I’m reading some books on the de-churching of America, i.e. the drop in church attendance over the last 50 years.
Research being what it is, I know that anything can be proven, but I have my own research tool: the IM readership.
Without going into great detail, what have you seen in your own extended family? Do more or less people participate in church now than in the past? What is your personal take on the de-churching of America?
From where you live, can you see the emergence of a post-evangelical (Or Catholic or Mainline) or post-Christian culture?
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My response to the posted question: Do more or less people involve themselves within their the church. Why or why Not? Hummmm….not quite enough strength this eve to write much of my own, by I did find a significant small statement written from “Donald Daytons Article” on Jesus Creed making mention of this….”Quote: “Stockholm Syndrome”…..”Insights of liberation theology that the oppressed tend to adopt the values of their oppressors as a way of gaining crediability in their eyes–rather than seeking–What is it truly the reason “Why” are we becoming reformed/transformed”….is it to appease the….Or God?
Than a small ownership of discerning ability came to mind…..flipping through the pages of my Bible written as “Jesus spoke” to the crowds–His disciples….”Matthew 23:28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness”.
Now , expressing that small version than; I pondered back to the picture up top, of a woman holding her hand out, claiming a posture of distance-back off approach. How sad. This is when I, myself crab ahold of a fine tuned book for encouragements -“Theology, And the Art of Remembering Rightly in a violent World”.
Although ….On a much more postivie note!!!! Thrilled to read up top commenting that attendence has increased in Canada 7.5% Church related! Praise God for that! As for all of the churches–it is my solemn Prayer that once again maybe “The Angel” of the churches will speak again to the so called churches of Ephesus….Thyatira…Laodicea…and so forth–Our Churches today…..Rahab
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Humanly speaking, I might be dead without the reality of the church in my life. I need my brothers and sisters in Christ, in order to grow as a Christian and to faithfully (very imperfectly) live out life in this fallen world.
As with many Christians, I have been deeply hurt by churches in the past. However, the church, locally and world-wide, is the Bride whom Christ loves (I speak as a Reformed Protestant), and I am called to love it too. It’s not just a matter of feeling; it’s also a matter of commitment. Moreover, there are simply no examples in the Bible of Christians being “lone rangers,” living as Christians without being part of a local church.
With the above said, of the family members with whom I am in touch on anything resembling a semi-regular basis, four adults (I think), including me, still go to church. I was raised in a very nominal Christian family. I think that this may have had much to do with our irregular church-going when I was a child, and the non-existence of the church in the lives of most of my family members today.
I believe that I was only actually saved six years ago, at the age of 29, largely through *directly participating* in the ministry of Evangelism Explosion. Saved through evangelism training– who would have thought? (Not that I think that’s the way to go!) I had very little stability in my Christian life (and *no* solid understanding of the importance of the church for Christians– I’m convinced there is a relation there) until I came to a healthy, warm Reformed Baptist church that taught its members about what the Bible has to say on the crucial role of the local church in the Christian’s life.
I have never been the same since that time– and all for the better. If only more of my family members would come to see their need for Christ *and* also find a church with such careful, thoughtful teaching on the *role* of the local church for Christians!
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We stopped attending Sunday morning meetings with CEO leadership, guy up on a stage, and audience-style non-participative format.
Our fellowship is now gathering with local friends for a meal, a chat, some prayer.. nothing churchy. No fixed place, time, or agenda. But that might change.
The Internet, as well, is providing welcome access to resources, ideas, spiritual creativity, encouragement and many new “virtual friends” around the globe – a participative “virtual ecclesia.” This, to me, is the most exciting new development in global faith – a truly horizontally connected global ecclesia – without walls, denominational barriers, or hierarchical layers.
I think, within a few generations, the definition of “church” will be radically different from today’s understanding. In a good way – in a fulfilled way – in a gathering way – in an organic, comprehensive, universally compassionate and non-exclusionary way. In the Jesus way.
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I moved half way across the globe just over a year ago. I’ve gone from attending one form of church or another every week since I was born to having been in only one Christian meeting in 12 months. I’ve been put off by a history of pastors (i.e. dudes that just happened to have started a church) banging on about stuff that I think is poorly thought out, reactionary, politically motivated, egotistical and ignorant. I’m sick of being perceived as having “unorthodox†interpretation of the faith. I’m bored of worship (in the singing and clapping sense, I can’t stand the style of easy listening soft-rock worship music). I’m bored of altar calls. I’m bored of the drive for church growth at all costs. I’m sick of the insatiable desire to be ‘cool’ and ‘relevant’. What I want from Christian community is patience, kindness, humility and love. It seems get more of this from my non-Christian friends than I ever did in Church.
Most of all though, I have not had, from the “churched”, a real indication that the god they make so many claims about even exists. Put simply, I’m scared of going to a church. I’m scared that I won’t find God there.
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I stopped going to church because the last church I attended (at my son’s request) became unbearable to sit through. I stopped going to the small group first – having been a part of that group for over a year and still had not made an actual friend and not seeming to have any spiritual significance to me. And yes, it could be all my fault.
My children – daughter started going back to church in her mid 20’s and is continuing with her newest boyfriend at a new church. My two sons do not go to church.
My sister and 2 of my three brothers go to church regularly. Their wives do not go. My third brother seems to hate “religion”.
From what I can tell, one or two of my co-workers actually goes to church, the rest don’t.
I miss the great experiences I’ve had at the churches I have attended. It never occurred to me that that was a season and not going to be a permanent condition. But it was a lovely long season. And now I cannot think of a single church that I would be able to attend and commit to in some way. I hope this ‘season’ ends as well – maybe this is a refining time for the body of Christ and the Lord is cleaning up all this mess we have created in all of our denominations.
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On my father’s side of my extended family, every single person is a regular church attender. Not only do they attend, but they are heavily involved: they teach Sunday School, are volunteer youth workers, musicians, and ministers. My grandfather and 3 of his brothers were ministers. How did this happen? Have no clue. Their mother was raised primitive Baptist in the years following the Civil War, but became a Methodist as a teenager. She married a Methodist and raised 12 children in the Methodist faith. Most of her grandchildren and greats have been active in the Methodist church. A few are members of other denominations now, but remain active.
My mom’s family has Methodist roots, but many became members of the church of Christ and some still are.My mom was raised COC and was a member until she reached her 40s. Many in her family have joined up with other denominations. We are from the mid-South (Northern Alabama, the heart of the Bible belt, I suppose, though some of us live in other places in the south and are as far-flung as Alaska and Washington, D.C. As to why we (my extended family) are so faithful, perhaps it’s because many of my ancesters were diligent about living out publicly their Christian faith and about discipling those of us who came after them. I know we have been wonderfully blessed.
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Extended Family Church History
Paternal side: Grandfather – Methodist Circuit Rider (rode a horse from place to place to preach)at age of 16 (in Georgia)/very knowledgeable in Bible prophecy/grand-mom remained home/cared for and churched 7 children/both grandparents stopped attending in later years
My father was a Baptist evangelist/led many to Christ through active witnesses/his siblings and families, except youngest brother, attended until their deaths or still attend/ mother attended until terminal illness prevented – she remained faithful to her Lord/ loved the television ministers
Two sisters/myself: Oldest sister, husband, children, and grandchildren all regularly attend baptist church of our parents and our childhood/ all are college graduates(including the children’s husbands and wives)/ all serve within the church in some form (several of grandchildren identified as intellectually gifted)/three of the adults participate in county jail ministries
Younger sister: She, husband, two daughters-their husbands and children attend same church as older sister/sister very committed to serious Bible study, teaching, witnessing to people she encounters, and jail ministry; oldest daughter became disillusioned when her church youth-worker dad committed adultery and left the family for the other woman after 15 years of marriage to their mother/she has not attended church in her adulthood-nor does her husband or two children
MYSELF: Attended Baptist church of childhood until married a Methodist and moved to husband’s nearby Methodist church/ very active in teaching Bible prophecy/husband was lay-leader- taught classes/two children received Christ there/ we moved to neighboring Methodist church with large youth ministry/ third child born-died while there/older members resented our input (husband lay leader….both on church committees) since we were new members/later relocated to my hometown due to mom’s terminal illness and to put two children in better school/mom died weeks afterwards/I had begun teacher college at night-husband and two teens cared for our 8-month-old/chose Baptist church uptown -soon became aware of discord in that church- grieved heavily over loss of mom–all too much- took sabbatical from church to recover…husband and I never again went full-time/teens both kept attending/daughter still attends there with her family-husband is youngest deacon for that church/she teaches kindergarten and church classes…he is bank executive and teaches church classes/our son married a church goer/now divorced-shares custody of daughter/ stopped going to church during the marriage / healing is coming- emotionally healthier than he’s been in years/youngest daughter attended same church as older siblings/ received Christ at a young age but did not join church and was not baptized/she’s in her 6th year on scholarship at University of Alabama-student assistant with Women’s basketball team/has done house church in her home/has been baptized and affiliated with a non-denomination church there/attends and participates with Baptist Student Union/at age 23..we seldom see her…communicate often by text/ diabetic with an insulin pump since age 10/intellectually gifted and a leader
Maternal side of my family is made up of relatives who all attend Baptish church. My husbands father attended Methodist church until his death/ mother stopped going years before/sibblings and families all attend regularly
I know we are in serious and changing times. God is growing a body of faithful followers who will see the ‘harvest’ is in serious jeopardy. Christianity is not just about ‘assembling yourselves’. It is about taking the strength gained from the ‘assembling’ and moving out to serve and effect the world.
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My grandparents on mom’s side were in the Church of the Brethren and they raised all five of their children in it. Out of those five one uncle did not come to Christ until a couple of weeks before his death, another uncle has always been fairly strong in the faith, my mom and aunt are regular church attenders, and another uncle is not a regular church attender. One of my cousins is now an Assemblies of God minister but the last I heard none of his three kids have much to do with church. I don’t see many of my other cousins often but from what I gather two of them never go to church (and may not believe at all) while another three do attend fairly regularly. I wound up in the United Methodist Church and attend services regularly along with my wife and son.
