I think your point about the importance of Christian churches as a center of community to the rural USA is underappreciated in liberal cities. There are good arguments that the breakdown of Christianity equals the breakdown of Middle America.
I was thinking about the various services and ministries provided by my small-city church, and to reconstruct its social impact, you’d have to have at least these things:
a community center where children are, weekly, taught morality and good behavior from nursery through high school, and then graduated into adult morality study classes
a social club where the members donate ten percent of their (sometimes not inconsiderable) income for the good of the community
a TV studio with live audience seating and up-to-date A/V equipment where professional speakers and singers can perform live for an audience, and have their content recorded and published to the web
Increasing its positive impact on the city would be easier without having to avoid certain rulings which would (especially in light of the narrowness of the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruling) require us to host events for people antithetical to our core purpose as a church: pointing people to Jesus. And because Cthulu swims left and Moloch consumes all, we’re caught between the Charybdis of relaxing our standards and the Scylla of dying off before enough new members show up to repopulate the church.
I think your point about the importance of Christian churches as a center of community to the rural USA is underappreciated in liberal cities. There are good arguments that the breakdown of Christianity equals the breakdown of Middle America.
I was thinking about the various services and ministries provided by my small-city church, and to reconstruct its social impact, you’d have to have at least these things:
a community center where children are, weekly, taught morality and good behavior from nursery through high school, and then graduated into adult morality study classes
a social club where the members donate ten percent of their (sometimes not inconsiderable) income for the good of the community
a TV studio with live audience seating and up-to-date A/V equipment where professional speakers and singers can perform live for an audience, and have their content recorded and published to the web
Increasing its positive impact on the city would be easier without having to avoid certain rulings which would (especially in light of the narrowness of the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruling) require us to host events for people antithetical to our core purpose as a church: pointing people to Jesus. And because Cthulu swims left and Moloch consumes all, we’re caught between the Charybdis of relaxing our standards and the Scylla of dying off before enough new members show up to repopulate the church.