The book cited below was originally published in 2001. I don’t know whether or not the statistics have remained the same. I have read that 9-11 temporarily bumped-up these type of statistics. My hunch is that in the past handful of years that throttling has subsided. However, either way, the statistics cited below are disconcerting.

Only 41 percent of Americans attend church services on a typical weekend [Barna Research Online, 1999]. Each new generation becomes increasingly unchurched. . . . Our recent research on the younger generation, the bridgers (born 1977 to 1994), indicates that only 4 percent of the teenagers understand the gospel and have accepted Christ, even if they attend church. Of the entire bridger generation, less than 30 percent attend church. America is clearly becoming less Christian, less evangelized, and less churched. Yet too many of those in our churches seem oblivious to this reality. . . . The percentage of adults attending church on a given weekend in 1999 was the same level it was in 1986.

Despite a plethora of resources on reaching those who do not attend church, the population of the unchurched in America continues to increase. Noted one Christian researcher, “At the same time that in America a multitude of new churches are being launched, and the mass media continues to report on the impact of megachurches, the number of unchurched adults is also on the rise.” . . . And as noted earlier, only one person is reached for Christ for every 85 church members in America” (Thom S. Rainer, Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them, 33-35).

 The implications are disturbing for said statistics. The “unchurched adults” of the “bridger generation” are a growing, rising, and flourishing segment of contemporary entrepreneurs, lawyers, politicians, medical physicians, day laborers, musicians, and artists, and when they marry or cohabit they form second generation unchurched-families.

In a section examining Martin Luther’s Lectures on Hebrews (April 1517), Thomas J. Davis discusses how Luther began to mature theologically by working “extensively through the concepts of personal faith and the word of testament (the promise) and how the two are related in such a way as to portend his mature beliefs.” To that point, Davis observes:

Faith is a clinging to the Word of God for Luther. It is the only work of the Gospel, and it is internal. In a telling passage, Luther declared, “Without faith it is impossible for God to be with us.” Why is this so? Because God “does everything through the word.” For that Word to bear fruit for the believer, there must be faith. One can ties this arrangement to the incarnation. If Christ is God incarnate, as Luther certainly affirmed, the way one possesses that incarnate Word is through faith. The union of believers with the incarnate Word, a union so real that Luther speaks of Christ as the Christian’s substance, is achieved only through faith. If the Sacrament is a visible word, as Augustine of hippo taught and Luther accepted, then the Word itself is an audible body, Christ’s substance, possessed through the hearing and believing of it–through faith” (Thomas J. Davis, This is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought, 33).

“Only God himself is a sufficient witness to himself. The Word of God finds no acceptance until it is sealed by the inward witness of the Spirit, and the heart finds its rest in Scripture only through this inward teaching. Scripture is not subject to human argumentation and proof, and Scripture’s own assuring power is higher and stronger than all human judgment. No matter how large a role the church may play in the genetic process [Footnote: “Obviously, this genetic aspect, this coming to certainty, cannot be separated from the question regarding the foundation of faith, but the differentiation does not therefore lose its significance.] of ascertaining, ultimately no one can accept Scripture because the church testifies that it is God’s Word. The moving of the church as praedicatrix evangelii [The “herald” or “preaching of the Gospel,” Berkouwer is quoting Kuyper.] is not the ultimate explanation of faith in Scripture. This conviction is also expressed in other Reformed confessions, which always speak of the convincing power of the Holy Spirit in connection with belief in Scripture” (G. C. Berkouwer, Studies in Dogmatics: Holy Scripture, 41-42).

