In any dying industry, its leaders obsess about making their irrelevant product feel relevant again. Christianity is no different. To most Americans, its product—membership in specific Christian groups—seems more and more irrelevant. But evangelical leaders in particular can’t retool that product to fit the times. Instead, they employ various strategies to make it seem relevant when it’s still the same old irrelevance. Today, let’s see how they’re failing.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 4/25/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now!)
SITUATION REPORT: Evangelical leaders are getting desperate to seem relevant again
A relevant church engages its members. It addresses their needs and concerns to make a positive impact on them. And lately, churches haven’t been doing any of that for an increasing number of potential and existing members. To a great extent, the story of Christianity’s decline in America speaks to churches’ growing lack of relevance.
Last time we met up, we talked about the “State of the Bible Report 2025” (local archive) from the American Bible Society (ABS). It described deeply troubling metrics for Christian leaders—especially Gen Z’s disengagement, with 83-85% not “Scripture Engaged” (p.30).
This report aligns with the trends I’m seeing in evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals try hard to establish their religion’s relevance to potential new recruits. One recent story comes out of the tabloid New York Post. It asserts that “young people are converting to Catholicism en masse — driven by pandemic, internet & ‘lax’ alternatives.” Most of those converts seem to come straight out of evangelicalism!
Over at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a March 2025 report claims that half of Protestant pastors think their churches are growing. Other stories there talk about SBC churches’ “kindness outreach” efforts and tips for welcoming guests at church. Meanwhile, Christian Post runs editorials imagining a “revival” of young Americans.
I see what evangelical leaders are doing. They’ve lost Gen Z, who are following Millennials right out the side doors of churches. Gen Alpha (kids born since about 2013) seems poised to be even less engaged with Christianity.
If things looked dire before for evangelical leaders, they’re terrifying now. Understandably, they’re pulling out the stops to try to at least end the decline if it can’t be fully reversed.
Alas—for them—it’s too little, too late.
The prophetess who saw it coming, and the Christian leaders who ignored her warning
In 2013, a bombshell of a column appeared on CNN’s “Belief Blog.” Written by Rachel Held Evans, it was titled simply “Why millennials are leaving the church.” With compassion and humor, Evans informed evangelical leaders that they were losing Millennials:
I point to research that shows young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith, between science and Christianity, between compassion and holiness.
I talk about how the evangelical obsession with sex can make Christian living seem like little more than sticking to a list of rules, and how millennials long for faith communities in which they are safe asking tough questions and wrestling with doubt.
Invariably, after I’ve finished my presentation and opened the floor to questions, a pastor raises his hand and says, “So what you’re saying is we need hipper worship bands. …”
And I proceed to bang my head against the podium.
She told evangelical leaders to stop revamping the window-dressing of their faith—trying to look cool—while the core of it remained stagnant, irrelevant at best to Millennials—and repulsive at worst.
In response, right-wing Christian leaders dismissed her. David French called Evans and Millennials alike “pretty darn narcissistic.” Barna Group insisted she was wrong, though they offered numerous tips to make church culture more appealing to Millennials.
Progressive and mainline Christians, at least, seemed to value the conversations her column sparked. They were about the only ones who did.
A few years later, right-wing leaders weren’t laughing at their rejected prophetess.
They were panicking.
Unfortunately, little changed as a result. The strategies they used guaranteed that!
Church Growth Strategy 1: Pump up the volume of new members to look relevant to potential and existing customers
A shrinking church looks bad to both potential and existing members.
Right-wing Christians, who include evangelicals and hardline Catholics and are often authoritarians, see their faith as membership on the winning team—both here on Earth and in their imagined afterlife. If they sense that their team is losing, they’ll drift over to a winning one.
So right-wing Christian groups inflate their numbers to seem more relevant. The New York Post claims Catholic churches are gaining large numbers of converts. Their story says that some dioceses report 30-70% increases from 2023 to 2024.
I’m skeptical. In March, Crisis Magazine noted that for every 100 new Catholics, over 800 leave. Also in March, Pew Research found that only 29% of American Catholics claim to attend Mass every week. This “growth” might just reflect new counting methods—like grandparents bringing their grandkids to Christmas Mass.
