“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. (John 4:34-36 NIV)
First the bad news, John Cotton would not be happy! Does it frighten me? No!
I have taken my title from a Los Angeles Times article dated Monday, March 16, 2009. The article by Joanna Lin reports the findings of the American Religious Identification Survey 2008. The upshot of the article is the number of Americans claiming no religion has nearly doubled. Of interest was that the New England region of the United States has surpassed the West Coast in its abandonment of religion! The cradle of Pilgrim congregationalism and the new frontier for it are fast becoming spiritually nonaligned. I thought to myself, “Hey they are talking about us!” “They have us going and coming.
While the Los Angeles Times article was on page four, a similar article appeared on the front page of USA Today seven days ago. I believe the title of the article was “‘Nones’ Now 15% of the Population.” It looks like since 1990 the number of people who claim ‘no religion’ has grown from 8% to 15%! That means if the present trends continue for the next 60 years, 57% of all Americans will be claiming no religion!
Now the good news – this is nothing new – and it actually presents the church of today with an unprecedented opportunity. It is often the case that the solution to a problem is bound up in the problem itself.
The bad news provides an answer. In USA Today, Kathy Lynn Grossman quotes Barry Kosmin as saying: “These people aren’t secularized. They’re not thinking about religion and rejecting it; they’re not thinking about it at all …” Do you see the solution? The solution is to reach out to the people around us and introduce them to Christ. If Kosmin is right, these are people who are neutral about religion.
When Jesus’ disciples demurred at his offer of the Gospel to the Samaritan woman and her Samaritan friends, he told them the fields were ripe for the harvest, all they had to do was look around them. In Matthew Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few!” In both cases he is telling his disciples: reach out to those around you and you will have success!
If the statistics of the American Religious Identification Survey are correct, that means that within a five mile radius of Oneonta there are 198,000 people who don’t have religion on their radar. That’s a harvest field ripe for the picking.
We think of Lent as a time of introspection. Perhaps the church of the 21st century should use times like Lent to be extroverted. Do you think Oneonta can lead the way?
Your Pastor and Friend,
Doug Brandt
Pastor Doug
Oneonta Congregational Church 