A Shrinking Denomination Looking into the Cell Approach

http://www.acpi.org.uk/articles/explainingcellchurch.htm

I find this article relevant because I consider it to be a balanced, no-hype introduction to the concept of moving to a small group model in one's community.

This comes from the Anglican Church Planting Initiatives, from UK. The Anglican Church has been experiencing a dramatic decrease in membership.

Just to give an idea, this is the title and the beginning of an article from Christian Today, written in 2006:

Statistics Suggest Anglican Church of Canada in Huge Decline

The Anglican Church of Canada has experienced a huge decline over the past 40 years, according to a new independent survey.

by Daniel Blake

Posted: Monday, February 13, 2006, 18:50 (GMT)

The Anglican Church of Canada has experienced a huge decline over the past 40 years, according to a new independent survey.

Over the period of 1961 to 2001 the Canadian region of the worldwide Anglican Church has lost 53% of its members, with numbers declining from 1.36 million to just 642,000.

An even more worrying sign for the worldwide Church is that the survey suggested that the decline is accelerating.

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From the article "The Shrinking Church of England" we learn that:

In the 35 years from 1971 to 2006 the Church of England has declined by 43.5%.

I.e it has just about halved in terms of it’s Sunday attendance.

In the 35 years from 1971 to 2006 the Population of England has grown by 9.37%

I.e it has grown by about a 1/10th.

http://anselmic.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/the-shrinking-church-of-england/

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It would be natural to expect that they would look into alternative approaches to evangelism and more effective Church dynamics in general.