The SBC uses the same tactic: A March 2025 report claims half of Protestant pastors say their churches are growing, with 7 “decisions” per 100 attendees. These vague “decisions” often mean little. Sometimes, they simply indicate members switching churches. Either way, the SBC notes:
[T]he large are growing larger and the small keep getting smaller.
There’s a reason why, of course. Big churches can seem more relevant because of their greater resources. They can afford programs and amenities that keep members engaged. Small churches can’t compete. All they can offer is the basic church package. And that’s clearly not enough anymore.
From here onwards, we’ll mostly be talking about evangelicals in particular. Just know that all of these strategies can be seen in any authoritarian, right-wing church.
Church Growth Strategy 2: Insult those leaving or rejecting the product for not recognizing how totally relevant it is
Evangelical Christian leaders often try to slow churn by insulting anyone leaving their churches or rejecting their pitches. In the early 2010s, evangelical leaders like Ed Stetzer sneered at “Cultural Christians” who couldn’t handle TRUE CHRISTIANITY™. He accused them of leaving to worship themselves or avoid accountability. These insults warn those still in the pews what’ll happen if they ever consider leaving.
Evangelical leaders haven’t stopped insulting people for rejecting them, either. Recently, Josh McDowell’s ministry site claimed that those leaving evangelicalism lacked “sound theology.” Last year, minister Josh Taylor, set rigorous terms and conditions for leaving a church. If someone leaving failed to meet them, he’d think they weren’t “respectful” or “Christ-like” (which is a veiled threat of Hell, naturally).
Apologist Frank Turek accuses people of not rejecting Christianity over any “intellectual objection” but rather for “an emotional, moral, or volitional objection.” He considers those invalid reasons. The evangelical blog Sisterhood Hub ran a post in February blaming the Theory of Evolution for giving people invalid reasons to reject Christianity. And a 2025 post from Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry tells us that even those who’ve never heard about Christianity still reject “natural revelation” to “pursue their own sinful ends.”
Insulting people only gives the targets another great reason to walk away.
Church Growth Strategy 3: Pretending to be a relevant and worthwhile group to join
One intriguing strategy to seem relevant involves community service—or at least pretending to care about it.
The SBC’s official site, Baptist Press, recently highlighted “Kindness outreaches.” These are “small initiatives to reach the community through kindness.” Since 2010, one of these outreaches has offered free car washes, raking leaves, or handing out cold sodas to motorists in hot weather.
This program’s leader, Austin Cooper, claims “significant growth.” But he expects volunteers to eventually make recruitment pitches to the recipients of their kindness. As a Texas SBC pastor, Perry Crisp, puts it:
The helpful gestures ignite conversations.
“We want to show you God’s love in a practical way,” Crisp said. “It’s a soft pitch right over the plate so you can take a gospel swing.”
It’s no different from the fakery of friendship evangelism. To reinforce that similarity, the hardline Calvinist site 9Marks explicitly ties recruitment pitches to kindness:
After sharing the gospel for months, David considered his neighbor his personal evangelistic connection. David hired his neighbor to mow his lawn and invited him over to dinner several times. One day, David realized he could share this relationship with other church members. Immediately, he introduced his neighbor to his church friends as a potential hire for their lawn service. These members not only began hiring David’s neighbor to cut grass, they also began sharing the evangelistic load. Who knew helping someone grow their lawn business could be part of a team’s evangelistic strategy!
I feel so bad for that poor neighbor! Thankfully, it doesn’t sound like the guy joined—even when “David” tag-teamed a bunch of his church friends to help recruit him. “David” couldn’t just be a nice neighbor. He had to tie his nice neighborliness to evangelism. And the SBC and 9Marks both fully approve of this tie-in.
However, if these SBC ministers have been emphasizing kindness evangelism since the pandemic, it sure doesn’t seem to be helping them. As we discovered recently, the SBC has lost a lot of churches in Texas over the past five years.
That study came out an entire four weeks before the “kindness” one. I suppose SBC leaders expect their flocks to have short memories!