My father’s side of the family has never been religious and that includes him. There was some incident before I was born where some pastor said something which offended him and he has rarely been back to church since. When I do try to invite him he either turns me down or else shows up and openly displays and attitude of “is it time to go yet?” throughout the whole service.
Both sides of my wife’s family are Baptists. Her mother regularly attended church until she died. One of her aunts still attends church while the other one watches Jerry Falwell’s son on TV and counts that as church attendance. Her cousins rarely show up for church other than Christmas and Easter.
If I see any sort of culture emerging in my area it would definitely be post-Christian. Looking around at other people my age (mid 30’s) and younger I just don’t see that many of them choosing to go to church. The general mindset seems to be that as long as you are basically “good” then you get to go to heaven. If you believe anything more theologically precise than that then you are seen as being judgmental, narrow, hateful, etc.
The churches in my area are a very mixed bag. We have some mainline protestant churches which are barely holding on and others within the same denomination which are growing; this growth is tremendously high in some cases. There are very conservative Baptist churches which scream (sometimes literally) about missions and bringing in the lost but yet have remained the same size or shrunk over the years. Churches that preach the gospel plus some form of works based salvation are common throughout all of the local evangelical denominations and some of these grow while others shrink or are stagnant. As much as I hate to admit the fun factor seems to be key to growing a congregation around here. All of the largest churches in my area have at least one service with contemporary music and casual dress and the growing churches also feature this sort of thing.
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Both my wife and I come from a “churched” background, but also one where the Christian life was part of our home life – not just a Sunday morning exercise. My in-laws were very active in their church until they died, my parents and my wife and I attend the same church, and my sister and her family are active in their church. My oldest and youngest sons have detached themselves from the church and my middle son has not been attending due to work schedule conflicts, but has been attending another local youth group with some friends and occasionally attends church when his work schedule allows.
What has been sad to read in many of the posts is the sense that the church has almost chased people away and that people feel that they are better off without the community of the Body of Christ. The church is not about the building, the “institution”, or the pastor. It is first and foremost about Christ and His community. While I have many issues with most of the denominations, including my own, I would still seek out the community of believers because I believe we are called to live in community.
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Most of my family (parents, aunts, uncles) go to church.
I stopped going to church for about five years after graduating from a Christian college. I felt acutely alone as a single woman, and the pain was worst at church, plus it’s hard for me to get involved in social situations (like church), so I just stayed home. I always felt convicted about it, though, and two years ago I started going to a good church that had Saturday night services. This church has been amazing for me and helped me not feel so apprehensive about church in general.
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My sister and I were raised in the church (Baptist). My father two to three times a year was invited to give a guest sermon even though he is a professor not a minister. My sister and I drifted away when we moved away from home.
Fast forward 18 years – my sister is very involved member of a very charismatic church. My wife and I are very involved in a nondenom church that is dying both spiritually and financially. My mother attends a churchs whose raison d’etre is racial healing (it is a church plant statred by two churches – one all black, one all white). My mother started going there when I got married (I’m black, my wife is white) – her imagined penance for being less than thrilled in my spouse selection. My father stays home to watch NFL Sunday Ticket – the politics (both party and personal) and lack of substance drove him away.
My extended family are almost all church goers — all are still Baptist. Interestingly enough, the only non-baptists in my extended family are B’hai. My in laws are PCAers and still go, although my wife’s uncles have drifted away and one of them is married to a quasi-athiest / Unitarian.
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IMonk
I think SBC is growing, the First Baptist (?American Baptist)is not. A of G definitely is.
Converts to the CC here and to many of our churches are often coming without any traditional Christian faith.
As for our children, I agree there is only so much that a parent can do, but it must be sincere and truthful – including the doubts. If we believe faith is a gift, we must trust in the power of Grace and train our children to be open to Truth. The Church in fifty years will be whatever God wills it to be.
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We stopped going to church regularly about 14 years ago. No big disagreement, just issues of integrity, personal responsibility, and the search for authenticity vs. life in the bubble of what seemed to us to be a corporate organisation in which you somehow had to suspend most of your faculties in order to get along.
Just had a wonderful weekend retreat with over thirty friends (including a handful of non-Christians) where we baptised our oldest daughter (she’s 11). Would like to see more organic / community based fellowship emerge (aah – I used the “e” word!!) and I think this is at the heart of what God is doing at the moment.
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I am the first Christian on my side of the family, and probably the last. My two sons, age 15 and 13, were baptized as infants and raised in the Orthodox Church. Both attended sunday school. Like a commenter above, I taught them to be independent thinkers. My oldest stopped going to church when he was 12, because he stopped believing in any of its teachings. I hoped my youngest would stick around, as he was very dedicated until the age of 11 or so. He was also an altar boy for about 3 years. But now, he is about to leave church, for the same reason as his brother. At least, he still comes to me with questions about my own faith, and I give him explanations as much as I can. Though I am not without my own doubts lately.
My guess is, there are many factors contributing to the de-churching of our society. For one, this stuff really is hard to believe and embrace, especially if you have not read much on the subject. And believe me as a mother, I tried, but there is only a very small amount of religious literature you can shove down your kids’ throat. First they are too young to understand it, then when they are finally old enough, they are not interested.
Peer pressure, IMO a close second. It’s hard to go to church when no one else in your class does. It is hard for a child to get out of bed at 8AM Sunday morning, knowing full well that every one of his classmates is sleeping in today. Furthermore it is hard to go to church when everyone else thinks it’s a silly superstition. We are talking several generations here. Almost everyone my age that I know personally is atheist or agnostic. Same with my children’s peers.
Lastly, as we are all aware. Huge turn-offs exist inside the church itself. Nine times out of ten, when I got to know some of my fellow parisioners closer, I wished I hadn’t. This especially applies to the most vocal and active members in church, parish council members etc. There are not enough intelligent, freethinking people in church, and those that are, are not vocal enough to be ever noticed by others. And this is just our parish, which I consider one of the better ones. When you look at Christian society in America in general, esp the religious right, it is straight out depressing. What we see all too often is out-of-control hate and ignorance, denial of scientific facts, intolerance for the very same people they are called to serve, etc. This may not be true of the entire religious right movement, but this is what we see and hear from its most vocal members. No teenager in their right mind would support that.
The only suggestion I can think of is more outreach work. I’m glad to say my church has made huge steps in that direction lately. This IMO will appeal to young people infinitely more than cheesy “rock”?! music and laser-tag outings. That, and promote engaging our intellect more. Orthodox church for one, has an immense store of philosophical works at all levels, that we can learn from. So many teens try to keep going on fumes of what they learned in elementary years of Sunday school, and fail.
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Of my parents’ generation, only one uncle in my family is alive and is a devout RC. My in-laws have always been socio-cultural Christians (moralistic therapeutic deists) and have not attended services since their childhood, but all on my side were regularly attending RC or EO.
Of my generation, 4 of us are regular attenders (2 RC, 1 SBC, and me- raised RC, recently post Evangelical and now heading toward EO) and 2 non-denom Protestants, former regulars but not attending now because of health reasons, out of 9 total who are still alive.
Of my children’s generation, 20 total, fewer than 5 attend church at all, other than special occasions, and I have no idea how often. All those who do attend are RC.
In general, I think church attendance in this country is like water- all aswirl with motion, flowing in different directions that don’t look like what the various traditions used to look like, because of the social upheaval of the last 40 years. I think of those who attend, many are looking for something different than they grew up with, for various reasons, not always hedonistic. I think Barna’s research needs to be taken seriously as a springboard, and more “Why?” questions need to be asked before we can really say much of anything about it.
Dana
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Patrick,
It is hard for me to grasp where you stand. I have seen you articulate more than once the thought that Jesus and Christianity is but the creation of our individual perspectives and experiences. It is difficult for me to discern what you mean by this. You clearly think something more than this is going on, but what that more is I’m unclear about.
In the Bible, Jesus is forever blowing up the boxes that people have put him and the Father in. Our boxes are always too small. Christian growth means having our boxes blown up, growing into new ones, only to have them blown up once more ad. infinitum.
This doesn’t mean the God we were given by our family, churches, and culture was wrong altogether. It simply means we are no longer children and must “leave home†if we are to stay on the road with Christ. We don’t need to denounce those who seem not to be “growing†along with us or judge their Jesus to be a pure fiction. But to try and stay within the confines of the houses we grew up in after we have known something beyond them will turn us into false people. And so conflicts do arise. I’m just not sure they mean we must judge those we have left as wrong. I am called to judge only myself and no one else.
I really don’t know if what I’m talking about and what you are talking about are the same thing. Maybe you’ll comment and help me to know.
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I would also like to say I think the problem at that church was primarily with the youth group – and some with the leadership that put a psychopath in charge of the youth. It was a problem in THAT church. Not the CoG at large.
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“Actually the demographics indicate it will become a faith comprised of mostly Hispanics. At least in the USA.”
The young Hispanic kids growing up here leave the church in roughly the same rate as their white peers, unfortunately. In South America as well, groups like the Pentecostals are gaining huge ground on the Catholic Churches in many nations – SA Catholics are undergoing a culture erosion too, just not the same as we are here. Religiosity takes a big hit intergenerationally in general, and whereas high barriers to entry into mainstream Anerican culture kept the church strong as ethnic groups rallied there and built social ties, the same dissipating social realities that affect (or should I say disaffect) young whites also affect young Hispanics.
The Spanish-speaking Catholic church in America, I figure, is about half a generation behind the curve on the downward trend. That’s my half-educated opinion, based on growing up in that church and reading about it.
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Michael Bell: Just a sarcastic aside on the facts, such as I see them:
Lots of people equate Living the Faith with having the right Scripture quote available for any situation. Their pastor’s eyes glaze over when he talks about sin and right and wrong and reading the Bible and Jesus – his voice gets loudens and he seems moved by his own escalations. The little kids go to Bible Camp to learn what the right Scriptures to say are, and put their crayons to coloring books filled with cartoons of Moses and the Holy Spirit (??!).
This is Christianity.
