What has happened to Methodism in the Rockies?

I just completed a short look at Methodism in the Rocky Mountains.

We are not doing very well.

There was a time in the early 1950s, where the ratio of Methodists to the local population had just about, but not quite, gotten to the same ratio as the nation at large. Not bad given the nearly 100 year head-start the East Coast had on that and the fairly late settling of most of the area. But soon thereafter, we began to slide. Since 1970, Methodism in the US of A has declined by about 20%. In the Rocky Mountain West, it is closer to 40% ...

Why?

Good question ....

If churches are our deployment platform for the distribution of our "product" (scriptural holiness based on Grace), then we slowed our growth in the 1930s and that may have begun our long slow slide to where we are ...

If what is preached is important, and understand I am just spitballing it here, but somewhere, I think I learned that it is, then are we out of touch with our surroundings? Some would say we are and we need to move ... the question is ... which direction?

Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity for the Rest of Us, spoke to our Annual Conference (a gathering of Methodists in an area, long standing tradition, hard to explain to an outsider, and an insider understands immediately). She mesmerized the room ... her theme was that mainlines (and Methodism is part of the mainlines) are starting to experience a subtle turn-around by little points of light who are being clearly intentional in their approach. A move away from establishment and modernity towards intentionality and post-modernity. Dr. Bass did suggest that she didn't know what our "product" was ... I thought I knew before she said it ... but no body in the Qs & As at the end mentioned that to her ... maybe we were just tired ...

The churches in the Rocky Mountains -- that are also Methodist -- that do seem to be growing are the ones who are indeed trying to be intentional about who they are ... how post-modern they are ... I guess we'll see ...

What has happened to Methodism in the Rockies ... I think somewhere, sometime, in a long distant place, we made a wrong turn, and it has taken us a long time to figure it out ... I wonder if we have time to re-join our sisters and brothers in the rest of Wesleyan Pietism or are we doomed to wander as we slowly spin into oblivion ... I am ever the optimist ... Hope says Yes, History says No ...

Send me a note and I will send you a .pdf of my "report" (email address is part of profile).

More later ...