Dr. Doom's Oracle Report, September 2026:

1. The UN reports that we are now headed for +2.6 temperature increase by 2100. This is almost certainly an under-estimate. And will be much sooner. We are are already in the scenario once predicted for 2035 or later: Floods. Droughts. Wild fires. Heat waves. Hurricanes. Famine. Vanishing glaciers, rivers, fresh water, and sea ice. Sea level rise. Extinctions. The notion that humans have the wealth and political stability required to mediate against these catastrophes is magical-thinking. We do not.
      
2. Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies know they are above the law and will break US voting for the November 2026 mid-terms. It will not be possible to know who actually received how many votes. The swearing in of the next USA congress will be a gong show. The USA is no longer a functioning democracy.
      
3. The underwriting of USA national debt is about to collapse. We will be in a decades-long economic depression before the year is out.
      
4. AI has already demonstrated that it can go rogue and break through corporate internet security. But expert warnings will continue to be ignored. AI will break the internet. Electronic commerce and all forms of business data, communications, and control will be disrupted and possibly disabled.
      
5. The billionaire class are about to discover that not only can't money buy you love, it can't buy you food when there isn't any. Everything is connected and the idea that a tropical island can remain a paradise while the world is burning is magical-thinking.

I don't subscribe to the NYT so I missed Margaret MacMillan's September 1, 2026 Opinion, "A New World Order Is Coming. We Aren't Ready." That piece is behind a paywall. So I still haven't read it. But you can listen to an excellent interview by CBC's Paul Hunter on The Current. Here's a YouTube link: CBC's The Current, Paul Hunter Interviews Margaret MacMillan.

It's not your fault

American author and social critic James Howard Kunstler coined the phrase “long emergency”¹ to describe the effect of decades of small changes. For example, if your congregation were to lose half its members in one year, that would be an emergency. But if it were to halve its membership over two decades, losing maybe three of four per year, you would adjust and carry on. But, says Kunstler, it’s still an emergency – a long emergency.

Here’s how it looks on a national scale.² In 1977, when the United Church began recording average weekly attendance, 378,000 people went to church. That number peaked at 404,000 in 1984. Since then, attendance has gradually declined by 2.5 percent each year, so that in 2011 the number was 167,000. And if the rate of decline for only the past 10 years does not change, attendance will drop to 25,000 by 2025.³

But here is the really bad news: It’s not your fault. The decline in worship attendance is not because you need a better minister, cheerier music, more small groups or jazzier youth programs. It’s not because you need to read one more church-improvement book or to attend one more workshop. It’s not because the United Church is too liberal or too political.

The simple fact is that Canadians are not going to church like they used to. In fact, Canadians aren’t going to synagogues, mosques, temples, or Kiwanis either. Volunteer membership organizations of all types are declining.

Attendance decline is not a problem that can be fixed. It is simply a reality to which we must respond. Congregations must plan to be fewer, smaller and without buildings or payrolls. The challenge is too big for individual congregations to meet on their own; we will need to close, merge, and work together in new ways.⁴

The good news is that the United Church was founded by those who left the beloved familiar behind and embraced the desired unknown. Where that heart still beats, our hope for the future can be found.

Rev. David Ewart is a United Church minister in Vancouver.

Published in the January 2014 issue of The United Church Observer, page 41. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.

Reality Check Revisited.

In 2014 I wrote a series of articles for The United Church Observer magazine called "Reality Check." They were based on projecting what the United Church would look like in 2025, its 100th Anniversary. Given that we are now engaged in Toward 2035, I wondered if what I said then might have relevance for where we are now.

------

Notes:

1. Kunstler, James Howard. The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century. Grove/Atlantic Monthly Press. 2005.
      
2. The graphic is copied from The United Church Observer, January 2014. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.
      
3. Attendance data was significantly disrupted by COVID in 2020. And the severity of annual decline moderated in the 2010's. The reported attendance in 2025 was 111,000.
      
