Greetings!   

The fourth week of the bible study on Paul's letter to the Galatians has concluded. This session was an interactive session that left us with a few final unanswered questions.  These were, "how will we change based on our agreement that "grace is enough?  And, how will the fact that "grace is enough" change us, and our church, in 2011 and beyond?"   

These are especially important questions based on the following article which advised that religion will soon be "extinct"!  A study released by the American Physical Society and conducted by Richard Wiener of the University of Arizona and Daniel Abrams and Haley Yaple of Northwestern University determined that between 40% and 60% of people surveyed in countries like Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Switzerland identified themselves as having no religious affiliation.  In addition, the study also found that the only religious grouping that is growing in the USA across all 50 states is that of  "Americans without affiliation". Further, in 2008, as a country, 15% of our population now advises that they are not affiliated religiously (Vermont topped the chart at 34%). 

 The study concludes that "religion in these societies may one day disappear" and "the model predicts that in societies where the perceived "utility" of not adhering is greater that the "utility of adhering, that religion will be driven toward extinction."  I found the choice of the word UTILITY intriguing.  Synonyms for utility are "usefulness", "value", "convenience" and "helpfulness" among others.  So maybe our question needs to be, since grace is enough, how can we make the religion in our church more useful, valuable, convenient and helpful?  Join in an effort to establish strong, sustainable goals for our church by attending a meeting on April 5^th at the home of Tricia Kuiken.   Maybe we can find a few new ways to add to the usefulness, value, convenience and helpfulness we already provide through our church. Maybe if we focused on these few synonyms we could begin to stem the tide of change in our community. 

God Bless and have a great week.

John V W

P.S.  Here is a link to the information provided above.

http://www.urbanchristiannews.com/ucn/2011/03/religion-may-become-extinct-in-nine-nations-study-says.html