This is a totally unrealistic place. This is a minimum-security zoo for very strange people. Teens notice eventually. They look around, having heard all their lives about this Jesus guy, and see this bizarre place his Spirit is supposed to be in, and suddenly they can no longer identify why it is that they would want to believe in Jesus – believing in Jesus, they come to realize, has always been just another word for “believing that this zoo is here for a reason”. Now, they stiffen and conclude that this crazy church exists because these people want to quote these kind and deadly aphorisms to one another and have their kids play in certain coloring books, and that’s all there is to it, and even the pastor is lost in it, and to each his own – Jesus is, clearly, whatever people want him to be. And if that’s not unrealistic, those kids wouldn’t know what is.
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Aliasmoi and Michael,
I probably shouldn’t have asked my previous question. I don’t think that any one church has a monopoly on hurting others. I have seen people hurt by church in a wide variety of denominations and singling one out for attention was probably not a good idea.
Michael would you be willing to do some editing in this regard?
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I have three daughters, 29, 26, and 23. All were raised in church. My wife and I taught them to be independent thinkers. Though God was a fact in our family, we gave the girls room to ask questions. All see themselves as believers, and none now go to church. They detest what they perceive as falseness. They dislike most of the music in evangelical churches. They are all more drawn toward something one might call a “high church”, God centered, approach to God. But they also dislike the lack of faith in many of the churches that are high church. So for now, they are not in church. All three desire something more, but are making no effort to go out and find it.
I have many older friends who are dropping out of church. I am in a town that is the headquarters for the Assembly of God. The other half of the people here are mostly Baptist. Neither have a strong historical sense of Christianity, though the Assemblies are growing in that regard. Consequently, they are susceptible to Frank Viola style summations of Christian history along with its simplistic denouncements of the church as being out of touch and unessential. They see church as no more than a human institution, and therefore have no problem rejecting it in full. If I attempt to present the idea of a church that was and is created by Christ, as that which Christ died for, they look at me like I’m someone from outer space. The concept of a universal church with physical manifestations we can touch and participate in does not compute. That churches are and always have been impure and less than heavenly is not believed.
These people are all life-long church goers who, until recently, could never have imagined a life outside of church. They are mostly in their fifties. Since they believe church is no more than what they have experienced, and that any historical manifestation of the church (Catholic and even Reformation) is even worse than what they have known, they have divorced themselves from the life they have known in way I find strangely cold and hard to understand. They imagine a pure, early church that met in homes with no organization, hierarchy, or doctrine. They are mostly self satisfied, lone ranger Christians. If they attempt anything at all as a community of believers, they get together in homes, sing worship songs, eat a meal, and share a little about their life with one another. They are oddly disinterested in scripture other than how it may affect them individually. They will use it to make a point they wish to make, but are strangely unmoved if an opposing scripture is presented that would contradict their opinion. They have, to my mind, become totally free floating and disconnected from the “faith of the fathers.”
The town we are in is part of the Bible belt. But I think the evangelical faith I see here is barely connected to the historic Christian faith if it ever was. Perhaps this is simply a manifestation of the secularization of American culture, and this is what it looks like in the center of the heartland.
MDS
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This is the Church of God denomination that has it’s head quarters in Cleveland, TN and runs Lee University.
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For what it’s worth, I do personally know a number of people who came into the Catholic Church with no religious background whatsoever. Anecdotal evidence is worthless evidence, though, so take that with a grain of salt.
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Aliasmoi,
Readers my not realize that there are a number of different denomination that call themselves “Church of God” including a Pentecostal denomination, a Holiness denomination and a Christian Brethren offshoot. Wouldn’t want people to be thinking about one when you are meaning another.
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My family was never the sort of family that went to church regularly anyway. As far as they’re concerned church is for hatchings, matchings, and dispatchings. I can remember my mom flirting with the J.W.’s when I was little, but until I was 12 the only consistent religious education I got was because I went to Catholic school – lived in city where public schools were unsafe. Then, when I was 12 mom got involved with a Church of God. She went to that pretty regularly until we left New Jersey, and she dragged me along – kicking and screaming. Someday I’ll write about the serious spiritual damage this church did to me. Then, after we moved to VA, the only member of my family who has gone to church consistently is me (and my son when he was under 18).
My son’s girlfriend is not religious, and I think that is the main reason he doesn’t go to church anymore. Plus, he idolizes my youngest brother who holds going to church in contempt.
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Mr. iMonk, I am willing to concede that most of the people that will be replacing the ones that drop out are going to be reverts or Protestants.
I think that the average non-christian in America has a greater chance to become an Evangelical than a Catholic. Again most of what will happen in the next 20 years will depend on Bishops but most importantly in the will of God.
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We’re protestant.
My mom’s folks weren’t saved until their 30s or 40s but went to church until they died.
My parents went until we moved out from under the watchful eye of my grandparents. They started again when they moved back. My mom and her husband (60s) are heavily involved now, which I think is amazing considering how her previous church treated her during a family crisis AND her husband is Catholic.
My sister (36) went through a rough phase (living on the streets with her ex-drug running boyfriend), but after a divorce (to another guy) went to Bible college. The previous post you made about being involved in a church that doesn’t quite fit spoke to her deeply.
My brother (32) hasn’t gone since he was a kid.
My mom’s sis and husband (60s) are hit-and-miss Quakers. Their daughter (early 30s), who as a child insisted on being baptized, now considers herself pagan.
I don’t see my dad’s family a lot, but they’ve always been the poorest ultra-conservative, black-helicopter-watching, Jesus is comin’ in 1988-believing Christians you’ve never met.
My husband’s parents (60s) have gone to the same church for forty years because it would look bad if they quit and found one they actually liked.
My husband (42) stopped going as a teenager, then started again in his mid-twenties because he couldn’t meet a nice girl at a bar. He met me (38) (I’m so socially inept I can’t figure out how to make friends without a church), and we’ve been steady attenders throughout our marriage. Our son (7) goes because we make him, and he gets to play in the gym.
We’re military, as are many of our friends. Standard operating procedure for most of us is move, find a house, find a church, plug in quickly because we know how this church-thing works and we’re not going to be around long enough to take our time. Absolutely, the key is to find a church that is open to those who will only be there three-four years–both personally (will they befriend short-timers?) and administratively (Eg.: if deacons elections are in the Fall, but you have to be a member for a year before being nominated, but membership classes don’t end until Winter, but you have to commit to a two-year term…basically, you’re not going to have military as deacons).
But we’re also fortunate because we’re not tied to a denomination, and we can look around for the theology, worship style, and people that will be such a big part of our lives. We actually like this church-thing.
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Patrick Lynch
Could you elaborate on what you mean by:
“Unrealistic Jesus: a side effect of Christianity.”
Not sure that I completely understand what you mean by that.
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Chris E:
“Actually the demographics indicate it will become a faith comprised of mostly Hispanics. At least in the USA.”
Yes – and right now those Hispanics are probably going to a different set of Catholic churches to the majority of the Catholic commentators on here.
The flourishing Parish I mentioned above is almost totally white upper middle class. But again, that church is the exception that proves the rule as what is making the difference is a charismatic priest who’s doing things in a different, fresh way.
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My extended family—
On my mom’s side, my aunts, uncle, and my aunt’s ex-husband attend church. Twenty years ago, they didn’t. So that’s good.
On my dad’s side, two aunts and an uncle attend sporadically. The rest try not to think about God very much.
My siblings all attend. Three of my cousins attend. The rest don’t. In my immediate family, we were all discipled by Mom, not our youth pastors. In my cousins’ families, they weren’t discipled at all. The three that attend: Two are kids and have to go. The other came to Jesus after he had moved out of the house.
Church attendance drops, I believe, mainly ’cause kids aren’t discipled. It’s all handed off to the overwhelmed, underpaid, and sometimes underqualified youth leaders at the church. And it’s not their job. The command to train up your children is to parents. If you never instill Christianity in them, is it any wonder they don’t stick with it?
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Well, just about everyone in my extended family (I’m only talking first cousins, here – I don’t know about the rest) was raised in church. We all fell away for a couple of years to varying degrees (and it was in college – PARTY!) but came back. We’re all very faithful now. I’m not so sure about my husband’s family, but I know that all of his six siblings are faithful. Even through college.
Honestly, I think the fall away from church is because parents don’t pray for their kids like they should. I know that I would not be where I am today (nor would my husband) if we didn’t have mommas that prayed for us.
Also, my dad is now faithful (my parents are divorced). His mom has been praying for him for 15 years. He was on all kinds of drugs and had almost lost his mind, but has been delivered.
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With so much emphasis on the attrition rate among youth, I think it’s easy to overlook the exodus of older church members. My parents, members of the “Greatest Generation” are an example. They have been active church members there entire lives, and I owe my faith to them. But when their church moved to a boomer-centric worship style and heavy emphasis upon politics, they felt pushed out. They no longer attend church. It makes me extremely angry with the current state of evangelicalism.
I think the problem concerns churches attempting to reach demographics rather than people; numbers rather than individuals. It is dehumanizing. It is strange that the same people who champion the sanctity of human life inside the womb treat people like so many cattle outside the womb. A church which treats people like objects will treat God like one also, which turns him into a lifeless idol (loose paraphrase of Martin Buber). There are many factors associated with faltering church attendance, but evangelicals are by far their own worst problem.
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“Without going into great detail, what have you seen in your own extended family?”
Skimming the surface would take a book or two so I’ll skip this part except to say it ranges from church founder to overseas missionary to off the deep end to con artists. 🙂 and 😦
“Do more or less people participate in church now than in the past?”
In percentage terms, I certainly feel that it’s less than in my 60s childhood. Or at least the non attenders are more out in the open.
“What is your personal take on the de-churching of America?”
In a series of items that interact.
– It’s now OK to not go to church. In the past this was a problem in most areas of the country not NYC and LA. The peer pressure just isn’t there anymore.
– Churches are turning in to social clubs with a message. Sometimes the Gospel but still social clubs. It’s easier to change social clubs than to change a faith club.
