I just picked up a recent copy of The Baptist Messenger and one of the articles immediately caught my attention.  It was originally written last year by Michael Spencer, known in Cyberspace as the Internet Monk.  Sadly, Michael went to be with the Lord earlier this month.

The article is entitled The Coming Evangelical Collapse. It is a thought-provoking and somewhat chilling read.

Here is an excerpt:

Many who will leave evangelicalism will leave for no religious affiliation at all. Others will leave for an atheistic or agnostic secularism, with a strong personal rejection of Christian belief and Christian influence. Many of our children and grandchildren are going to abandon ship, and many will do so saying “good riddance.”
This collapse will cause the end of thousands of ministries. The high profile of Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Hundreds of thousands of students, pastors, religious workers, missionaries and persons employed by ministries and churches will be unemployed or employed elsewhere. Visible, active evangelical ministries will be reduced to a small percentage of their current size and effort.

Nothing will reanimate evangelicalism to its previous levels of size and influence. The end of evangelicalism as we know it is close; far closer than most of us will admit.

Click on the link above for the full article.