“When Abraham Kuyper came to grips with the criticism of Scripture in his day, he sharply formulated this existential character of the problem. He attacked the criticism of his day “in its questionable effect upon the church of the living God.” It is obvious that Kuyper had in mind all forms of radical criticism, for he used terms like “critical vandalism,” “Scripture anatomists,” “recklessness and vivisection.” These radical critics of Scripture create distrust and doubt by denying what formerly applied as the standard of faith: “When Scripture has spoken, all contradiction ceases; when it has testified, the last remnant of doubt vanishes.” But even though Kuyper is referring particularly to radical criticism, it is clear that the contrast between criticism and authority occupies his mind. The logic of criticism is contrasted with a non-critical, receptive listening to the voice of God, like Samuel’s “Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears” (I Sam. 3:10). Behind his considerations is a recollection of the relationship between God’s Word and the indubitable certainty and place us for time and eternity on an immovable foundation. Much strife and opposition in the church must be viewed in this light, as must the emphasis on the judging but unjudgeable Word of God. The Word must be praised and trusted (see Ps. 56:10-11), as Scripture informs us with its unique divinity and self-authentication” (G. C. Berkouwer, Studies in Dogmatics: Holy Scripture, 14-15).

“This chapter launches the thesis that will run throughout the rest of the book. That thesis is this: God has promised to save and keep his people through the means he has appointed and through no others; the ordinary means of grace are limited to the preached Word and the administered sacraments; God’s rationale for these means is made explicit in Scripture [emphasis original]. There are many other things that are essential for Christian growth: prayer, Bible study, service to others. However, these are not, properly speaking, means of grace but means of discipleship” (Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship, 29).

“In the fourth century, with the conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity and the steady growth of the church, the relation of Christianity to the society underwent a gradual but momentous transformation. Constantine introduced laws that made Sunday a day of rest, thereby creating a new calendar and reordering the life of society to make space for Christian worship. He advanced legislation that discouraged the exposure of infants by indigent parents and saw to it that the public fisc would provide food and clothing to rear abandoned children. He built churches, not only in the new Christian city of Constantinople and the old capital, Rome, but also in Jerusalem, a city that would acquire potent symbolic significance in the public consciousness. As these new buildings displaced the temples built by former emperors the plan of cities began to reflect the presence of Christianity in the life of the empire. The most prominent public building became the church, and to this day one will find a church on the central public square of European cities” (Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God, 199-200).

Following excerpt from George Herbert’s The Temple – The Church-Porch, Perirrhanterium (the 9th stanza):

Yet, if thou sin in wine or wantonness,

Boast not thereof; nor make thy shame thy glory.

Frailty gets pardon by submissiveness;

But he that boasts, shuts that out of his story.

     He makes flat war with God, and doth defy

     With his poor clod of earth the spacious sky.

More from Berkouwer on the relationship between general and special revelation:

We have in mind only that, in the most profound sense, no true knowledge of the revelation of God in the works of his hands is obtainable without faith in Christ. Calvin’s reference to the glasses (of faith) as the only means whereby we can know God in this book of “nature,” is of decisive significance for all reflection on general revelation. This is not a question of our knowledge of nature as such, but rather of our knowledge of God’s self-revelation. Stated otherwise, in Dogmatics general revelation is not to be regarded (in isolation) as an independent object of study. Reflection on dogmas is in principle different from activity in the natural sciences. . . .  

The relationship between general and special revelation is not a competitive one; but in special revelation our attention is focused on the universality of God’s actions in relation to (the plan of) salvation and the Kingdom of God. It is precisely this salvation of the Lord which calls forth a song of praise about the works of God’s hands, indeed, this hymn of praise is a part of that salvation. When we speak of the general revelation of God, then we are concerned with this universality of God’s actions in created reality” (G. C. Berkouwer, General Revelation, 285-286).

“We may, and must, emphatically protest against any two-sources-theory, which places Scripture and tradition, or Scripture and nature, or Scripture and history, on one line, as sources of knowledge of equal import [emphasis original]. Any such equalization has always resulted in a devaluation of Holy Scripture. But also every attempt to prove, on the basis of fallen mankind’s blinded eyes, that God has revealed himself only by his Word, and not already in the works of his hands, must be rejected” (G. C. Berkouwer, General Revelation, 280).  

“The triumphant indicative concerning God’s action in Christ establishes a safe foundation on which to stand as we seek to obey the divine imperatives. That’s why worship is dialogical: God speaks and we respond” (Michael A. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship, 26).