Mainline or Seeker-Oriented

I work for a non-profit that's affiliated with a large mainline denomination. I sit in quite a few meetings where I am the only person who does not belong to this denomination. This past week I was in one such meeting where we were discussing Christian bookstores. Now, I will grant that there is a lot of fluff in Christian bookstores these days. I have not touched the Left Behind series (nor do I assume that it's non-fiction!). During this discussion, our local seeker-oriented church came up. The church was poo-pooed by someone as basically being an intellectual marshmallow (my words, not theirs). I'm not a big fan of this church, but my brother goes there, as does most of his in-laws who attends church, so I have to give it a good nod for reaching my family. As a result, I tend to opt out of discussion surrounding this church. I must confess, though, that what I wanted to say was that that church probably has more new people from this old mainline denomination attending it than all of the local churches from that denomination. In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if there are 300-400 people from that denomination who have started attending the seeker church in the last few years, but I'd be VERY surprised if there were even half that many new people attending all of that denominations local churches combined.

Ironically, the same person who poo-pooed that seeker church, also commented that their denomination is dying. Now that is a statement that I agree with. There are four churches from that denomination within a mile of my home, and I'd be surprised if there were 1,500 people in all four of those churches combined. I'd be surprised if there were over 200 people under 40 in all four of those churches combined.