Unchurched Christians=Bad news?

I thought that is was interesting that this recently-published USAmerican church trend was labelled 'bad news': "Among the other bad news about American religiosity that he noted in his year-end review was the continued rise in the number of unchurched Americans and the continuing alienation of men from churches.
He said the number of unchurched adults has nearly doubled from 38 million adults to 75 million in the past decade. The 'unchurched' trend was strongest among men, people younger than 40, singles and people living in coastal states. "
I would have to say that 'bad news' in a case like this is very perspectival. It would also depend on just what analysis might be given to the causes.

It is bad news only if it is an unquestionable good that Christians are in church: I have to question that if the churches that they may be in are such that they do not equip Christians to show the compassion, justice and love of Christ in their everyday lives but rather pull them into an inbred religious ghetto which appears to hate everybody else and is unable to tolerate dissent or honest questioning. In fact, that is precisely why I think that the number of unchurched Christians is growing over there [and possibly over here too]. The tragedy will be that without support many of these unchurched Christians over a gneeration or so simply become unchurched and they and their families no longer promote a Christ-inspired vision and actions. I think, personally, that has been some of the real story of the Church in the UK during the 2oth century; many people saying 'you don't have to go to church to be a Christian' who began to lose their Christian edge and were unable -unsupported- to transmit true-enough Christian spirituality to their offspring.

In the case of the decline of ale churchgoing, this is offered as one reason: " Men who are leaders typically aren't allowed to lead within the church," he said. "They come into an environment where the senior pastor is a teacher pretending to lead. Thus, men who are called and gifted as leaders become a threat to the pastor. For those men, church is a very frustrating place to be."
The intersting thing here is the identification of the divergence of ministerial calling and demands between teaching and leadership. We definitely need to recognise that they don't automatically go together. FOr example my primary calling is to teaching, and I am quite good at leadership/facilitation in small group or shared-leadership contexts but I don't really rate myself as El Jefe in a big -church set-up... go figure.

On a different tack it seems that the most secular of the US states are experiencing a religious revival: "The greatest national increases in daily Bible reading came from Oregon, California and Washington, where 29 percent engaged in the practice in 1994, but 44 percent did in 2004, a 52 percent increase. Church attendance rose 24 percent, and small group participation went up 136 percent during the same time period in those states." And I wonder if this should be put together with recent trends in that bastion of North American churchlessness, Canada where recent reports seem to be showing increases in church attendance since the mid 90's of 4 or 5%. What are the implications, if any for the UK? Well, perhaps that the cultural inevitability, as we had seen it, of church decline is not so; having leaders who are younger and addressing existential questions in meaningful and graspable ways could work. RE-inventing forms of church and church life that take hold of the concerns of unchurched Christians might also be fruitful ...
Public Christian symbols backed - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - December 31, 2004: