Ok so this is American, but given our tendency to mindlessly follow along its maybe a picture of what is to come in Oz…

These are excerpts from the Barna report – with the full story here.

“For decades, American Christians, who comprise more than four of our every five adults, assumed they had one legitimate way to practice their faith: through involvement in a conventional church. But new research shows that this mind set is no longer prevalent in the U.S. The latest Barna study shows that a majority of adults now believe that there are various biblically legitimate alternatives to participation in a conventional church.”

“The Barna study also found that tens of millions of people are experiencing and expressing their faith in God independent of any connection to a conventional church. In the past month, 55% of adults had attended a conventional church service. During that same month, 28% of all adults who did not attend a conventional church activity did, however, participate in an alternative means of experiencing and expressing their faith in God.”

“In a companion study conducted by The Barna Group among Senior Pastors of Protestant churches, two out of three pastors agreed that “house churches are legitimate Christian churches.” Surprisingly, pastors from mainline churches were more likely than pastors from other Protestant congregations to consider house churches to be biblically defensible forms of church experience. Among the pastors least likely to support the legitimacy of house churches were pastors who earn more than $75,000 annually; African-American pastors; and pastors of charismatic or Pentecostal churches.”