Paul Borden, executive minister of Growing Healthy Churches, spoke during the Thrive conference in April about the death of churches in the Western hemisphere. Despite the growth of the faith worldwide, churches in the United States continue to decline.

 â€œWhat’s interesting is that Christianity is dying in the three continents most touched by the Protestant Reformation: North America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand,” he said. (Watch him on video.)

Apparently the soil in these once rich environments of Christian faith, has gone bad—it's turned rocky, hard and weedy.

I know all about weedy. We have a huge yard. It’s one of the reasons we bought our house. However, it also becomes a cardio workout to weed the property each week. I thought at first that if I just set a goal to fill eight plastic grocery bags full of weeds each weekend I might be able to stay on top of the weeds. That goal soon became four kitchen trash bags. That goal has now turned into an hour a day spent weeding. Even that is in danger of turning into two hours a day.

I may never catch up.

Compare that to the 3,000 churches a year that die in the United States. Consider it in the context of the parable of the sower. Some seeds fall among weeds and are choked out. Some 3,000 gardens full of seeds were choked out last year in this country alone.

Proactive planting

Of course, any gardener has to consider proactive ways to deal with weeds. If I could only prevent the weeds from germinating in the first place maybe I could keep up with the occasional weeds that do push their way through. Someone else laid yards and yards of landscaping cloth in our border gardens and mulched over it. Still, a handful of hardy weed species enjoy snaking their roots beneath it until they find a hole or a crack or just bully their way right through it. Other species root in the shallows of the mulch.

Plants will be my answer. I got a dozen perennials in pots and have begun to reclaim areas of weeds for healthy flowers and grasses.

This may be an answer for the death of churches, too.  According to Borden, last year 3,800 new churches started—for the first time in more than a decade more started than declined. That’s good. But, like my garden, it’s simply not keeping pace with the need. Borden estimates that 10,000 new starts each year are necessary just to keep pace with population growth.

 â€œThe point is we are losing ground,” he said.

I know the feeling.  But I’m not giving up—at least not yet—on the garden or the Church.

The end of the sower parable says the seed just needs good soil to produce 100 times what was planted. Every place can’t be rocky, hard and weedy. Everyone’s heart can’t be closed. Even in my garden there are places where good plants are thriving.