– AIG and similar items. Adherents to this train of thought basically “run out of town” folks, especially late teen and college kids, who want to go into science. This leads to a general perception that church is for folks without a brain. (If you want to yell at me over this there’s a long series of comments in an iMonk blog from last week about just this.)
– Less need for church as a social gathering place. SBC churches Wednesday nights existed for a variety of reasons. Not the least of these to allow friends to get together on a regular “unplanned” basis. The 60s and onward spawned technology that made these social gatherings easier in other ways. More cars per family, cell phones, TV (especially cable), and now the Internet.
– Affluence. Less people feel a need for the church. In hard times people SEE the need for the Gospel more than in easy times.
– ME!!!!!!!!! It’s all about me. What’s this nonsense that to have a full life I need to sacrifice, serve others, submit (you’ve got to be kidding), etc… And what’s all this “sin” nonsense? (tongue firmly planted in cheek but sadly so)
– Evasive leadership. Church leadership where they don’t want to offend people as it might scare them off. In practice this almost ensures that when the evasions come out, folks will run out the door due to feeling duped. (See some of the above plus the previous iMonk postings dealing with “extras” you must believe to be a Christian.)
– Corporate Church. Many churches as they grow tend to become more “form over function”. I.E. the business of church becomes dominant over the function of church. Bricks over Gospel. Not deliberately but that’s just the was people are wired. A large (anything over 1000 in Sunday attendance and maybe even less) church has to have some structure to operate and make sure the water and lights stay on. The problem is many times this overtakes the Gospel. And after a while you have people attending who are there NOT to hear the Gospel but just to “do” church. And while there take in the Starbucks kiosk. And they will come and go.
– Politics. Most times I’ve seen a pastor / priest get into liberal or conservative “you must think this way to be a Christian” membership has gone down. While individual churches may gain I’m convinced based on personal interactions with dropouts that this drives folks away in general. I’m not talking making moral choices, I’m talking speaking politics from the pulpit.
– Hypocrisy. Others have mentioned it but here’s two big ones I’ve seen from about 10 years ago. SBC wanted to boycott Disney since they gave benefits to Gay partners. Lots of churches jumped on this bandwagon. But, from what I could see, they totally ignored that in many cases well over 1/2 their membership worked for companies that did the same. IBM, Cisco, any airline, etc… Then the next year the SBC wanted to boycott Disney since they had Gay days and marketed to Gay groups. Again so do IBM, Cisco, airlines, etc… Are the pastors that obtuse to just afraid to speak the truth?
And I could go on. But in general I see 2 things. Much of the general drop is in folks with the label Christian but who really didn’t believe. And much is in how we drive out kids and young adults away.
As to growing churches locally one of the fastest growing churches is a part of the Anglican Communion in America. None of the above that I can see and a total repudiation of the traditional Episcopal Church in the US and Canada. Which matches some of the above comments about the more scripturally based a church the better it survives.
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Yes – and right now those Hispanics are probably going to a different set of Catholic churches to the majority of the Catholic commentators on here.
This is, of course, part of Rodney Stark’s point. There were always some social groupings who were churched in the past – equally there were some who weren’t at all (often newer immigrants or the poor who felt that ‘church is not for the likes of us’). How many chinese-americans do you think attended church during the 50s?
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Patrick Lynch
“For these reasons, I’m pretty sure Catholicism is going to decline precipitously in the US in the next 20 years.”
Actually the demographics indicate it will become a faith comprised of mostly Hispanics. At least in the USA.
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Giovanni: You see evangelistic growth in the American RCC? Actual conversions of non-Christians into the RCC?
Where?
I’m not talking icking up reverts, Hispanics of Protestants swimming the Tiber. I mean actual conversions replacing the millions of drop outs.
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My parents stopped going when my father had worsening symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis – mainly he had to go to the restroom frequently and was told that he was being a distraction by several members of the congregation. This was about 15 years ago.
My immediate family (me, wife, 2 kids) stopped going for a few reasons (we consider ourselves non-denominational Christian):
Our daughter was diagnosed with autism and there are no acceptable forms of childcare for special needs children available to us. A babysitter is not in our budget every week. Some members have treated us like ministry projects once learning of this fact instead of getting to know us, which leads me the next reason.
Members, overall, are not genuine anymore… the creepy cheesy grin that seems to be everywhere; when you are greeted with at the door, when you’re asked to stand up and greet your neighbor, in the lobby when you are between services, and at small groups when you find yourself to be the only person sharing true feelings/hardships. Nobody is going to feel welcome in a group of people who seem to be pained by mustering up the ability to look you in the eye and shake your hand because it is what the pastor asked them to do.
Lack of discipleship… there are a few church leaders out there that can really dig deep and teach. Most sermons are available on the internet in pre-arranged powerpoint presentations and that comes across in the delivery. Once someone gets “saved” and says the sinner’s prayer, there are a few pats on the back for the affected person and attention shifts to the “unreached.” These hearts are ready for molding, and people who are spiritually mature need to disciple these people… otherwise they are being set up for failure without any knowledge or education about where to go from there.
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Eclectic Christian, you said “leavers are being replaced almost as fast as they leave”.
This is definitely true in certain demographics, except that these “new converts” are overwhelmingly drawn from the husks of mainline denominations, whose membership have fallen apart completely.
However, many Evangelical denominations are still posting slow growth. Evangelical churches tend to do a pretty poor job of convincing their kids that Jesus is real.
Unrealistic Jesus: a side effect of Christianity.
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Yeah the Catholic Church is great at loosing members but it also great at gaining them. In the United States at least I can see steady growth of Catholicism now to which extent it will grow will depend on the Bishops. If they decide to actualy teach what they are suppose to (something they havent done in the last 20 years) then the growth may be even bigger than most expect.
As far as other Christians I would say that the SBC will continue to grow, unfortunatly so will the mormons, Evangelicalism is the odd duck. They seem to grow in certain places but very much centered in one spot rather than a sweeping movement. That might be due to their independent nature or their buffet style theology.
As far as the denominations in decline, I would say mainline Protestants are hitting that 500 year wall right at this point. Prebetyrians, Lutherans, and specialy Episcopelians (though realy at this point they resemble a pseudo-paganims more than Christianity)
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Slightly more of my extended family go to church now than before. Neither of my parents’ families were churchgoers, and neither was I growing up. I converted at 30 and my then future wife at 38. We go. One of her sisters’ families has started going just a few years ago. Her family went when they were young, but now don’t. An aunt of mine is now a flaming Baptist and married within her church.
I have mixed feelings about the de-churching of America. Growing up in the suburbs in the 60’s and 70’s, I knew many churchgoing families. I don’t remember any of them claiming to be Christians, but instead Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, etc. It seemed to be exclusively a cultural phenomena. The dead religion of middle class American moralism. So, in one way, I see it as no big loss. In another, there isn’t even an empty shell of religion acting as salt and light anymore. It’s about a wash.
From where I sit, I don’t see the emergence of anything much different, or the emergence of anything at all.
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My maternal Catholic grandparents are the only ones on my side of the family that still attend church regularly.
Most of the next generation (My parents, aunts, uncles, etc,) used to attend church regularly, but stopped. They basically moved into a type of non-church attending “cafeteria Christianity.” I seem to notice this with a lot with baby boomers in my area.
My generation (20-30) (brother, cousins, friends etc), pretty much grew up without attending any church. Usually, the only time my generation is in a church is when the grandparents come into town, Christmas, weddings and funerals.
Those from my generation that have become church attending are usually on their second or third church/denomination. I think a post evangelical church would appeal to them, but finding one is the problem.
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Hmmm, no one in my immediate family goes to church except me. Also, only one of my local friends does. I have several out of town that do but… I am 36 and my generation doesn’t seem to have much use for church, or any definite concept of God for that matter, and I don’t see those younger than me warming up to it.
Why? Any number of reasons. We preach more on drinking and smoking and what to wear than sin and repentance. We cling to 1950’s rural America and slap the “God Approved” label on it…rendering all other cultures/worship styles/dress codes as suspect. Honestly, some people view black churches and their exuberant worship as being right on the edge of heresy and too emotionally driven. We’ve been hypocrites for 50 years. Railing against perverts and such while allowing adultery to go on. Decrying the evils of gambling while preaching that if you insert enough money into the God-slot machine you’ll hit the jackpot. When a teenage girl does get pregnant out of wedlock, for years we simply drove her off. Only in the last 20 years has the church en masse started to fix that.
How many kids have grown up into apostate adults because they saw all to clearly that their parents faith stopped at the church house door only to be picked up on the way back in next Sunday?
Why should I get up on one of my two days off to come hear self-help pablum, political diatribes, Culture Warrior speeches that put more faith in Washington than in the Almighty God with a bunch of people who, outside of church, never bother to talk to me, let alone go out to dinner or a movie with me? This is what people on the outside see…most times.
On the other end of the spectrum are the churches that wouldn’t call sin sin if Jesus was standing behind the preacher pointing at people. Calling homosexuality sin is proper as long as we are also willing to call what that couple in the youth group does sin too.
Just my 2 cents worth.
As an aside, try finding a single woman in her 30’s without four kids and a divorce in any church now days. Trust me I’ve tried.
DD
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In the North east of Pa. The SBC churches are holding there own and growing in number. There are a few new plants doing OK and some 20 to 30 year old works staying strong. 2 Nazarene churches are new and growing, a couple older Baptist works died, but there are some old works with new blood doing real well. Assembly of God is growing. The Methodists Presbyterian, RCC, are really taking a hit on attendance, but the membership is high as people are born into them, it is a family thing I guess.
Fastest growing is Latter Day, but that might be a whole new thread.
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Interesting question. On both sides of my family strong church going by grandparents. My father’s family is Methodist,but some are Lutherns or ECUSA with a great-great grandfather a minister. But his father did not go to church (too busy working) but my father went to the local Methodist Church till he became to hard to go out at 90.
