It is probably a favorable sign that fewer people are going to church and those attending are contributing less. It is indicative of discernment rather than a decline in their religious sense. They are being better consumers, noting the product is less serviceable and asks or expects more than it provides. There is probably a relationship between people's spirituality and their disappointment. They may even have shifted to a level exceeding that of the church, so that they are becoming less able to communicate with it.
Church has at other times lost touch and needed to reach a degree of estrangement from the people, and from the ideal of itself, at which time it has caught up with where the people have led. Then for a time church and believers remain in harmony, until the people again move forward. Each step in this process takes longer than we might wish, but it is in the nature of progress that we do not trust it as we might, and so we make it proceed more slowly that it could.
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