As the church has developed in China, the number of Christians has also increased a lot. However, alongside there has been a loss of believers in many churches, and this has hurt the church staff a lot.
I would like to list some factors relating to the loss of believers, hoping that we could find a better, more practical way to minimize the problem.
The most serious factor is that they felt hurt in church rather than loved. There are complicated interpersonal relationships, controversy on theological views, divergence on ministry communication, and so on. Many young believers feel hurt by the church so they storm off.
Dissatisfaction with the shepherding work of the church is another factor that leads to a loss of believers. There is significant growth regarding the number of people going to church, while the church is seeing a gradually increasing lack of shepherds. This means that believers can not be satisfied even when they want to seek deeper pursuit, which leads to believers' leaving the church.
Christians being attracted to heresy is another factor leading to the loss of believers. Due to the fact that there are too many attendees for the proper church to care for, they can hardly do it well. Those young Christians who are not familiar with Christian teachings would be attracted to heresies easily.
The internet church, or online church, is also a great challenge that traditional churches are facing. Since some believers choose an online church due to a busy schedule or ignorance of the importance of worshiping in the building, they prefer to attend online religious activities. Because of this, some Christians would not go to church, instead they attend internet church.
Factors that lead to the loss of believers in the church are not limited to these. Others include urbanization, materialism, etc.
-Translated By: Alice Wang