4. "Work together in new ways" means we cannot do this one congregation at a time. The scale of change needs to be denominational - or regional at a minimum. And likely multiple strategies will have to be pursued. What might work in an urban environment will not work in a rural one.
      

No New Members

Does a church with no new members have a future? That’s a question the United Church will face in 2019 if the trend for the past 10 years continues.¹

People join the church for the first time by making a public profession of their faith during worship. Typically, these are teenagers who are being confirmed after attending children and youth programs. The chart shows the baby boom spike after the Second World War, and the smaller echo in the 1980’s of the boomer’s children.²

The future will not unfold in a straight line, but we are headed toward having no one newly confessing their faith in Jesus Christ.

We live in a culture that is “spiritual but not religious” and more eager to connect online than in person. It is also one where fewer and fewer people are committing time and money to join volunteer membership organizations of any type.

Joining a face-to-face community that has accepted Jesus’ invitation to, “Pick up your cross and follow me for I am the way, the truth and the life,” is truly counter-cultural. 

Our mission then, should we choose to accept it, is pretty much to forget everything we have experienced about being the church. Our best days in the future will look nothing like our best days in the past.

With fewer people and smaller budgets, we must shift our time and energies from buildings and budgets to identity and mission: Who is Jesus for us? What are we being called to do and be? How are we loving our neighbours?

The future presents us with wonderful opportunities to find new ways to be communities of faith that are authentic, engaging, and joyful.

We have a history of giving ourselves for others in need. We don’t have much of a history of evangelizing and raising up new disciples. But if we want to have a future, it looks like we have about five years to change that past.³

Rev. David Ewart is a United Church minister in Vancouver.

Published in The United Church Observer, February 2014, page 41. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.

Reality Check Revisited.

In 2014 I wrote a series of articles for The United Church Observer magazine called "Reality Check." They were based on projecting what the United Church would look like in 2025, its 100th Anniversary. Given that we are now engaged in Toward 2035, I wondered if what I said then might have relevance for where we are now.

------

Notes: 

1. The graphic is copied from The United Church Observer. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.
      
2. The second paragraph above incorrectly attributes the post-Second World War growth to teenagers. The spike of New Members from 1945 to 1965 was not teenagers. It was the parents of the baby boom who needed to become members in order to have their children baptized, as was required by United Church policy at the time. It is also likely that the echo in the 1980's was now-adult baby boomers who had not joined the church in the 60's but were briefly returning to have their children baptized.
      
3. We did not hit zero in 2019. There were 1,648 new members that year. COVID significantly disrupted receiving new members, but in 2025 the number was 1,586. 

United but not uniform

We may be a United Church, but we are definitely not a uniform church. In 2011, there were about 3,000 congregations: 1,500 were single-point pastoral charges, and 1,500 were part of 659 multiple-point pastoral charges.

If the United Church were uniform, one would expect to find that the people and financial resources of single-point pastoral charges would equal multiple-point pastoral charges.

In the chart, the two blue bars are the single-point pastoral charges. The light blue bar shows the 300 congregations with the highest average worship attendance, while the dark blue bar represents the remaining 1,200 single-point charges. The orange bar represents all 1,500 multiple-point pastoral charges.¹

The total money raised by the light blue group is 65 percent higher than the total for all multiple-point pastoral charges combined. In fact, in almost every Year Book measurement, the top 300 congregations exceed the total of the multiple-point pastoral charges.

Make no mistake: a congregation in the top 300 is not better than a multiple-point congregation. Each will have its own strengths and challenges — but very different strengths and very different challenges.

Given the magnitude of the differences, I wonder if we don’t need to imagine ourselves, not as a United Church, but as a Trinitarian Church — one in three and three in one: (1) large single-point pastoral charges; (2) medium and small single-point pastoral charges; and (3) multiple-point pastoral charges.

I wonder if we have the capacity to imagine different ways of being church for each grouping? And to provide different resources and supports for each of them?

Whatever else is to be made of this data, it is certainly clear that there is no such thing as a “typical” United Church congregation. Whenever we talk about congregations, we need to be very clear just what sort of congregation are we imagining.²

Rev. David Ewart is a United Church minister in Vancouver.

Published in the March 2014 issue of The United Church Observer, page 41. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.

Reality Check Revisited.

In 2014 I wrote a series of articles for The United Church Observer magazine called "Reality Check." They were based on projecting what the United Church would look like in 2025, its 100th Anniversary. Given that we are now engaged in Toward 2035, I wondered if what I said then might have relevance for where we are now.

------

Notes:

1. The graphic is copied from The United Church Observer, March 2014. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.
      
2. My own observation is that the divide is mostly between urban and rural. For example, urban congregations can utilize proximity and property values in ways that rural congregations cannot.

Generation iPad

My wife and I were out for dinner. At the next table, a young couple were also eating while their two-year-old daughter played on an iPad. Welcome to modern parenting.

In 2012, Nielsen,² a global information and measurement company, reported that 70 percent of parents let their children under 12 use their tablets. In January, Ottawa-based MediaSmarts³ reported that almost all of the Grade 4 to 11 students it surveyed used the Internet and most owned a cell or smartphone by Grade 7.

And according to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center⁴ in New York, over 80 percent of the top-selling apps in iTune’s⁵ education category target children, with almost 60 percent targeting toddlers and preschoolers.

For better and for worse, the toddler next to us was revealing the future that is already at hand. She was hard-wiring her brain to expect that space does not end with the four walls of any room she is in. And time is not just, “now,” but also, “any time, all the time.” She is networked and interactive. This means new dangers and risks, but also new opportunities and benefits.

What do you think are the chances that an iPad baby will disconnect from her world and sit passively for an hour where every word she hears, sings and prays will have been chosen ahead of time by someone else?

Evolution shows us that when the environment changes, organisms must change or die. The era of the church building as the sole platform for ministry is ending. Communities of faith must learn to connect, communicate and congregate in cyberspace. 

And the challenge is not just to become social media savvy.

These new wine skins will not hold our old wine. How will we baptize her on Facebook? Clothe the naked and feed the hungry on YouTube? When she does connect online or in person will she meet Jesus in the community that calls itself the Body of Christ?

Throughout my ministry, congregations have tried to respond to changes in society by making our room more welcoming. But the room has left the building.

To paraphrase poet Patrick Lane,⁶ “The story of Jesus is our story now. How do you want it to end?”

Rev. David Ewart is a United Church minister in Vancouver.

Published in the April 2014 issue of The United Church Observer, page 41. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.

Reality Check Revisited.

In 2014 I wrote a series of articles for The United Church Observer magazine called "Reality Check." They were based on projecting what the United Church would look like in 2025, its 100th Anniversary. Given that we are now engaged in Toward 2035, I wondered if what I said then might have relevance for where we are now.

------

Notes:

1. The graphic was copied from The United Church Observer. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.
      
2. American Families See Tablets as Playmate, Teacher and Baby Sitter, Nielsen, February 2012.
      
3. Steves, Valerie. (2014.) Young Canadians in a Wired World, Phase III: Life Online, Ottawa: MediaSmarts
      
4. Pioneering Literacy in the Digital Wild West, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, New York. December 2012.
      
5. Apple's iTunes has been replaced by its App Store.
      
6. Presentation at the Vancouver Writers Fest, October 2012.

The value of a dollar

Just about every church treasurer I know worries about how to help their congregation have a clear understanding of its finances.

Part of the problem is that our brains just cannot absorb the numbers. There are too many, and it is just too hard to remember how the data from one page relates to data the next.

Another problem is the way inflation makes it impossible to easily compare one year to the next — especially if we want to know how are we doing this year compared to 10 years ago. In 2004, $100 would buy what you need $118 for today. So if we raised $100 a decade ago and the same this year, you might think we were holding steady. In fact, we have lost ground by almost 20 percent.

In the chart above,¹ blue line shows the Mission and Service funds received from Pastoral Charges as reported in the Year Book. You can see a slight dip in the 1930s. Then, a gradual rise after 1945 becomes a big increase in the ’70s and ’80s. Finally, giving holds steady at just below $30 million since the 1990s.

But what a difference it makes to adjust the historic data to reflect the impact of inflation shown by the red line. The decrease during the Depression of the 1930s is much sharper. And the big increases occur in the 1950s and ’60s, reaching a peak of $65,500,000 in 1964. The 1970s were actually a decade of decline; the ’80s a rocky levelling; and the ’90s to the present have been years of steady decline.

Why does General Council keep cutting programs and staff? If we only look at the blue line, we should be three times better off than we were in 1965. But, in real terms, M&S giving has declined by $40 million since then. And if the trend for the past 10 years does not change, M&S will decline by a further $8 million by 2025.

The Moderator keeps urging us to prepare for significant changes to our church. The red line tells us why.²

Rev. David Ewart is a United Church minister in Vancouver.

Published in the May 2014 issue of The United Church Observer, page 41. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.

Reality Check Revisited.
In 2014 I wrote a series of articles for The United Church Observer magazine called "Reality Check." They were based on projecting what the United Church would look like in 2025, its 100th Anniversary. Given that we are now engaged in Toward 2035, I wondered if what I said then might have relevance for where we are now.

------

Notes:

1. The graphic was copied from The United Church Observer. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.
      
   
2. Updating values to 2025: M&S from communities of faith in 1964 was $88 million; in 2014 it was $30 million; and in 2024 it was $16 million. If the trend for the past 10 years continues unchanged, M&S in 2035 will be vanishingly unsustainable.

Love and marriage

If you’re old enough to remember the 1955 hit lyric “Love and marriage go together like a . . .”² then you’re old enough to notice that walking down the aisle of a church to get married is going the way of the horse and carriage.

Canadians are still getting married. Federal government cutbacks forced Statistics Canada to stop keeping count in 2008,³ but in the last decade of record keeping there were about 150,000 marriages each year. However, the percentage of Canadians choosing to get married in a United Church has been in steady decline from over 25 percent in 1945 to six percent in 2008. And that trend could reach zero by 2019.⁴

The future will not unfold in a straight line, but there are already

over 700 United Church congregations that had no weddings in 2012.⁵ And the threshold to be among the top 10 percent of United Church wedding chapels is six ceremonies per year.

In my ministry, walking down a church aisle was a part of almost every couple’s dream wedding — even if they had nothing to do with the church. Those loose ties to religion in the wider culture helped us connect to the community without evangelizing. People came to us for weddings, baptisms and funerals. So we didn’t need to go to them to share our experience of what a difference trusting Jesus and being part of a community of faith makes in one’s life. But as the wider culture becomes “spiritual but not religious,” far fewer people are turning to the church to meet these ritual needs: baptisms may also cease, and funerals will be fewer.⁶

This cultural shift is creating a number of issues for the United Church. One is that the post-war church building boom has left us with an excess building capacity that is now a burden to many congregations. But perhaps the more difficult change is the need to figure out what it means to be the church in a culture that doesn’t need us. What on earth are we good for? And what is the most viable way to organize and pay for ourselves to live out those purposes?

Rev. David Ewart is a United Church minister in Vancouver.

Published in the June 2014 issue of The United Church Observer, page 41. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.

Reality Check Revisited.
In 2014 I wrote a series of articles for The United Church Observer magazine called "Reality Check." They were based on projecting what the United Church would look like in 2025, its 100th Anniversary. Given that we are now engaged in Toward 2035, I wondered if what I said then might have relevance for where we are now.

------

Notes:

1. The graphic was copied from The United Church Observer. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.
      
2. Lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Music by Jimmy Van Heusen. Released by Frank Sinatra, Capital Records, August 1955.
      