The problem, of course, is that evangelicals as a group aren’t naturally kind or generous. They’re not even inclined toward reliable niceness. Maybe that’s why an April 8th story from Baptist Press contained advice for making guests feel more welcome in churches. Tips like those reveal how much coaching evangelicals need just to achieve standards of basic human decency.
In short, the illusion of kindness collapses on impact with actual evangelicals.
Church Growth Strategy 4: FOG MACHINES AND HIP WORSHIP MUSIC v2.0
Evangelical leaders often chase after simple window-dressing changes to seem relevant. In Rachel Held Evans’ day, these changes involved fog machines and hip worship music. These days, church leaders have become more sophisticated. Now they’re looking to the electronic mission field.
During the pandemic, Protestant pastors from all flavors of Christianity streamed services on social media sites like YouTube to keep their congregations engaged—and, of course, donating money.
In 2023, Pew Research found that a sizeable number of Americans use computers or mobile devices to read the Bible, listen to religious podcasts, or get help with praying. Perhaps that’s why, as Christianity Today found that same year, online church services remain popular.
Barna Group tried to temper this enthusiasm. They noted the challenges of measuring online church attendance and church members’ resistance to online-only churches. But evangelicals remain interested in this form of Christian community.
If a church isn’t relevant otherwise, though, it’s only a digital echo of irrelevance cast into the void.
And evangelicals’ favorite strategy: Not changing anything at all and claiming that’s the whole relevant shebang right there
Evangelicals love lists of revitalization solutions. Without fail, they always advise churches to do more of what they were already doing. A May 2023 SBC post reveals four surefire ways to ensure a church’s growth. Their writer calls for:
- Relentless evangelism
- Assimilating new members into the church’s culture
- Discipleship through small groups (discipleship is Christianese for tightly controlling the disciple; evangelicals think it’s the key to ending church churn)
- Being a big church already
That last one made me laugh. As the post itself points out, about 70% of SBC churches contain under 100 attendees. So that last bit might be difficult!
Ministry Brands recently took a lot more words to offer a remarkably similar list. After going through all the problems facing modern church leaders, they offered a listicle of all the stuff churches needed to do to grow:
- Youth groups and Bible studies
- Various mission and service trips
- Music/art and recreational programs
- Retreats and camps
- Leadership development
- Outreach and volunteering
It’s hard to imagine any large church not already doing all of this. And smaller ones couldn’t afford most of it. Regardless, if these efforts haven’t already made churches relevant, doing more of them but harder won’t work either.
Why it might be hard to gauge how relevant churches are
What makes any group relevant? After all, what one person finds relevant, another finds to be pointless filler.
Whether the group focuses on gaming or religion, it survives and thrives through relevance. It must offer members:
- Something they want or need
- At a price they’re willing to pay
- Without dealbreakers (like scandals or better alternatives)
For gaming, the group might offer community, fun, and games the members love to play. For churches, it might be community service without strings or activism against social ills like racism.
So what do modern evangelical churches actually offer? Do enough members value these offerings over other alternatives?
Increasingly, the answers seem to be: “Not much” and “Afraid not.”
(We’ll dive deeper into relevance in a future post.)
The one factor that doesn’t matter at all
As you might have noticed, I don’t analyze Christian recruitment in terms of their own supernatural beliefs. There’s no need. Their strategies are secular. The workings of their groups are explainable without invoking imaginary beings.
Any group trying to use the strategies we’ve discussed today would get the same exact results evangelicals have.
The entire rise and fall of Christianity—from its earliest hungry days to its stranglehold on much of the world to its current decline in the West—can be understood in purely earthly terms. No gods and no magic required.
NEXT UP: Watch out, Dallas-area heathens! #SBC2025 prepares to descend upon your city like a swarm of locusts! (SQUEE! The summer fun begins!) See you next time! <3
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Endnote
It’s a little, too little, it’s a little too late
I’m a little too hurt and there’s nothin’ left that I’ve gotta say
You can cry to me baby but there’s only so much I can take
Oh, it’s a little, too little, it’s a little too late
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