My mother’s family was Catholic, my grandparents never missing church. My mother was fairly active in the Catholic Church till her death. They have four grown children, two go to Mass most Sundays and are somewhat active, one only goes to church on Easter and Christmas sometimes, and the middle adult child last went to church for a fire department memorial service. Most of my Catholic cousins are either nonchurch going Catholics or Protestants. My Protestant cousins are more likely to be active in either AOG or Methodist churches. But one married a Catholic who goes to RC church with her Catholic Revert Gramdmother-in-Law.
The divide seems to be pre WWII generation active, Baby boomers go to church when they have chidren and the post baby boomers going only only when they marry and have childen as adults. And they do not go back always to the church they were taken to as children. Also more chuch going with my family in Maryland or Virginia than in New York or New England.
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I hope you read “Quitting Church” by Julia Duin, Spence! Great book about why people quit church.
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Joe M: All the Baptists are growing? Even the small, older rural churches?
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My kids want nothing to do with church. And yet somewhere they have been taught that God knows their heart and loves them and He is not mad at them and they can do whatever they want without any consequence (all in one long , run-on sentence like that).
Deconstruction? Post-modernism? The fastest growing churchs in our area have secular songs in each worship service, have provocative messages about sex with a bed on the stage, have worship complete with mirror disco balls and psychadelic lights. We visited one where the last song was a Beach Boys song and beach balls flew out from the back of the auditorium (scaring the Bee-Jesus out of us) and were batted around by the congregation while they whooped and hollered.
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In my rural poor community, the CC is slowly growing, the small bible churches pop up and die down 15 years later, the Mormons are slowly growing, the Presbyterians are gasping, and the Assembly of God and Baptists are definitely growing.
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All of my siblings, in my family of six kids, left the Catholic Church – some of us for many years. All but one has returned – two to celibate religious life. Our offspring are following in our footsteps: skeptical, leaving and some coming back. Time will tell. Most of my cousins still go to church and talk about their faith.
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Hi Internet Monk!
I’m new to your blog and I’m really enjoying it. I heard about this through Steve Brown Etc.
In response to your question, my grandparents raised my mother’s family in a strong church, and all four of them went on to have an active presence in their churches. Now their four children, so far, are regular attenders of church.
Though that is a positive story, my general impression, of course, is that church attendance, and a Biblical worldview, has dropped off dramatically. But I agree with you that absolutely anything can be proven, in fact, I didn’t even write these words, and I can prove it 🙂
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“What have you seen in your own extended family? Do more or less people participate in church now than in the past? What is your personal take on the de-churching of America?”
My husband and I were both raised in semi-rural Ref. Church in America churches. He was saved as a child…I was after we were married. We left the RCA to join a Bible Church plant in a nearby city and then moved on to help plant 2 more Bible churchs…The current one (10 years old) is more unconventional. It’s elder-led, meets in rented school, not program-dominated.
Our 3 adult children and their families are all involved in local churches. One daughter & family have rejoined us after 6 years as missionaries. One worships with her family at the nearby “relevant” seeker-sensitive church plant. Our son and his wife and kids have gone back to the first Bible church we helped plant over 30 years ago.
My husband’s siblings (brother & sister) and their spouses are involved in local RCA churchs, but both have belonged to a number of various evangelical and charismatic churches in the past.
My siblings (3 brothers and a sister) are mostly non-church-goers. One brother is loosely affiliated with the Methodist church. Two of his 3 kids have children now, and both have joined the UCC. One daughter (single mom) hopes to send her son to a Christian school.
We live in an area of the Midwest that is culturally conservative. That is being challenged, though, and that has affected the church. I think that my generation (60+) may attend from force of habit. The next generation is becoming afraid for the future of their own children. That may be one of the reasons they are returning.
I hope they don’t become disillusioned by what they find.
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I was raised as rural Western Methodist from a long line of Methodists on both sides. In my parents’ generation, folks started branching out, including Pentecostal and Divine Science, but all were still active church-goers.
Our generation (Boomers) was where the de-churching started. I’m the only one of 5 siblings that has a personal faith which began in college, passed into and through Evangelicalism in a variety of forms to where I can take or leave “church” membership and attendance, though I’m passionately committed to The Church, as my wife and I are in “full-time” cross-cultural service. Among my cousins, all raised in church, about half are committed evangelicals or pentecostals, and the other half are anywhere from pagan to agnostic to antagonistic toward church and Christianity.
Our adult kids are passionate Jesus followers and committed evangelical church members. Two teens at home still, but it’s too soon to tell.
My wife is from rural Midwestern German Catholic stock, and her parents’ generation were all faithful Catholics. My wife came to an evangelical faith in Christ in college. Her cousins all stayed in the church as long as they remained in their rural community, but those who moved away also fell away for the most part. In her immediate family, herself excepted, the females seemed to remain Catholic, whereas the males at least drift if not turn angrily away.
Like was mentioned by an earlier commentator, with the urbanization of our generation, and even more so, our children’s generation, the general trend has been away from attendance in, identification with, and commitment to traditional church. So with some exceptions, the de-churching process is increasing with each generation. In my own case, I’m growing much more in a Kingdom orientation, with less interest in a denomination, or a specific local fellowship as a member. Post-evangelical describes it pretty well.
IMHO 18th and 19th century revivalism transformed entire communities, including those of my Methodist ancestors. The essence of the Gospel had been lost by the time it reach my generation, and only those of us who had conversion experiences reclaimed it. Most of the rest lost all heart for and connection with the traditions they were raised with. But those of us who became evangelical were not a part of a culture- and community-transforming movement like was experienced by earlier generations. Instead, we created a subculture with our own books, music, movies, youth activities, etc. And we lost touch with the culture as a whole, which has written us off as uncompassionate and irrelevant.
Sad…
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Both my parents are actively involved in the local Nazarene congregation, though they don’t much care for the church itself. They mainly go to help support my sister, who is a student at Point Loma Nazarene University. She herself is very actively pursuing the Christian faith at school. I myself go to Mass at least once a week.
On my father’s side, my grandparents were practicing though indifferent Presbyterians. My dad and both of his brothers went apostate into agnosticism/atheism, though my oldest uncle and father had Evangelical conversion experiences later in life. My uncle who remains non-practicing is married to his second wife, who is an active Christian, his son practices nothing, and his daughter is an observant Reformed Jew. Of my oldest uncle’s children, two are churchless though not necessarily unbelievers, and one is an active Catholic. One of the unchurched cousins is married to a devout Catholic.
On my mother’s side, my grandparents were extremely devout Catholics, my grandfather remaining so till his death and my grandmother is still active. Of their 8 children, two are devout Protestants (including my mother), one is a practicing Catholic (though her kids aren’t), and the rest are indifferently Catholic. Of the 18 or so cousins, one and his wife are college ministers with navigators, and the rest are pretty indifferent to religion.
The observation about Catholic vs. Protestant youth activity seems true from where I sit on the ground. Among Evangelicals, older folk are trying to preserve traditional ritual from the youth, whereas with Catholics it’s the other way around. I do live in a very Catholic, urban area so the Church is exceptionally strong around me. The parish I attend is small and conservative, but is strong. The children raised there are well catechized, and prone to stay in the Church. The RCIA class I’m in has 12 people: 1 non-Christian preparing for Baptism, myself and another Protestant preparing to enter full communion, and 9 Baptized Catholics seeking to receive confirmation and participate more fully in the sacramental life of the Church. From what I can see, the future of the Church is as healthy as it’s ever been, so take heart.
Pax et bonum,
Sam Urfer
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Rachel states that “Between our families we bear out the statistics that of evangelical children raised in the church, 33% will go on to attend as adults.”
Where does that number come from? If it were true, wouldn’t attendance be a mere shell of what it was 20 or 30 years ago? Leavers are being replaced almost as fast as they leave (yes there are exceptions to this rule all over the place), but surely not at the rate that Rachel’s numbers would suggest.
According to the link provided by Chris E. Ten percent of singles attend church but forty-four percent of those who are married. Could it be that we have a leaving, and then subsequent rejoining when maturity (and children) come along?
This would fit with what I have seen in a number of different situations.
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I am seeing the same trends in my own family and in the extended families of many of my congregants. Jesus did predict that the love of many would grow cold. We are living in a post-constantinian culture and the church in general has not learned to adapt to this new fact. The media, secular education (I am a former public school teacher)our consumer culture, even democracy undermine rather then reinforce our faith in God. So far this seems to be killing the church. I do believe that we will adapt and that the church can become even more vital in a post-constantinan world. I guess that makes me an optimist.
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My husband and I were raised in the same evangelical church by parents who are now in their 50’s (all of whom converted to evangelicalism in the late 70’s after being raised in Catholocism).
Between the two families there are six adult children aged 22-28 (two men and four women including my husband and myself). All of us attended evangelical schools elementary through college and are well-taught in terms of doctrine and belief. All have college degrees and work professional jobs.
Two have left the faith, do not attend church at all and if pressed would classify themselves as cynical/questioning/agnostic – one male and one female.
Two attend church regularly and are very involved in the vein of their parents (though their doctrine is post-evangelical and more liberal than what they were raised with) – both females.
Two do not attend church but believe in God and some/most tenets of Christianity. I would probably call them lapsed evangelicals and I give it a 50% chance on whether they will return to the church in the next five years (I think one will return and one won’t) – one male one female.
Between our families we bear out the statistics that of evangelical children raised in the church, 33% will go on to attend as adults. Out of six children who received roughly the same education and training and modeling in Christian faith, only two are now carrying that on in their own lives.
My husband and myself fall into different categories (that changed after we were married – when we married we were in the same category) and it has been a source of deep grief for the one who has remained in the church.
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For the Things That Make You Go “I wish I were a different person” file:
I checked out a Catholic Singles site recently (disclaimer: I’m a total religious social network voyeur, not [just] a nerd), and on this site they give you this questionnaire wherein you reply with Yes or No to “Do you agree with the Church’s teaching?” Then they would list various things like Priestly orders, Communion, etc.
(This, by the way, is totally how Catholicism is more like an ethnicity than a religion.)
Also listed are Contraception, Premarital sex, and Abortion – to which you can say Yes, I agree with the church, or basically No, I’ll put out.
