I was raised in the Church of Christ, and over the past few years I've noticed (both first hand and through the conversations of older generations) that the church has recently been under a lot of stress and we're coming to a breaking point of sorts. Modern movements in religion and ways of thinking have influenced my generation so much that the church is under quite a bit of pressure to maintain the "loyalty" of the up-and-coming members of the church that are needed to keep it alive. There are a lot of dynamics that go into why this is an issue, mainly due to the extremely conservative practices and doctrines of the church. But more on that later.
I'm interested in two main topics: both how the elders of the church (pretty much our parents and older) are handling this, because they're in a pretty crucial position right now, and also where the church of Christ as we know it is headed. For the sake of this project, I'll probably focus more on the former, but both are topics I'd love to explore in depth later, if given the opportunity.
Hope all of that made sense, feel free to ask for clarification. I'm still figuring it out myself :)
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ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a very interesting topic and I bet you will be able to get some really diverse interviews. Are you thinking of focusing on a particular church or visiting a variety of them?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you find it interesting :) I'm thinking about visiting a variety, mainly to see if there's any consistency in the responses, and how feelings differ between congregations. I figured it would give me a better idea of the overall picture.
ReplyDeleteThis topic has a lot of potential, as I have already said, first of all because most of the work that I am aware of in the US is on growing evangelical churches. It would be interesting even just to document the phenomenon and collect life histories of people who have been involved in the church their entire lives, asking them to reflect on these changes! You would get pretty far just asking them to tell you about the past ten-twenty years in the church, etc.
ReplyDeleteYou might not have time to do research in more than one church, so, for class purposes, one would be enough, but if you are curious and excited about the topic, you can take it even further!