This week, on the Word of the Lord endures forever, we begin our adventure in the acts of the Apostles,

starting off with the Ascension, then devoting themselves to prayer, Matthias chosen,

Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit and Joel's prophecy.

Join me, Pastor Will Whedon, for the Word of the Lord endures forever your daily 15-minute,

verse 5, verse 5, we'll study on demand.

Listen at thewordendourser.org or your favorite podcast provider.

The numbers are undeniable and just when we were thinking it might just be the pandemic,

a lot of churches closing. Well, the pandemic is over and churches are still closing.

National Public Radio even notice the faithful see both crisis and opportunity as churches close

across the country. Welcome back to Issues, et cetera. I'm Todd Wilkin. It's time to talk about

increased church closings. Dr. Mark Wood joins us. He's director of witness and outreach ministry

and the revitalization initiative for the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate. He's author of the books

connected to Christ, witnessing in everyday life, and meaningful outreach and essential guide for churches.

Dr. Wood, welcome back. That's great to be back with you. Why are so many churches closing?

Well, there's a lot of factors on why churches are closing and there's no question that they're

closing at a faster rate than they have in the past. And I think the the chief reason and it's

often overlooked reason is that over the past few decades we've seen a tremendous shift in our

population from one part of the country to other parts of the country. So we primarily see people

moving from the Midwest and the East Coast to warmer climates, mostly out West, California,

Arizona where I live, Texas, Florida, along the Gulf Coast and the Southeast. So this huge

population shift has taken place. So we now in a situation where we have churches where people aren't

and we have people where churches aren't. And so this disconnect has resulted in churches that

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