Church Death in UK 1. Introduction

The Methodist church down the road was demolished a few months ago. It was a modern 60s building. It became a pile of rubble and is now cleared and flattened. I felt very depressed. It wasn't my church but it held stories, histories, songs, relationships, sermons that are all gone. It is a metaphor of what has happened to the church in the UK over decades. Who cares that its gone? Will it even be missed? Despite this happening up and down the country the denominations continue in their relentless death throes. This book is about those death throes, why it has happened, and what we can do about it. 

The problem

"For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as “Christian”, a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3% (33.3 million) in 2011; despite this decrease, “Christian” remained the most common response to the religion question." ONS 2021

The mainline traditional churches are declining towards extinction by the end of this century. Newer churches are growing but they are not significant numerically. The UK is not a Christian country anymore. Despite this churches largely continue as if it were and in the same way with a few fragile experiments in different ways of being church. If the church were a company then churches would have been closed a long time ago.