Hopes for the Church in 2023

We all know the constant refrain — “the church is in decline!!!!!!” It’s the constant drumbeat that is being beaten into us. But I wonder if the punctuation is incorrect. I wonder we are hearing it the wrong way. I wonder if we are assuming exclamation points like the statement is some how set in stone, that it is a phrase of finality. But it’s the church we are talking about after all. Isn’t the whole basis of the church set on a belief of life, death, and resurrection? That sounds rather hopeful to me. Not in a fantasyland kind of way either, but in a we’re moving to something much better kind of way. As in the best is yet to come. Isn’t that what we’ve always been preaching and proclaiming? And yet so much of the church seems to be down, as if it actually believes that the best is now over. All that talk about the best is yet to come was just a crock, that the church didn’t actually believe it.

Hello! Time to wake up, kids. Time to wake from your slumber. Time to snap out of the pity party.

The doom and gloom of “the church is in decline!!!!” is incorrect. Let me clarify that statement. I’m focusing on the exclamation points here. The tone of how it is said. Too often we are going around shouting “the church is in decline!!!!” sounding like a bunch of insane people. We could just as easily be yelling “the sky is falling, the sky is falling!!!!”

The church is certainly in decline. But maybe we could approach this differently. What if we started using different punctuation? Doesn’t it feel different already…