“The sons of Issachar … understood the times and knew what Israel should do.”
—1 Chronicles 12:32 (NASB)
The church today faces a profound interpretive challenge. Nearly every denomination is shrinking, and in the past 25 years about 40 million American adults have left the church. The impulse is to react—to panic, to fix, to do something—but first we must understand the nature of the problem. Everyone knows we live in a secular age; far fewer understand what that actually means.
Understanding Our Moment
Philosopher Charles Taylor helps us name what has changed. He distinguishes three ways the word secular can be used. Secular1 names the distinction between sacred and secular spheres. Clergy attend to sacred vocations, while butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers pursue secular, or ordinary, work. Secular2 describes a society in which fewer people participate in religious practices such as reading Scripture or attending worship. Secular3, however, marks a deeper shift: a world where the assumptions that once made belief seem natural have changed so profoundly that faith in God has become difficult even to imagine.
We now live in that secular3 world—what Taylor calls an “immanent frame,” where belief and unbelief alike are lived as contested possibilities. The church makes a serious mistake when it assumes a secular2 context and responds to declines with marketing campaigns or engagement strategies. In a secular3 world, such efforts can make things worse, reinforcing the sense that Christianity is just another consumer option. The church no longer operates within a shared “background of belief,” where evangelism means reawakening lapsed faith. The challenge now is deeper; the plausibility of Christian faith itself has eroded.
From Argument to Presence
In a world where faith feels implausible, persuasion and presence must work together. This doesn’t mean abandoning proclamation, but it takes recognizing that words require a lived context that makes them believable. The gospel becomes most compelling when its truth is joined to a community that makes it visible and credible.
This requires a kind of faithful imagination—the ability to inhabit spaces where the presence of God can again be sensed and not merely asserted. We need practices that help the church move from anxiety about decline to confidence in patient, visible faithfulness within public life.
The Forecourt: A Biblical Image of Hospitality
One such practice comes from Jim Davis and Michael Graham’s recent book The Great Dechurching. Drawing on the imagery of the Old Testament temple in Jerusalem, Davis and Graham note that while God’s presence dwelt in the temple where Israel gathered for worship, the temple also had a forecourt—an outer area where anyone could draw near, listen, and experience something of God’s reality. The forecourt was a place where cynics and saints mingled—where the curious could explore and the convinced were called to embody the patient welcome of God.
Davis and Graham suggests that the church today should create analogous spaces of hospitality— “forecourt events.” These are gatherings that welcome neighbors to come near without demanding premature belief: moments where friendship, beauty, and joy embody the reality of God’s kingdom in the midst of ordinary life.
Forecourt Events in Practice
At my church in San Luis Obispo, California, we are learning to use forecourt events as a way of making faith imaginable again in a secular3 world. Our Christmas party at a downtown brewery, our children’s Easter egg hunt, the Cinema for Cynics and Saints film series, and the annual SLO Forum on Faith and Culture create porous boundaries between church and city. These are not events for the sake of merely our congregation, nor are they stunts to get unbelievers in the door. They are signs of transcendence within an immanent world—simple rehearsals of the kingdom that is already breaking into our midst.
When framed this way, the measure of success changes. The goal is not attendance or conversion statistics but presence. Our congregation is learning that presence is the crucial first step. When we show up, and when we invite friends to join us, we make the gospel visible. Our warmth, curiosity, and conversation make it believable.
Presence is the first act of witness. Faithful witness joins clear words with a faithful presence that gives those words weight and credibility. The church’s task in a secular3 world is to become the kind of community whose very life gives credibility to its message.
Ordinary Acts, Eschatological Echoes
Every act of hospitality is, in this sense, an eschatological rehearsal—a glimpse of the day when God will dwell with his people and make all things new. Forecourt events invite both believers and skeptics to inhabit, if only for a moment, that coming reality already breaking into our midst.
This kind of presence will not reverse statistical decline overnight, but it does something more significant: It trains the church to live truthfully within its time. It teaches us to resist panic and to rediscover confidence in the slow, embodied work of grace.
For Pastors and Ministry Leaders
As you approach the holiday season, consider how your church’s rhythms might serve as forecourt spaces in your own community.
- Can events already on your calendar—concerts, festivals, neighborhood gatherings—be intentionally shaped to invite nearness without pressure?
- Could your Christmas Eve service move away from performance and toward public invitation, designed with outsiders in mind?
- Might a church Christmas party become not only a celebration for your congregation but a shared feast for neighbors who rarely experience Christian joy?
- In your personal and family life, might hospitality—meals, open houses, or informal gatherings—help build a local plausibility structure around the gospel?
To understand the times and know what to do is to recognize that mission today begins not with argument but with presence—with forecourt spaces where God’s welcome can again be seen, heard, and felt.
Bryce Hales is the pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church, San Luis Obispo. He is the author of A Fruitful Life and cohost of The Cartographers podcast.
