I tend not to pay much attention to sensationalistic titles. The last thing we need, I figure, is another alarmist manifesto on how bad the world is becoming. And that’s what I thought David Olson’s The American Church in Crisis was before I took a closer look. Boy, was I mistaken.
Through fairly extensive research, Olson charts the life cycle of churches. He identifies common denominators between growing churches as well as similarities among dying churches. He explores when in its lifetime a church is the most evangelistic, when it becomes the most introspective, and when it begins to decline.
Olson also takes time to address changing sociological trends in American culture that present challenges for the church, including the shifts from Christian to post-Christian society and from modern to postmodern worldviews, and changing ethnic demographics.
As this summary suggests, Olson uses organic language throughout the book. The church is not a machine, but an organism that requires nutrients and care to grow, that responds to stimuli and dies without them. It may come as little surprise, then, that the upshot of The American Church in Crisis is actually an apologetic for church planting. If you want the harvest, you have to plant the seeds.
Churches are the most evangelistic in their first three years, Olson argues. Therefore the hope of the American church is the constant planting of new congregations.
I don’t disagree with this analysis. Yet following his organic language, I wonder if there aren’t other gardening concepts that might influence the health of the church. What about pruning, grafting, and cultivating? Is planting our only hope?
Despite these questions, I recommend The American Church in Crisis as a helpful overview of the changes and challenges facing the church in the years to come. It is written by a passionate and faithful author who believes deeply in the power of the gospel through the faithfulness of the church. That makes him an excellent guide.