Fully half of the (attractive) girls I checked out answered No (and No means Yes) to contraception and premarital sex.
Part of me (guess which part) is screaming “this is GREAT NEWS!!”, and another part of me is screaming “This is TYPICAL.”
If I were anybody else, I’d be able to say to myself, ‘it doesn’t matter what she believes – it’s what you do that counts’. But I know better.
=(
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I think Clark is onto something when he writes “I think Americans being overbooked has something to do with the drop in church attendance. Surely those of us who attend church feel it too.”
When we surveyed our community a few years ago, the top reasons for not attending church were 1. Not enough time/too busy and 2. Too tired.
I see my family falling into the same trap and so on this past Sunday we took a day off from going to “Church” but instead had family devotionals, and spent the day unwinding as a family. The difference in the kids attitudes today was noticeable.
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The church attendence in my family has dropped. Among my extended family, my parents were some of the odd ones out that attended church. Between me and my brother, I was the preacher’s kid that became and a preacher also, he was the one that basically dropped out. I don’t think he has anything against church. We visited his church a while back. I think my brother represents a lot of Generation Y: there’s just too much other stuff to do. My brother has 3 kids, works too many hours, is often on call when not “at work,” is taking tech. classes, then has friends of his own outside of raising the family, coaching soccer, etc. etc. etc. When we travel back home, we basically make an appointment to visit. I think Americans being overbooked has something to do with the drop in church attendance. Surely those of us who attend church feel it too.
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I have 8 ppl in my immediate family and all of us still attend church somewhere. However, for myself and all 5 of my siblings, loyalty to the institutional church is quite low. My wife and I left the institutional church 2 years ago and I doubt if we’ll ever go back. Which brings me to a relevant thought, perhaps the “churched” number is under-counted if the statistics Barna is using come predominately from main-line and traditional type churches. From my perspective here in the Mid-West, there is a veritable groundswell of house churches that probably are hard to count and often do not end up in the final statistics.
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Wow, I didn’t even read J. Michael Jones’ post before I commented, but right on!
I don’t think that people are becomming post-christian I just think that people are putting their faith in the church rather than in God.
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A little background, I was born and raised in western KY Southern Baptist churches (2). I am an (inactive) deacon at the church I am a member at. I am 36 married (10 yrs) with two kids (boys). My family currently does not attend church services.
I believe the membership in the rural country church is declining, too much trying to live up to the expectations of the “perfect christians”. On the other hand I believe the Mega churches are growing. More people my age are attending the non-denom mega church. I think the reason be, it’s easier. You don’t have to go hear a guilt trip every Sunday, saying I’m not living up to my potential.
From my experience most pastors have become motivational speakers. The ones in the rural churches throw on the guilt to get you down the aisle, but the ones in the Mega non-denom. churches pick you up and get you pumped up to get you down the aisle.
I vote we just leave it in God’s hands, it seems to me He is more than capable.
Just my $.02.
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Good question about post-evangelical Vs post-Christian. I know that in our area, the trend follows the nation, so, about 80% of the churched youth don’t stay in the church. Many, I’m afraid are becoming “post-Christian†because they have no viable options. What they really mean by their exit behavior is wanting to be post-evangelical because they are fed up with the Evangelical subculture. But they become post-Christian because they have no where else to go, but the evangelical church. So they are caught between the rock and a hard place, pun intended.
We need to provide them options . . . new wineskins for a different expression of Christian community. We older people are still wondering in the wilderness trying to figure things out for oursevles. I wish I had taken my kids out of the traditional church when they were young, but introduced them to a much better expression of Christian community.
Our Evangelical church (which I attend out of commitment to my wife), is typical. If you are very, very honest, the only reason high school students go is because of guilt manipulation by the adults and a since of penitence. “I must go to church because if I don’t it will make Mom, Dad and God sad.†I think that is a poor retention factor for teens.
I’ve argued with our pastor and elders because they think the best way to stop the hemorrhaging of our youth is to add more guilt manipulation saying things like, “We need to confront them over their music, movies and tattoos when they are young because once they are taken in by the world, we loose them!â€
What about creating the most honest, loving and accepting place on the freakin planet? Where the kids can talk about anything and not be afraid. Where they can ask any question . . . even “Does God really exist?†and that question makes the adults smile with joy rather than cover their faces in terror. Why do should they smile? Because it is an honor that the young person trust them so much to ask such a revealing question. I could go and on. But, we can’t out-entertain the secular venues to keep the youth. There must be a better way.
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Most of my extended family always attended church. Some of the less faithful in attendance have become more involved recently, so our church attendance had increased.
Most of the family attend various mainline denominations, and many are quite active. I’d say only a few are post-evangelical.
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For my family, or what is left of it.
Cousins on my stepmother’s side, hurt by the church as teenagers, with a father who left it after WWII, not going. Only one (of 3) is even willing to talk about spirituality. She does regret not raising her daughter in a church.
Nieces and nephew. Not sure about, but I doubt if they are active. One reason for them is that their parents were at the church everytime the doors opened. That can, (not always) lead to problems.
Me, active, with scars but probably giving a few also. 😉
To Ranger,
About Catholic youth. I think that if they can get involved with a strong, orthodox group they tend to stay active, but otherwise not.
To Patrick Lynch: I know what you mean about the lack of singles. Fortunately my diocese does have a singles group that is in my age bracket. PS If you think that being a relatively young single in church is hard, try being a middle aged one.
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Our family has gone the opposite direction of most iMonk readers.
My maternal grandmother was the daughter of pioneering missionaries in Africa. My maternal grandfather was the only practicing Christian in his family. All of their descendants and spouses (twenty in total) are active in the church, many as leaders.
On my fathers side of the family, he was the first Christian. Since then his whole family (we believe) came to Christ. His brother does not currently attend because of mitigating circumstances.
On my wife’s side of the family, her sister was the first Christian in her family. (Remember the Nicky Cruz crusades?) Since then my wife, her mother, and her father have become Christians and are all active church attenders. So, two generations ago in our family we had two people who attended church. This has multiplied into 24 active church attenders. (And if you added in the number of people that various members of our family have introduced to Christ and who are currently attending church, the numbers would be in the hundreds or thousands.)
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Very few people in my extended family attend church. And if they do, I wonder sometimes just how committed they are to what I would term sound biblical faith.
As a Pastor on staff at a large Assembly of God church, it amazes me how little doctrine our people know and adhere to. The Assemblies have always prided themselves on exuberant worship and what we term the baptism in the Spirit. But what good is speaking in tongues if you don’t live holy and change the culture that you live in.
Part of the dechurching of America to me is the erosion of doctrine and cultural change effected by the church. Instead of reaching the lost, we spend our time talking to Emma and other nonsense. I am picking on Pentecostals because I am one! Because there is no standard, we have lost our battle for the hearts and mind of a generation.
Still there are some bright spots. Yesterday my church which runs about 1000 joined with First Baptist which runs 2000 for a combined outreach to our community. This was the culmination of a combined service we had a few weeks ago where we pledged to put aside differences to transform our community.
Yesterday was great, but both of our staffs learned something. Most of our people have no idea how to witness Christ. But that is another subject.
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A secondary question: I always hear of a decline among youth in evangelical churches, but an increase in Catholic and Orthodox churches. Is there any research to this end?
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It looks like we’re not normal of iMonk readers.
Only one set of my great grandparents went to church. My mother’s parents went to church. My father’s parents didn’t. My parents go to church. My family goes to (house) church. My sister’s family goes to church about once a month. All of my wife’s family goes to church regularly (two older sister’s families), although none of her grandparents or great grandparents did. Her parents didn’t start going until they were in college.
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COMMENTERS: Please remember the assigned topic. If you are about to comment, but haven’t read the post, please read it and respond to the questions above.
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I’m assuming that in this thread, ‘church attendance’ means some kind of formal gathering involving some combination of Worship (praise songs, liturgy, whatever) and a sermon, along with the possibility of some sacramental observance.
Given that definition, my wife and I have pretty much given up on “church attendance” in any traditional form.
Why should I get up early on Sunday to go sit in an uncomfortable pew for an hour to sing songs I don’t like and/or don’t mean (or try to keep up with liturgy I don’t comprehend), and listen to some guy (who may not be all that well spoken or intelligent) tell me things I already know?
I have much better alternatives for fellowship in small groups, worship in my own prayer closet in spirit and truth, and access to teaching form some of the greatest thinkers and communicators in Christendom via the internet.
I’ll have an iMonk podcast or an NT Wright MP3 any Sunday before I care to hear another personal rant about the “radical liberal agenda” from Pastor JimBo at First Evangelical.
Short list of reasons various churches turn me off:
1. Sermons that are more politically inspired than gospel inspired. (This week:”The End of American Family Values and Why Harry Potter will turn your child into a Gay-marriage endorsing Liberal Pagan”)
2. No sense of tradition & history. (Our faith didn’t start in 1978 in Chicago…)
3. Over-commitment to tradition & history. (But it IS 2008 already…)
4. Closed-communion. (“Oh, YOU’RE the one true holy catholic apostolic Church. So glad I finally found you…”)
5. Over zealous recruiting tactics (“You’ll be back next week, right?”)
6. Lack of invitation to participate in community (Presupposing you didn’t offend us too much with your sermon (see point 1) we’d like to know how we can take the next step in getting to know people here.)
In short, I know of no church organization that invites me to participate in a truly Christ-centered community in a way that acknowledges the real world as I experience it.
This might be, I suspect, the definition of iMonk’s post-evangelical ‘wilderness’ or ‘driftwood.’ Those metaphors resonate strongly with me these days…
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Two of my three brothers and my one sister are still active churchgoers. My parents were raised Lutheran but left for non-denoms during the Jesus Movement. It seems like my nieces and nephews are staying active in their 20’s, though some are drifting into theological liberalism.
I’ve mainly attended church plants for the past ten years, so I can’t say if more people are going or coming. It seems to me that most church growth I see is from people switching, not new conversions. I blogged on this subject today:
http://livingtext.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/is-the-church-exhausted/
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Good question. It will be interesting to see what people say.
