{"id":4915,"date":"2016-10-18T16:45:28","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T20:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4915"},"modified":"2016-10-18T16:45:48","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T20:45:48","slug":"church-failure-4000year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4915","title":{"rendered":"Church failure: 4000\/year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A piece about pastors <a href=\"https:\/\/baptistnews.com\/article\/the-ranks-of-ex-pastors-grow-as-some-join-nones-and-dones\/#.WAaHqiTgn2t\" target=\"_blank\">leaving ministry<\/a> to find honorable work includes this interesting tidbit:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Atkinson shared some well-known statistics that contribute to the stress of pastors. They include <SPAN style=\"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a8f2f5\">declining or plateauing attendance<\/span> in most congregations and the <SPAN style=\"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a8f2f5\">closure of up to 4,000 American churches annually<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Southern Baptists admit on the order of 750-churches failing per year, so 4000 amongst all denominations has a believable sound to me.<\/p>\n<p>Good.  The Christian narrative is undoubtedly false, and the ethics are very bad; a set of teachings that rest ultimately on Abraham&#8217;s willing betrayal of his son deserves to die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A piece about pastors leaving ministry to find honorable work includes this interesting tidbit: Atkinson shared some well-known statistics that contribute to the stress of pastors. They include declining or plateauing attendance in most congregations and the closure of up &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4915\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4915"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4917,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions\/4917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}