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Church as NGO

April 21st, 2023 | 4 min read

By Jake Meador

One of the most pressing problems facing the church in the west right now is how we can course correct after 40 years of failed discipleship strategies. The past decade has exposed the fact that many of the people in our churches don’t actually know or agree with much basic Christian doctrine (this was actually apparent prior to 2014, but most of us tried to ignore it, I think) and that many churchgoers went more out of the inertia of habit than out of any deep commitment to living the life of Jesus—that’s why when COVID disrupted church gatherings around 1/4 or more of attendees in many churches just stopped showing up, even after churches reopened.

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Jake Meador

Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, First Things, Books & Culture, The Dispatch, National Review, Comment, Christianity Today, and Plough. He lives in his hometown of Lincoln, NE with his wife and four children.

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Church