For my grandparents, their major connections to life outside their own home were extended family, job, and church, and not much else. That was true even of my one grandfather who was a holiday-only attender.
My aunts and uncles were by and large church attenders and supporters, but not to the level of my grandparents. (It could be argued that the grandparents overdid it, though.) Of my several aunts and uncles, I can think of only one uncle who stopped going. Though he was a nice guy, he had a longstanding reputation of being a bit irreverant, even from his youth. I can think of two uncles who started going again later in life after “rededication”.
In my generation, including my siblings and cousins, I think about half of us are going to church now. The ones who aren’t going just never ever “got it” as kids, and when they grew up, they saw no need to keep going. Why they didn’t “get it”, I don’t really know. (Also, I presume that there were kids in earlier generations who didn’t get it either. I don’t know why they kept going.)
Looking at my cousins’ kids, I would guess that, without some kind of “conversion experience” or whatever, less than half of them will be going to any church once they are grown.
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Of our five grown children who were raised to be regular church-attenders, only two attend church now. Two are apathetic and one has fallen away from the faith completely.
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I am one of 56 cousins. We spring from strong Welsh Baptist roots. Out of the nine siblings who are our parents, one has gone to church steadily and now an Aunt comes to my church to here me preach. Of the kids, 2 of them are serious Roman Catholics. At family get togeathers we group up and talk about the reasons to read Maccabees [or not]. We share a common faith divided by religion. Most of the others are social Christians, not attending anything.
I understand not going to church. When God called me to the ministry I refused, I told Him I was not fond of his people and had never been in a church I liked. Guess I told Him!
In my area RC churches are up for sale all over. Some new works buy them, but churches that once held hundreds now hold tens.
We have to face it. We failed to feed the flock.
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This thread makes me sad.
=(
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The two sides of my extended family are very different. On my Mom’s side, there are a lot of “spiritual but not religious” types dispersed all over the western half of the country. This hasn’t changed much in the last two generations, except for one Aunt and Uncle who became Mormons and then had a lot of kids, most of whom still go to their services. (For reference, I’m 24; my cousins are all between 16 and 30)
My Dad’s side of the family are farmers in Indiana, and those few who have stayed in the area are regular churchgoers. Those who have moved away (which is most of those near my age) I haven’t seen in a while, but they seem mostly not to attend church regularly. I suppose this is a clear-cut case of church attendance dropping with urbanization.
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I’m 50 and family experiences and attitudes towards church virtually the same as IMonk listed above. If there were relatives younger than me who were zealous for the faith I wouldn’t know it. Not to be snobby…… One cousin my age who is a preacher has kids, I’m sure, who are churchgoers.
For relatives preceding me, everybody went to church and two generations removed were openly faithful. These were the relatives you didn’t smoke or drink in front of.
For those remaining in church,they seem to be growing in their faith. For the semi-goers, it’s about culture.
I’ve personally deemed it ,the anti-revival.
I’ve also failed at any seed planting coming to fruit bearing from others. My wife is about all whom I may have been instrumental in “soul winning”.
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Of 4 grandparents, all died in the Faith. My grandfather even died of an aneurysm while saying the Rosary. Of 13 aunts and uncles, one still attends Mass, one is Pentecostal, and the rest have apostatized. In my generation, I believe I am the only one who attends a weekly religious service of any sort.
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Hmmmm. I think I have a preacher or two somewhere in my extended family, but I don’t know them very well. I wasn’t particularly raised in any Christian church, though I had some experience of many growing up (as well as a lot on non-Christian things). My mother (one of those boomers you describe) had … issues and did a lot of spiritual exploration. About 20 years ago she did convert to Roman Catholicism. One of her brothers converted to the Roman Catholic faith of his wife when they were married (very young). That part of the family tree remains Catholic. Her other brother is more or less Presbyterian. (Perhaps a little less than more.) My cousin on that side convert to the Judaism of his wife.
My father and many on that side are more ‘secular’ (though I’m not sure that’s the word that really fits). Not really atheistic. But not Christian really, either. My aunt is pretty clear on that point. My father is more ambiguous in his statements (and perhaps in his perspective).
My brother has remained pretty Christian his whole life. As such things go.
Most of my wife’s family are Roman Catholic, with some on her Dad’s side who are Baptist. (She grew up really only interacting as Roman Catholic.) Her brother is pretty close to agnostic or something similar. He also speaks softly on the subject of faith.
So far I’ve ended up Christian. My wife is as well. My older two children and quasi foster child (all adults) are not. My daughter-in-law is somewhat curious about Christianity. My youngest two are really the only ones who have essentially been raised their whole lives in one Baptist church. I’m not really convinced that, on balance, that has been a positive thing in their lives. I’m conflicted on whether I did the best thing for them or not. Sometimes I sense that it has done more bad than good for them.
My friends are all over the place. I think ‘post-Christian’ may be too specific a category and label. I see and have experienced the shattered glass of a deconstructed/deconstructing age. And I’m not sure many in the Christian realm, even among those who try to write or speak about it, really grasp that reality.
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Over the past few generations, faith has been transformed into the activity of church. Rather than living by faith, day by day within our homes, our fathers before us have slowly left the Lord out of their daily lives. It’s habits I’m fighting as my wife and I start to raise our family. I can see it in the congregation where I attend. If God isn’t longed for in the home, he certainly won’t be welcomed by our nation.
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My grandparents on my dad’s side went to church regularly. Neither of their children did – I’ve never been in a church with my dad. On my mom’s side no one went to church. My granny was raised Catholic but had a wretched experience in a Catholic orphanage as a child. Not too long before she took her own life at age 90 she proudly told me she didn’t believe in God nd neither did any of her kids. I became a Christian as an adult as did my husband. We raised our kids in the church and went on many side trips to find God-knows-what. We still go to church but none of our three adult children do. If I had to choose between not going and going to the church we mainly went to as we raised them, I wouldn’t be going either.
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My LCMS congregation of about 300 (I’m a layman) has doubled in size over the last 10 years or so. It’s about 50 percent non-LCMS background. Many of those converts are from other denominations, to be sure, but many are new Christians as well. And lots of families with young children.
As for my own family — my wife and I both grew up in nominal/liberal Protestant families. We’re now fanatic Augsburg evangelicals. 🙂
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Both my parents have stayed in the church, but my aunts and uncles have stayed basically generally religious. One of my uncles has basically turned into a classic Fosdick liberal. Interestingly enough, most of his children (my cousins) are openly opposed to Christianity in general.
I kind of wish the Midwest (where I’ve been raised) would be dechurched. Being in the buckle of the CHURCH belt (cause nobody reads the Bible down here), I’ve encountered way too much hatred toward Christianity, and much of it has been earned by old, bitter, complaining, probably unregenerate church members. I’m a server, and on the occasional Sunday lunch shift I’ve worked I’ve considered apostasizing. Every stereotype, every awful thing you’ve heard about the Sunday crowd I’ve seen. It’ll make you sick.
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I no longer attend any institutional system, and have no allegiance to any either. My parents are the only ones in my family who attend a meeting on Sunday.
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For the sake of providing a frame of reference, I’m 29. All of my sibs/cousins are between 21 and 33. My parents and their sibs/cousins are all in their 50’s or early 60’s (they all had us young).
Within my generation of the family there is SIGNIFICANT de-churching, even among those who would describe themselves as religious. Of the 20-some cousins and their spouces, less than five of us attend regular services. Within my parents’ generation of the family, however, most are still regularly attending church.
Now here’s an interesting exeption that proves the rule: woman I was dating earlier this year (same age as me) has seen her Catholic parish grow exponentially in the last few years due to their new priest. He shows the flock that he really cares and preaches accordingly. I heard one parishoner compliment him by saying that he preaches more like a Baptist than a Catholic. This growth has reached accross generational lines at that church. The Sunday night service is run by their highschool and college-aged kids (minus the stuff that only clergy can do). Every service I attended was full of folks from young children to seniors and everything in between. It honestly had me considering crossing the Tiber despite my concerns with major areas of Catholic doctrine.
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I now realize I didn’t even answer the questions. 🙂
I’m the only one in my family who has attended church on a regular basis for as long as I can remember. A few of my aunts and uncles still attend regularly, but I don’t remember the last time my parents or my sisters and their families were in church.
At my old home church, there was also a dearth of young adults. Many teenagers, after graduation, just quit coming. They sometimes would return after starting a family.
Why the decrease? Maybe we need more Gospel and less practical advice. If I wanted that kind of talk, I’d listen to Dr. Phil.
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It’s dropped, and it’s a problem – but not as far as the Culture Warriors would have us think. Church attendance sky-rocketed back in the 1950’s following WWII, right now we’re closer to what it was pre-WWII. The major difference is that we’re not longer living in a culture where Christianity is the nominal default among the populace.
I’m not sure this is necessarily a bad thing – in a culture where folks who call themselves “Christian” are a minority you can’t have the type of complacency that’s marked a lot of US Christianity.
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I just read the link provided by Chris E. Some very good stuff there.
I guess I need to say two things here. There are a lot of hurting people who are leaving church for a number of different reasons. In the midst of all of our statistics we can afford to lose sight of this.
But there are also churches which are vibrant growing places. We have a couple within 40 minutes of us that appear to be doubling every 2-3 years. By their calculations about 40% of their growth is from new believers.
The sky isn’t falling, its just overcast and a little foggy in a number of places. In others, the Son is breaking through.
(Hope that last line didn’t sound too corny. 🙂 )
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I come from a slightly different perspective, having grown up in the a cappela Church of Christ. What I have seen in my family is a general moving away, denominationally, from that tradition, not away from church attendance altogether. That said, I haven’t been to a Sunday service in… ?? On my wife’s side (Catholic and Salvation Army background), there is, and has always been, a non-attending trend. No one really goes to church at all.
Cultually, I think there is a trend toward a “post-Christian” society. I think church attendance and this cultural trend are linked, but I’m not sure this is the place for that sort of rambling.
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The answers are simple, and complex. Lots of people have left. Of those remaining, there are basically two groups: those who are considering leaving and those who are in denial (and perhaps a few who are just unaware).
