Links Edition

Shrinking cities. Growing megachurches. Soul cycling. The Villages.

As usual, I’m linking to pieces that reveal aspects of American culture that gave me pause for thought. These trends have nothing to do with wokism or reactionary conservatism—plenty of that elsewhere. These are below-the-radar trends that reveal beliefs, attitudes, hopes, and sometimes despair.

I’m regularly tempted to stand back and condemn such phenomena as silly, shallow, and perhaps even evil.  And they might be all those things. Then again, anything that attracts people likely contains something that is rightfully attractive.  Eve was tempted with the good—to be wise.  I want to at least note the attraction, however warped or confused it might be, and consider how Christians of various stripes might rightfully respond.

I acknowledge that spotting the problem is a lot easier than determining the best response.

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Localist Living in a Shrinking Age by Aaron Renn.  Renn’s newsletter regularly features trend pieces that can help churches think about the ministry challenges they face or will face in the near future. This piece begins:

Shrinking cities have long been a phenomenon of the Rust Belt, as well as analogous regions around the globe. As suburbanization and then deindustrialization hit, cities like Cleveland, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, South Bend, and a host of others lost a huge share of their population. Even some metropolitan areas lost population on a regional basis.

The response of most people who don’t live in these places has been “too bad, so sad.” Shrinkage was seen as a phenomenon that affected a relative handful of unlucky places but was pretty much irrelevant to everybody else. The 2016 election caused people to pay more attention, but shrinkage has still been viewed as a contained phenomenon.

Alan Mallach argues that far from being an anomaly, shrinkage is likely to become the norm, in the US and abroad--even in China, saying, “By 2050, shrinking cities will have become the dominant urban form in China.”

A great deal of church growth, especially in the 70s and 80s, was driven not so much by effective evangelism as it was by planting a church in an area of rapid population growth.  More and more, we’re going to have to figure out how to “do church” in areas of declining population--and still feel good about ourselves.

That’s it for the free stuff.  Paid subscribers can read links on megachurch growth, soul cycling, and the Florida retirement community, The Villages.