Some Things are Hard to Kill
The Lindy effect and religious institutions
There is a great deal of hand-wringing today about the future of the church in the West. Books like “The Great Dechurching,” the deconstruction movement, and the Great Awokening have all contributed to a sense that the Western church is in its final stages.
We may be facing a period of substantial decline. Yet, there are also encouraging signs. I traveled to Asbury last year when the revival was happening there. At the time, I spoke to several people about the impact of this movement on global missions. Many told me that there was no missions emphasis in the revival at all. It was about personal renewal. Yet, just last week I spoke with a young man who has decided to head overseas in cross-cultural mission because of what happened at Asbury. Like always, the way God is leavening the loaf is a beyond easy analysis.
Sunday night my wife and I went to a Bob Dylan concert (yes, he was awesome). On the drive through downtown, we passed a United Methodist Church, all dressed up in rainbow signs and slogans of inclusion. This stance, more than any other, is responsible for the current downward spiral of the United Methodist Church.
Most Americans are unaware of the size and scope of Methodism in America. Prior to the current split, which has already caused twenty-five percent of its congregations to leave (a percentage likely to grow), there were about 30,000 congregations in the US. That is just about 10 times more churches than there are counties in the US. At one time, Methodism was a juggernaut in the US. Now, it is under massive flux as close to 8,000 of those congregations leave, mostly to join the new Global Methodist Church.
This article is not about the split, but about shifting religious attitudes in the West. It feels very fast right now. I wonder if it is. It is my observation that religious institutions tend to fail very slowly.
“The Lindy effect is a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age. Thus, the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the more likely it is to have a longer remaining life expectancy” (from Microsoft Copilot and obviously ripped from Wikipedia).
Thus, something with a relatively short lifespan can fade quickly, while something with a long lifespan tends to die slowly. The more you hang around, the longer you hang around. When it comes to churches, ministries, and other religious institutions, the Lindy effect is in full bloom for better or for worse.
My guess is that the United Methodist Church will hang on for centuries. It will not be what it once was, but it will also not be put to pasture anytime soon. 22,000 churches is still a lot of churches, regardless of the colors painted on their billboards or the message from their pulpits.
One might argue that the Lindy effect is not working out too well for seminaries and Bible colleges. This might be true. It might also be a harbinger of rapid church change in our near future based on demographic discontinuity. Schools are subject to generational changes before other religious institutions are. Because they focus on a narrow age group, typically 18- to 25-year-olds, they are the first to process massive change that comes from generational differences. Not only are demographics creating havoc (due to a declining birth rate) but the ideological shift within Gen Z has led to massive downturns in seminary enrollment.
So, what can the Lindy effect tell us about the future of religious institutions? I think it is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the Lindy effect would predict a long run is our future before there is mass failure. Yet, schools might be the canary in the coal mine. Recent trends indicate that we might be at the beginning of a major shift. It is time to be ready for anything.
[image created on midjourney with the prompt “a canary in a cage, in a coal mine, photorealistic leica lens”]