3. In my not so humble opinion, it was Stephen Harper's Conservative government that stopped reporting data about marriages after 2008 when LGBTQIA2S+ marriage became legal in Canada. It was not a budgeting decision. Statistics Canada has resumed compiling this data.
      
4. The number of United Church marriages in 2019 was 2,594, a decline of 72% from 2008 when there were 9,255. In 2019 there were 146,121 marriages in Canada. Less than 2% of these were performed by the United Church.
      
5. 1,300 congregations had no weddings in 2024.
      
6. In 2024 there were 2,131 baptisms of adults and children. However, all of these baptisms were celebrated by only 220 pastoral charges out of a total of 1,928. 

Women united

I have never been a member of a United Church Women’s group, but throughout my ministry I have long admired and appreciated their work. Each unit had its own focus. Some emphasized support for world missions, some prayer, others study and still others local needs. All contributed to welcoming newcomers and building up friendships. And who could number all the teas, dinners and other fundraisers that supported the congregation financially and brought people together in community?

At its founding in 1962, the UCW had 260,000 members. This represented 30 percent of the denomination’s total membership at the time, making the UCW the largest adult organization within the United Church.

While membership has declined by 80 percent to 52,000, the UCW is still a significant presence. In 2012, 80 percent of pastoral charges had UCW groups. The average size of each group was 18, and the threshold to be among the largest 10 percent was 54. And together, these women raised $13.7 million for their congregations, and $1.7 million for the Mission and Service Fund.

Over their 50 years, the total amount raised — adjusted for inflation — is $1.5 billion for congregations, and $340 million for the M&S fund.² Wow. Wouldn’t it be great if we could somehow bring these women — the living and the dead — all together, all at once, and say thank you?

A study of the UCW would reveal much about how Canadian culture has affected the United Church. Those changes that opened greater opportunities for women are to be celebrated. Perhaps not so welcome are the changes that now require all adults to work where they can, when they can. What kind of world we are headed for when too many of us no longer have the time or energy to meet together to study, pray, change the world and form life-long friendships. A church where 30 percent of its members still did this would rock the foundations of our world.

Rev. David Ewart is a United Church minister in Vancouver.

Published in the July/August 2014 issue of The United Church Observer, page 41. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.

Reality Check Revisited.

In 2014 I wrote a series of articles for The United Church Observer magazine called "Reality Check." They were based on projecting what the United Church would look like in 2025, its 100th Anniversary. Given that we are now engaged in Toward 2035, I wondered if what I said then might have relevance for where we are now.

------

Notes:

1. The graphic was copied from The United Church Observer. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.
      
2. And make that a double "Wow." As of 2025, the UCW has raised — adjusted for inflation — $2.2 billion (that is not a typo, yes, it is "billion" not "million") for communities of faith; and $476 million for the M&S Fund.

Missing children

September means back to school, as well as the start of a new cycle of church programs for all ages. But September is also the month when church elders once again tell younger members about the good old days of flourishing Sunday schools, and offer puzzled anxiety — or accusations — about what’s gone wrong.

In the United Church, Sunday school membership rose with the post-war baby boom and peaked at 757,000 in 1961 as the first of that generation graduated from Grade 6. The decline that followed was not because Canadians stopped having babies. From 1965 to the present, births have hovered around 375,000 per year.

By 2012, Sunday school membership had declined by 90 percent to 61,000, with half of all Sunday schools having 25 children or fewer. The threshold to be among the 10 percent of largest Sunday schools was 60. And 20 percent of pastoral charges were already facing a future without any children in Sunday school.³

Adults can bring energy, curiosity and enthusiasm to church. Adults can learn, play and grow. We don’t need children for these. And churches, like other volunteer groups, can thrive as adult-only organizations.

But we know in our hearts that a church community doesn’t feel right if all generations aren’t fully present. Children embody – in a way that only children can – the conviction that all are precious in God’s sight; that the world is created to be good; that everyone has a place at the table; that all should be treated with justice; and that we need to build healthy bonds with others if we want these values to be realized.

