This is really an addendum to my last post. In the book I read, Casper the Atheist consistently repeats what has become the mantra of post-modern thought – being certain of anything outside that which is provable by the scientific method is arrogant, ignorant, and offensive. Here’s how he put it:

“Certainty is boring. Certainty is closed off. Certainty is against new information. Certainty is a kind of orthodoxy, really, and it was those kinds of ‘certainty’ moments – when I would hear a pastor or others in a church declare themselves absolutely certain of heaven, God’s existence, truth – that I would get a little riled. Because being absolutely certain about something you cannot prove is simply dogma, and dogmatism is the death of ideas, and I like ideas.”

Full disclosure – I really mean don’t “just” attend church. I think. This may be a long one…

First off, I am the world’s worst blogger. Promised a post Tuesday, getting to it late at night on Saturday. Lots of excuses – work, family stuff, an unexpected funeral to attend (are they ever really expected?). Blah blah blah. Of course, that would matter tremendously if anyone actually READ this thing. I think I can humbly ask the three of you I pay to check my spelling and grammar for your forgiveness and I’m in the clear.

The most signifigant delay this week was meeting up with a friend who is a pastor for coffee. During that conversation, he recommended a book called “Jim & Casper Go to Church“, which I promptly ordered from Amazon. I picked “slow boat from China” shipping since it was free and I’m cheap, but it came like the next day. And I started reading the first chapter. And then I realized I needed to finish the sucker before I wrote this next part. Three hours later (don’t be impressed – it’s not a big book and the words are mostly pretty small), I have completed it and HAVE to write RIGHT NOW!! 

(Note the emphasis on GOOD, as in Martha Stewart’s famous catch phrase. Try to keep up. The joke’s not as funny if I have to explain it).
I will start, I think, a series of indeterminate length on church attendance in general. The most common question I hear among Christian Ghetto ex-patriots is “Do we really need to attend church?” this question is not often voiced by those with no Christian history – after all, we have cemented permanently in our culture the idea that religious people of all faiths attend church services of some variety, and the more often you attend, the more devoted you are to your particular belief set. But corporate Christianity refugees are wondering if, when, and how to even approach being part of a community of faith. There are a lot of really good reasons for this, and we’ll get to some of them as we go along (feel free to post the ones I miss in the comments).

But first we must discuss a recent cultural trend – the overall decline in church attendance in America. For about 10 years now I have been hearing this statistic in one form or another – a majority of Christian church denominations in America are plateaued or declining. What this means. or course, is that their attendance (or number of adherents, depending on the methodology of the group or denomination) is decreasing. If you slice the stats by generation, the younger they are, the less likely they are to regularly attend a church (www.barna.org has lots of these kinds of statistics).

This, or course, has led to a panic at the disco.

Back to Church topics – long gap – apologies – I didn’t say 60 CONSECUTIVE days :-).

I was reading an article a friend sent me about a super-hip new wave online t-shirt company called threadless. It was sent to me in the context of “the missional church could learn a lot from these guys.” And I agreed – both on the positive and the negative. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up (thank you Mandy Pantnkin):

Threadless comes up with new t-shirt art by holding online design contests that their community votes on. The winning designs get printed, the designer gains strett cred and web immortality, and the shirts sell out because the consumers of the product are directly involved in creating the product. Super-cool and a great online community they have developed over there.