Is numerical decline on the way for UK evangelicals?

I want to reflect on what I think may be significant decline in the evangelical church in the next few years. A few things have got me thinking that we may be on the edge of a fairly steep decline.

First, as far as I can tell from what I've read and heard, the numbers of evangelicals have been plateaued in the UK for some time now. Evangelicals have tended to take comfort in the fact that while the liberal denominations have declined at pace, we have managed to hold on to relatively stable numbers. I think we've been right to think that the abandonment of the gospel has destroyed these denominations, not only doctrinally but numerically. However, plateauing numerically should probably concern us. Plateaus often/usually come before decline. I've begun to wonder if we're on that cliff edge, so to speak.

Second, it seems to me that those who take the name evangelical hold increasingly sketchy positions on what would be classic evangelical doctrines. If you want some concerning data, have a look at this Evangelical Alliance report. I suspect it says what lots of pastors know. The current generation is weak on the gospel, doctrine and ethics and we're really struggling with the next generation.

If we are to learn from the pattern of the denominations, the slide from orthodox belief into liberalism and heterodoxy is often pretty fast, especially as the orthodox get old and are replaced by the liberal younger generations.

Third, the pressure on classic evangelical beliefs in now fairly strong - especially in the middle classes where most evangelicals are found. This particularly focuses, as most of us will know, on the current crop of ethical debates. In short, evangelical beliefs are no longer anywhere near what is acceptable in many of the subcultures that evangelicals have traditionally come from. This is linked to my second observation of course. Standing firm as an evangelical Christian is now much harder (some of us pastors maybe need to be a bit more connected to what the world of work is now like for some in our churches). It will also make evangelism tougher - the cost is now bigger for a far larger group of people to become evangelical Christians.

Fourth, you may have heard me and Steve Kneale comment on our podcast that much of evangelicalism seems trapped in seeking comfort rather than serving God. If you combine that with my third point then of course the risk is that the comfortable way, which is the way many will take, is to slide away from the truth (see the second point). These things tend to accelerate with time into a kind of collapse (see the Church of England!).

Fifth, the Church of England has collapsed and this has always counted for a fair amount of evangelicalism in the UK. Evangelicals in the Church of England, even if they stay faithful, are going to be mired in dealing with the mess that is their denomination for the next few years. This is unlikely to be fruitful and it seems to me quite a few evangelical or partly evangelical churches will collapse in the process.

Sixth, there have been so many conflicts, scandals and fall outs in the last few years in evangelicalism (after a number of years where there had been progress on unity and working together). Obviously there's all sorts you could comment on about many of these situations, but suffice to say for the moment it is unlikely to be strengthening for evangelicalism.

Seventh, COVID produced a mixed picture with the evangelical church as far as I can see, but I suspect there are quite a large number of churches struggling significantly since the pandemic. Again, there's probably lots more analysis to be done here, but my guess would be that it will be a net loss - in particular we will lose lots of smaller evangelical churches in a process in some ways started by how the pandemic played out.

Eighth, the number of evangelicals training for ministry seems to be in serious decline from what I hear. I think this may be linked to a number of the reasons above, but it's not exactly an indicator of health.

Ninth, we're hearing of problems of decline in a number of other western contexts with evangelical strongholds, e.g. Southern Baptists in the USA and Sydney Anglicans in Australia. Although this doesn't necessarily transfer to UK evangelicals, it may be indicative of problems for evangelicals in western contexts.

Now, there need to be all kinds of caveats with this kind of thinking.

First, quite a lot of these things are actually pretty hard to work out. For example, what effect will COVID and the situation in the Church of England have? It's possible they will kickstart new areas of growth.

Second, there are other things that are positive. For example, people continue to plant churches and there are some signs of things turning back toward Christianity in the culture.

Third, evangelicalism has tended to be good at "re-inventing" itself and often in a good way. I don't mean the gospel is changed, I mean that evangelicals, because we care about the gospel, the lost and the church are often astonishingly creative at finding ways forward.

However, whenever I think about this sort of thing I'm reminded of a story I was told about the Church of England bishops. I don't know if it's true, but it captures the idea. Having been presented with some desperately bad statistics of decline there was silence. Then one bishop started to talk about a good news story happening in his diocese. Bishop after bishop did the same. They dealt with the bad news by displacing it. But of course, that isn't really dealing with it and I wonder if evangelicals are too inclined to do the same.

I don't like it when we talk the church down or talk evangelicalism down. I don't like it because I believe what we have as evangelicals and as evangelical churches is the gospel that is the only hope for the lost. But I do wonder if we need to face a reality that is a lot more difficlut and a lot more complicated than we might like. If we face it, we can plan and strategise and do the creative, gospel centred mission that evangelicals are known for.