Why Doesn't Your Church Get with the Program

(Trevin Wax) Here’s an opportunity for the Church to revise its teaching and increase its reach among young people.

If the Church doesn’t change, it will get left behind.

Peppered throughout the news coverage of Pope Benedict’s resignation announcement are comments like these from “practicing Catholics” who are politicians or common Catholics interviewed on the street.

The subtext behind these statements is this: The Church needs to get with the program.

Now, as a Baptist, I have more than a few disagreements with the teaching of the Church of Rome - sola scriptura being the watershed issue from which flows a whole host of other doctrines and practices. Despite overtures from Pope Benedict on the doctrine of justification, Trent still stands (unfortunately).

But let’s go back to this notion of the Church “getting with the program.” First off, the idea that the global Church should cater to the whims of a shrinking number of North American Catholics betrays a stunning ethnocentrism and an imperialistic mindset among elites who, ironically, would consider themselves “multi-cultural.”

Beyond that, however, I find it interesting that evangelicals are facing the same kind of cultural pressures.  MORE