National Heritage Group Warns Canada Will Lose 9,000 Churches

This group claims an estimated 9,000 “religious spaces”—that’s a third of “faith-owned buildings” in the nation—will be lost within a decade and that this will affect “every community in the country.”

This loss is attributed to church members aging and “the increasing secularization of society coupled with new spiritual practices.” The church simply isn’t impacting the culture like it used to and younger generations increasingly want nothing to do with it. Actually, these trends are happening through the whole Western world.

Many mainline Protestant denominations believe this is happening because the church needs to be more “inclusive.” So they disregard biblical truth and become “inclusive” spaces, for example, for those in the LGBT community. This means they no longer teach the truth of God’s Word but ignore it in favor of supporting people in a sinful lifestyle. We see this same loose handling of God’s Word in many churches when it comes to Genesis. But this watering down of God’s Word isn’t helping churches grow!

The largest denomination in Canada, the United Church of Canada, has been inclusive of LGBT people and has even supported abortion for decades (they also have at least one atheist pastor), but their congregations are still shrinking.

The answer to growing secularization of the culture and declining church attendance is not to secularize the church. Our mission is to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:19)—even when the message of the gospel and biblical truth isn’t popular and flies in the face of what our culture holds dear. We are ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20), and we must remain faithful to this task by holding firmly to the truth he has given us in his Word, starting in Genesis.

If we want to see churches filled with passionate believers of all ages, we need to stand boldly on biblical truth

This mission starts by recognizing biblical authority. We, as fallible, sinful human beings, are not the authority. God, our Creator, is the authority and he has given us his “God-breathed” Word (2 Timothy 3:16), which we are called to believe and obey. If we want to see churches filled with passionate believers of all ages, we need to stand boldly on biblical truth, contend for the faith, equip people with answers to questions that can cause doubt in God’s Word, and never fail to present the gospel to everyone who will listen.

Get More Answers on Answers News

This item was discussed today on Answers News cohosts Dr. Georgia Purdom, Bodie Hodge, and Avery Foley. Answers News is our twice-weekly news program filmed live before a studio audience here at the Creation Museum and broadcast on my Facebook page and the Answers in Genesis Facebook page. We also covered the following topics:

• South Africa rules Dutch Reformed Church’s ban on gay “marriage” is unconstitutional.
• Right to life for kittens, but not human babies?
• What makes evolution go backwards?
• And more!
Watch the video on YouTube.

Watch the entire episode of Answers News for March 25, 2019.

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Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.