\/?p=1637"},"modified":"2010-07-14T13:32:01","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T17:32:01","slug":"the-real-reason-for-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/2010\/07\/14\/the-real-reason-for-decline\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Reason for Decline"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The mainline denominations do seem to be weak in the sense of being unable to generate and maintain high levels of commitment among a substantial portion of their adherents. Although we are skeptical of Kelley&#8217;s argument about the relation between strictness and church growth, he is right that weak churches are in a precarious position as organizations because further weakening may diminish their members&#8217; commitments to the point of noninvolvement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leaderu.com\/ftissues\/ft9303\/articles\/johnson.html\">Mainline Churches: The Real Reason for Decline<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Benton Johnson, Dean R. Hoge, and Donald A Luidens look at the mainline decline, and come to the conclusion that people don&#8217;t show up because it does not matter. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The mainline denominations do seem to be weak in the sense of being unable to generate and maintain high levels of commitment among a substantial portion of their adherents. Although we are skeptical of Kelley&#8217;s argument about the relation between strictness and church growth, he is right that weak churches are in a precarious position &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/2010\/07\/14\/the-real-reason-for-decline\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Real Reason for Decline<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,51,53,76],"class_list":["post-1637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","tag-community","tag-ecumenism","tag-emergent","tag-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ispeculate.net\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}