'Go in peace': US church founded in 1800 holds last service

This kind of thing is almost inevitable as long as buildings and traditions take the place of a vital Christianity. There are many, many churches across North America that are on life-support even if they don't realize it. Where are the children? Where are the young adults (who leave when questions are dismissed instead of engaged)?

Lesslie Newbigin says, in Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, "The value of the word contextualization is that it suggests the placing of the gospel in the total context of a culture at a particular moment, a moment that is shaped by the past and looks to the future. The weakness, however, of this whole mass of missiological writing is that while it has sought to explore the problems of contextualization in all the cultures of humankind from China to Peru, it has largely ignored the culture that is the most widespread, powerful, and persuasive among all contemporary cultures—namely, what I have called modern Western culture. Moreover, this neglect is even more serious because it is this culture that, more than almost any other, is proving resistant to the gospel." (italics added)

Unfortunately, Christianity in the west has been reduced to particular (and obsolete) cultural expressions, tied to specific biblical interpretations, wedded to the accumulation of centuries of post-biblical traditions as if they were essential, and perpetuating a form of Christian worship with the essence removed.

As far as the building? A shame, I guess, but it's just a building.

The architecture is nice. When done well, it is deeply meaningful.

But the clear teaching of scripture is that "God does not dwell in buildings made by humans hands" (although he deigned to grace the Jewish temple with his name and presence).

The New Testament is pretty clear that buildings are irrelevant...Jesus himself claims to be the "new temple," and repeatedly Christians are told that they (individually and collectively) are "the temple of the Holy Spirit." So I appreciate the architecture—but when it becomes central and essential, it is actually undermining the message of scripture.

I think the turn off is religion, not Christianity.  Religion has become too political.  Young people don’t like that. Religion wants to tell you what to do and how to think.  Christianity has one goal. Be good. Some people believe that you don’t have to be good or at least try to be good if you are a Christian 

That kind of thing happens regularly. In my neighbourhood, a Dutch Reformed church closed its doors a couple of years ago. Its building was pretty new and beautiful, and rumour has it the building was sold for $1 to a church plant of another denomination.

The church I go to attendance is extremely low since Covid. It was decreasing prior to the pandemic.  But the service is streamed on Facebook every Sunday and members contribute on line.  Most Sundays I watch online. I guess I got used to it since they were closed for six months. Most of the kids who grew up in the church stopped going even before the shutdown. Including by own. Some went to more progressive, non traditional churches or just stop going to church all together. Guess it is the sign of the times

And that is the problem. People want man’s interpretation of good and evil and forgiveness. God knows we are not perfect people, but we must strive to be so. The New Testament is a guide. People need to read it for themselves and stop relying on man to interpret it for them. 

I was joking a bit. The part where the old lady says that church "was just what you did" does echo Nietzsche's discussion of the Death of God. Nietzsche pointed out that Europeans had stopped taking Christianity as a serious argument for why anyone should do anything.

Too many people think he was celebrating the Death of God. But Nietzsche laments it through his character Zarathustra.

I would argue that this is not the case. I could appeal to Kierkegaard, but I think it's more important to determine the criteria of the investigation. If someone attempts to "squeeze God (or revelation) into a box determined by empirical measurement," then of course when you open that box, you'll find nothing in there.