Church, Faith, People, & Relevance
The Shrinking Church: I feel like the reasons for that run quite the gamut from Apathy to Monotony to only temporary Zeal. Everyone wants a place to go, where they can "feel" good, about being good, as long as they don't have to tackle the actual problems of evil, whether it be within themselves, or plaguing the planet.
God, People, & Relevance: If sacrifice is understood, willing, and painless, rather than disembodied theft, you can hold people until they're bored. At which point, you have to discern if they hunger, or did they not mean it, in the first place? Morals, values, and standards regardless of fulfillment "can" be indicators, but with holding & starvation can go too far, as well, therefore approaching, and sometimes accomplishing irrelevance. The average, often lose their perspective and move on. Some will be aware that they quite liked their perspective, and will hold on longer to re-establish.
Many don't realize that it's MORE than feeling good, and choose not to internally THINK through & to the wording that will solidify their needs, regardless of how they FEEL. If you can't accept that people DEFINITELY are not perfect, and certainly DO NOT fulfill God, then you have to find the wording that still fullfils the "Love your God with all your heart, strength, and mind.", commandment, which, if you can accomplish the discovery of, brings MUCH of the rest of religion and church together for you. If you flagrantly forgive yourself and leave God, it's far worse than simply walking away from the church. Some don't understand the difference. If you can't accept that you need to love WHAT GOD IS SUPPOSED TO BE, even if you don't love certain people, and regardless of how you feel, then God fades away, and so does the person. That being said, there really is SUPPOSED TO BE TRUE FULFILLMENT between trials and battles. If there's not, the profundity of damage is devastating.
I think the shrinkage of the church is due to a certain monotony, sometimes influenced by a sometimes apathetic clergy, often driven by the ironic monotony of sheep who continuously choose the treadmill of suffering for attention, rather than choosing work against the sin, and fulfillment of content and growth, rather than sustenance to rewrite the routine on. What happened to the zeal, joy, purity, and ambition we had at baptism, and confession? LITERALLY, the sin of reality, and the work it takes. I'm as guilty as the next - primarily out of exhaustion, and the next diatribe I'll spare you on this platform, but everyone wants to be the one who changes the world, without having to do the work, and take the stances, and fight the battles of actually changing the world, and the way things get done. Inspiration is the easy part. New ideas are the easy part.
Truth, quite rightly so, has to be conserved, and I've suffered for giving too much of it to the inevitably unworthy, and suffered just as much for conserving it from others that are "differently" unworthy. Some will steal it, and run to the top of the mountain, to impersonate Moses, having never suffered the life of Moses. Some can't handle full truth, and are truly shattered by it, trapping you, if you're not careful, in an endless cycle of enabling, that you, ironically need enabled to be able to stop enabling. God is right, quite often, Something is WRONG With the Children, a rather ironic movie title, and, if you can handle the correlation, horror parable. Just a small bit of inspiration from a retired priest's commentary on an article about a church closing, and an unsure preacher of what is next to come, and what drives such things.