MEMPHIS, Tenn — In tonight’s Ransom Note: keeping the faith.
It’s getting harder for churches to do that these days. And the pandemic is only making things worse
The Wall Street Journal reports Christian leaders are wrestling with how to keep their congregations going with fewer people showing up. So, there was already trouble brewing.
A Gallup poll found in 2020 less than half of Americans, 47 percent, said they belong to a church, synagogue or mosque. And only one in three of them said they attended services at least once a week.
Now the pandemic seems to have accelerated the fall with attendance down 30-50 percent since before the pandemic
The result? Here’s one example:
Among Protestant churches last year, while three thousand new churches opened, 45-hundred closed.
Churches are trying to make the best of it with virtual services and other ideas but a cost of COVID we may be talking more about the longer this pandemic drags on is how a growing number of congregations are having to the fight the temptation to sell.
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