Bunk. Home churches are springing up where I live. The main protestant denominations have left Biblical interpretation and they are responsible for home churches growing. Evangelicals are simply moving away from denominations.
I think the replacement of congregations by “home churches” fits the article’s definition of the collapse. In the 1970s, people said, “I don’t need to church; I can stay home and pray.” They are today’s non-Christians. I think the home-church movement fixes certain problems with the 1970s attitude: by forming small groups, they make people accountable to each other for their worship, formation, etc. But they are not churches, they are not community worship.
Yes, the early Christians met in homes. But they met in the largest homes possible and everyone in an entire Christian community gathered at the same homes. This was possible because the Christian communities were small, very organized, and intensely ritualistic.
It wasn’t “Tuesday, we watch American Idol, here; Thursday, we pray here.” It was, “we have the real estate to do so, so our household is now the meeting place for the Christian Way.”
They sure are and around here they each have 4 or 5 people and they have just left the previous newly sprung up church because they don’t agree with them any longer.
I live in a small town and this has been going on for 36 yrs and I have witnessed it. It started with my parents and some friends from the Methodist church mainly. They wanted a vibrant evangelical church, they started up and did great, they even had a private school but then they splintered and the new ones seem to splinter every other year.
From what I have witnessed they have become cults of the leader, when the original leader dies, gets divorced or moves out of town, the church dies.
There are churches here that have 10 people max in their membership, they are all in different cycles, some growing, some dying, rarely stable.
Truth by stastics in my town would say that the 1st Baptists and the Bethel Baptists and both Catholic churches are thriving and stable. The Mormons are holding their own, the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Assembly of God and Methodists are slowly dying, literally, there is no-one there to replace them when they are gone. There is one evangelical church which has managed to survive for over 10 years and a pastor change but they are no where near as powerful of an entity as they were in the first 5.