Trend Predictions 30 Years Later

In Publishers Weekly in December 1969 a book editor for Westminster Press wrote about 25 trends and made predictions for the next quarter of a century:

• Conservative Protestants and Catholics will come together as will liberal Protestants and Catholics. [largely true today]
• The church will interest only those over 45 years of age. [largely true today]
• Church memberships will decline, but the remaining members will be more involved and committed. [true today for many denominations, depending no how you measure things]
• Construction of large church facilities will come to an end. [tastes in church architecture have changed significantly, but megachurches are constructing "big box" facilities that look more like a Lowe's or a community college than an identifiably religious building]
• Integration of all minorities will become a fact in the churches. [I can understand why this seemed likely in 1969, but, in fact, ethnocentric patterns have reasserted themselves.]
• The churches will give up their tax-exempt status. [Are you kidding?]
• Sermons are out and so is the Sunday morning worship service. [This is not markedly true, but there has been creeping change in this direction. Megachurches have worship services at various times throughout the week and house churches often meet on a weekday evening instead of the weekend. Video clips, drama, more music and a less preaching style have modified the sermon, but not really replaced it. And the traditional pattern still persists for a significant number of people, despite the fact that fewer Americans participate.]
• The church stands in great danger of losing the intellectual elite of this country. [Again, this has happened to a degree, although it is certainly not 100 percent.]
• Resurgent interest in formal worship is only momentary. [I would have to say dead wrong on this one. It is 40 years later and a significant minority of young adults are more interested in liturgical worship styles than ever.]
• The church of the year 2000 will not be recognizable by anyone from the 1960s.

This last prediction requires a longer comment. I was very active in the church in the 1960s as a teenager in a leadership position in youth ministry and then as a ministerial student at La Sierra University. Some things have changed significantly, some of them in ways I would never have predicted. But other things seem so unchanged that I could swear there has been no movement whatsoever.

The thing about change in a social institution is that when you are along for the journey, it is very difficult to really see the changes. You can visualize this phenomenon if you have ever been on a train alongside another train. If both trains are standing still and then one begins to move, it is very difficult to see at first which one is moving and which one is still standing still. Change is often an optical illusion. The world is full of people who have a lot to say, but are not very good observers.

My source for the excerpt from Publishers Weekly is Martin Marty's newsletter on religion and culture, which unfortunately is going out of business at the end of the year.