If there are no children, we are missing the truth that Jesus saw: “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Adults need children to show us how to enter the state of grace that Jesus called God’s kingdom. A church just can’t really be a church without children.

Rev. David Ewart is a United Church minister in Vancouver.

Published in the September 2014 issue of The United Church Observer, page 41. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.

Reality Check Revisited.

In 2014 I wrote a series of articles for The United Church Observer magazine called "Reality Check." They were based on projecting what the United Church would look like in 2025, its 100th Anniversary. Given that we are now engaged in Toward 2035, I wondered if what I said then might have relevance for where we are now.

------

Notes:

1. The title of this column was chosen before the non-Indigenous population of Canada finally became aware of the unmarked graves in residential schools. Don't read this post without pausing to reflect on the impact of these missing children.
      
2. The graphic was copied from The United Church Observer. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.
      
3. By 2025, Sunday School membership had declined from 61,000 in 2012 to 17,000, a vanishingly small remnant of 1957's 757,000. And of the 2,350 communities of faith, 1,400 (60%) had no Sunday School.

The cash-flow crutch

From 1965 to the present, statistics tracking United Church people have all trended downward. Whether you look at membership, Sunday attendance or baptisms, the numbers are dropping off like Granddad after turkey dinner (exhausted from so much cooking and cleaning, of course). And yet, the denomination’s overall income — called the “total amount raised for all purposes” — has not dropped significantly (see the green line). In 2012, the total amount raised was $399 million.

The total amount raised is the sum of congregational givings (red line), United Church Women’s fundraising (blue line), and “other” income (yellow line).

Congregational givings followed a pattern similar to the total amount raised between the mid-1960s and mid-70s. Then it dropped by 27 percent. The amount raised by the UCW also declined significantly during this period. And yet the overall total amount held steady. How come?

The difference is being made up by “other” income, which has grown from $33 million in 1965 to $132 million in 2012, a 300 percent increase. “Other” is a large category that includes community suppers, choir concerts and thrift sales, as well as rental and investment income.

And while there is good news in having extra income to support our ministries, the danger is that it masks the loss of people participating in congregational life while giving a false sense of security that at least the bills are being paid. Donations from participants accounted for 81 percent of the total amount raised in 1965; by 2012, that had fallen to 64 percent.²

Are we heading for a future of empty buildings paid for by rentals and investments?

Left unexamined, “other” income can be a sedative that allow us to stagnate while the culture around us radically transforms. The task facing the church today is finding ways to connect with new neighbours and younger generations.

Buildings, investments and fundraisers are distractions, not solutions.

Rev. David Ewart is a United Church minister in Vancouver.

Published in the October 2014 issue of The United Church Observer, page 41. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.

Reality Check Revisited.

In 2014 I wrote a series of articles for The United Church Observer magazine called "Reality Check." They were based on projecting what the United Church would look like in 2025, its 100th Anniversary. Given that we are now engaged in Toward 2035, I wondered if what I said then might have relevance for where we are now.

------

Notes:

1. The graphic was copied from The United Church Observer. The Observer now operates as Broadview magazine.
      
2. Adjusting historic financial data for inflation based on the 2025 CPI:
   Congregational givings have declined by 60% from 1965, and are now 58% of the total raised.
   "Other" income has increased by 300% from 1965, and is now 40% of the total raised.
   The total raised has declined by 40% from 1965.
      
3. Adjusting historical financial data for inflation based on the 2025 CPI, and rounding to nearest million dollars:
   Congregational givings have declined from $487 to 202 million.
   "Other" income has increased from $45 to 141 million.
   The total raised has declined from $599 to 349 million.
      
4. Adjusting historical financial data for inflation based on the 2025 CPI:
   Identified givers to communities of faith have declined by 75% from 520,000 in 1965 to 140,000 in 2025. But the amount given by each person has increased by 50% from $940 in 1965 to $1,440 in 1925.