This page is primarily for the local church staff and overseers. Pew Research Center, the Barna Group, the American Bible Society, and others have performed surveys of local church attendance, societal views on pastoral staff, beliefs of pastoral staff, and Bible reading. It is well documented that pastors are not held in the esteem they once were, attendance is declining among all generations, and fewer people read the Bible. The trend has been increasingly negative for the last forty years.
During a recent review of the theology, philosophy, and psychology databases for a Ph.D. dissertation at Liberty University, no peer-reviewed research-based literature addressed the causes at the local church level. Peer-reviewed is important because one must hold their reasoning up to the criticism of scholarly peers. Some churches and denominations have done surveys performed by marketplace organizations, which usually do not get to the roots of the problem.
For the dissertation, a group of people who had received the second birth were interviewed for their sanctification experiences to determine what influenced God’s sanctification processes. People discussed their relationship with the local church and the Body of the Lord Jesus in those interviews. The results indicated that sanctification was inhibited mainly by an invasive and predatory world system in the background that most of them did not identify and neutralize.
Over eighty percent received insufficient teaching, and none received equipping at their local church. These situations can be remedied, and Lititz Institute is well-positioned to assist. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Our approach is to leverage the deep database of industrial and organizational psychology testing and development literature, adapted to the church as an organization. That will allow for specific diagnoses for your church. Following that, a plan based on organizational change and development literature and experience in the field will be used to formulate a solution. There are no overnight repairs. Our staff will work with interested church leadership prayerfully, and under the leadership of God’s Holy Spirit.
Please contact Lititz Institute to discuss your situation.
Lititz Institute will contract with local churches to provide leadership and/or congregational individual development using the resources on the Learning Page. Special times and restricted groups are possible. Please use the contact form to get in touch.
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