The simple answer – Over the centuries the church has morphed into a strange creature that only remotely resembles what it first was. For many, it is now an empty religion that does not meet them where they live.
The religion is more concerned with tradition than Scripture. The people are more concerned with themselves than the poor & needy. Time, money and energy are spent mostly for properties, staffing and programs primarily for themselves. Most of us see it as a religious club at best, or as some kind of political movement at worst.
Read “UnChristian”. That book pretty well lays out what our culture, especially the younger generations, think about the church.
Probably a lot of the remaining people in churches don’t know what to do about what is happening. This is not because there are no resources available to point the way. It is because most church leaders either refuse to use these resources, or refuse to make the radical changes necessary.
According to “UnChristian”, two of our culture’s prevailing attitudes about churches and Christians are that they are hypocrites and anti-gay. After the recent election, and all the things that were said regarding California’s Proposition 8 and gays, I actually hear lots of people saying these very things about the churches and Christians.
Few of my extended family have anything to do with church any more. They just don’t see that it is relevant to them in any way. They don’t want to help pay for the fancy buildings and staffs. They do not want to be identified with what they think of as nasty, hateful, bigoted people. My friends and neighbors think even less kindly of the church.
As one friend exclaimed in the midst of a large group of people, upon finding out that I am a Christian, “You can’t be a Christian! You don’t hate us. You actually like us!” The group nodded and murmured in agreement. If that story is not telling, what one would be???
I’d love to spend more time writing on this, but I don’t see that it is doing any good or changing anyone. Instead, I plan to get up from this keyboard and get back to cleaning a bunch of the “stuff” out of my house so we will have room to invite invite in people from the neighborhood to eat together and share our lives together and talk about life and who knows what else. We need each other. The church only needs me to help them pay their bills and to volunteer to take care of their kids or hand out bulletins.
We’re not mad. We’ve just moved on, and so has much of the culture. We’re never going back to that. I’m guessing that most churches will either close or change dramatically. Of course a few will remain unchanged until the bitter end. Yes, there are people who still use the horse and buggy to get around, but if my research is correct their numbers have declined considerably.
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K from Saint Pete,
“Though it is interesting that half the kids from a church where only 5% are “heaven-bound†stay, while in easy-salvation America, the percentage is less.”
Actually, there are statistics that back this up. The aforementioned sociological ballers and shot-callers Finke and Stark gave us a rather amazing theory of religious economy that predicts that the more rigorous a church is, ethically, theologically and in terms of the commitments asked of you, the more likely it is to attract and keep people who find value in being there. Like a store that’s too Uptown for mere window-shopping, the clientele is going to be willing to make capital commitments pretty regularly in exchange for a higher quality, more focused communal and religious experience.
Rational Choice and religious economy are the jam.
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Most everyone in my immediate and extended family go to Church, including my father’s mother and step-dad who used to not attend.
In my last two of years of high school (I graduated spring 2007) and the first couple of years of college I’ve seen the majority of my friends/acquaintances who claimed to be Christian leave the faith. I’m not sure of any people that have converted.
I attend a Christian College and you don’t see many people leaving the faith there. I met one guy who left the faith and he ended up transferring to a public school.
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Also, since this is a thread about my favorite subject in sociology, I just want to show some love one time give it up for Rodney Stark, Finke and Stark everybody yes sirrr
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I’m pretty sure that assimilation has pretty much destroyed the lion’s share of Catholic culture. I’m one of the only single Catholic guy my age at my parish. For the most part, Mass consists of beleaguered parents and their screaming kids and old people trying to get ready to die. For me at least, this makes it really hard to figure out where my perspective and problems “fit in” to what I see going on around me. As for everybody else my age that would’ve been here, they stopping trying to make it work for them and left Christianity behind, abruptly and completely. Not having a peer group is probably the most difficult thing about the church these days.
On my mom’s side of the family, more or less everybody either became an agnostic or a Jehovah’s Witness, with one exception – my cousin abandoned his wife and two kids to become some kind of charismatic minister in Bolivia. On my dad’s side, only a handful of the old folks are religious. Even the most “religious” of us tend to just be cultural conservatives who like rituals. None of us are the kinds of spiritually transformed Christians that light up a church the moment we walk in.
For these reasons, I’m pretty sure Catholicism is going to decline precipitously in the US in the next 20 years. I even wonder if -I- will be Catholic in 20 years..
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I’ve been to church twice in the last year. The main reason is work; my position requires me to work most Sundays. Even so, I’ve become discouraged because it’s been hard to find a church where I can hear the Gospel, and not this week’s numbered list on how to be a better person.
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Couldn’t the drop in attendance amongst immediate family be also explained by religious attendance being more demographically dispersed than previous?
After all, there were – in the past – large ethnic groupings who wouldn’t have gone to church at all for whatever reason.
Rodney Stark in his book “What Americans Really Believe” has gathered a reasonable amount of evidence that purports to show that church attendance has gradually increased in percentage terms from 1776 onwards.
See this review:
http://setsnservice.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/a-summary-and-review-of-rodney-starks-new-book-what-americans-really-believe-01-05-congregations/
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Michael,
There is some good news. In Canada, between 1981 and 2001, Church attendance rose by 7.5%. This was as result of a rather remarkable rise in attendance in Evangelical Churches offset by a concerning drop in attendance in Mainline Attendance.
While looking at these numbers I also did a study into the statistical relationship between attendance and membership, and using the ratio between the two as a predictor of future attendance. I was able to find quite a lot of historical data on a number of U.S. denominations as well and was able to plot this data for 28 denominations.
I was most interested in the Southern Baptists at the time, as they had just come out with new attendance numbers. Their picture is not so rosy.
I captured all of my findings, along with my sources, in a post I entitled Southern Baptists in decline – Where will it end?” I encourage your readers to take a look and if they are interested in how their own church fits into the data they can email me at mike_kim_bell [at] hotmail [dot] com.
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Michael,
Off topic, I know. But I noticed you just jumped on the Twitter wagon. Et tu, iMonk?
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I have 31 cousins (surprisingly few since my parents were both the youngest of seven) and not one of them regularly attends church (that we know of; I don’t talk to all of them on a regular basis, but none are the active, go-getting soul winners the SBC wants) while all of their parents were regular church-goers and they were raised in church. Neither I nor my parents have attended (sick of the constant demands for money) for years, and while my sister and her husband/2 kids go, it is to a Joel Osteen-style church, and they even skip that when my nephew has hockey practice.
My girlfriend is from a hyper Dutch Reformed background (from Holland, and only 5% of the church is going to heaven) and their churches think they are doing well if half the kids brought up stay. Compared to the US stats, that’s probably correct.
Though it is interesting that half the kids from a church where only 5% are “heaven-bound” stay, while in easy-salvation America, the percentage is less.
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To me there is a loss of mystery and awe in our church. It is so geared toward the pragmatic side of life. Each time I step foot into our church building I hope to have a corporate time of connection with our God however, the 15 steps to dealing with predominates the service. This kind of service makes it easier for me to stay home.
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From a UM perspective I see it in our denomination, but not only ours. If Barna is right, and he probably isn’t off much, only about 20% of Americans attend a worship service on a typical Sunday. It very much concerns me too. Our children seldom attend other than at holidays. I keep wondering how this whole thing has happened when we have the Good News of Jesus Christ. We have all read literally dozens of speculations, but, the bottom line is in spite of all the analysis that we do, the decline continues.
I was in Oxford, UK, in September ’07 and attended an 8:00 a.m. Communion service at St. Michael’s at the Gate where I was the only person along with the greeter and the priest. At a later Methodist service, the Wesley Memorial Church was 25-30% full with a number of American tourists. I wondered how long it would be before that’s typical of America?
Do we in the church try to keep people so programed/busy that they just get tired and drop out because they don’t really get the spiritual “food” that they need and don’t know how to apply the spiritual disciplines in their lives?
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My son (age 25) goes to church occasionally, but it’s not a high priority. My daughter is 23 and has been turned off to church. She hasn’t been in a couple of years.
Here in this part of the Bible Belt, there has been a definite slippage in the number of people who go to church. We mostly have old main-line, mega-church wanna-be, or traditional fundamentalist Baptist.
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My extended family is so secular and splintered and has been for so long that my conversion alone constitutes an increase in religious faith. My wife’s family shows the trend you mention, in that the older generations appear more faithful. But I think this is a hard one to measure on a small scale or short time frame.
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My wife and I went through a terrible experience with our church about 5 years ago where we suffered a miscarriage and felt completely abandoned by the people we had gotten to know very closely over the previous two years. We stopped going to church completely after that, but have still stayed “in orbit” around Christianity.
In the mean time, I have essentially deconstructed my upbringing in the evangelical ghetto and only this last weekend went to a church again voluntarily for the first time in 4.5 years. Most of my close friends who are also in their early 30s have gone through a similar disillusionment with varying outcomes.
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This issue honestly frightens and confuses me more than any issue facing modern Christendom.
Nobody but me in my immediate family (mother, father, 2 younger brothers) has been to Mass in 10 years except on Christmas. We used to go all the time but just stopped and never even talked about why. I’m still totally clueless as to my parents’ and brothers’ thoughts on the matter, they don’t want to talk about it. Very confusing to me, I don’t understand it.
In my extended family it’s pretty much the same, except for my uncle who is a deacon and his son who is going to be a priest. This is on my father’s side.
On my mother’s side my grandparents raised their children basically unchurched… baptised Methodists at their grandmothers’ insistence but no church beyond that. Coincidentally an uncle on that side became Catholic because of his wife, not sure what they practice now though.
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In my extended family there has been a significant loss of church attenders over two generations.
There has been only one relative- and that in my wife’s family- who has started going to church after not going.
Particularly noticeable are the baby boomers who were brought up in church and dropped years ago.
Some of the de-churched do make their way to church occaisionally for special events, but that doesn’t count.
So here in the buckle of the Bible belt, I’ve seen definite generational slippage, and one can easily see it in churches that were full of kids in the 70s. Now many are struggling and many are dying.
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