Want to know what the end of Christendom feels like? These 3 things have worked for me.
1. Read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall then immediately follow it with the Stieg Larsson Millenium Trilogy. I did this last summer. Somewhere between Tudor England and 21st century Sweeden Christianity disappears. In Henry's court, the church is centre stage. In the Millenium trilogy, the church barely appears. Where it does appear, it is viewed with cynicism and suspicision as an agent of sexual oppression and abuse.
2. Talk to European missionaries. We have a link missionary working with CMS in Europe. He is back in Sydney now, and has been telling us of the desparate need Europe has to hear the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. There are still vestiges of Christianity - great Cathedrals, national churches, and large nominal affiliation to the church. But most people's faith is placed in materialism, spiritualism and relativism. Very few actually belive what the Bible says about Jesus.
3. Hear the stories of how the church has changed in Sydney in the last 50 years. Get the Builder Generation and Generation Y at your church to talk to one another about the place of Christianity in the culture. It was fascinating for me to see the Gen Y's identify so quickly with the stance of our returning missionary. This was a world they recognised - where there is a great yawning chasm between Christianity and the culture, where their friends are biblically illiterate, and where the Gospel is cynically dismissed as redundant. The Builders looked back with nostalgia to Billy Graham Crusades and churches bursting at the scenes. They'd grown up in a church that was so closely aligned with the Establishment - where the minister was someone with real power in the community.
Christendom is obviously a larger frame than people with a living faith.
You might argue therefore that Europe or Australia has never been 'Christian'.
But if Christendom is coming to an end then we are faced with a choice. Either our churches will continue to minister in Christendom ways to an ever shrinking ghetto of Christians, or we will transform them with a missionary strategy to reach people we'll never otherwise reach.
