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I also think it has to do with the fact that the church doesn't hold the position as a social center that it once did. When I was growing up, a lot of our family activities revolved around the church. My father went to the men's prayer meeting, my mother went to choir, there was Bible Study, we kids had junior choir and Pioneer Girls, youth group, etc.
The down side of that was that my parents never came to any of my softball games and only could attend school music concerts or plays if nothing was going on at church that night, and if they weren't available, we had to find our own way to the school and back. It made for a lot of resentment that probably contributed to every last one of us walking away from church by the time we were out of high school.
Nowadays kids have sports on Sundays, and there are non-church-related activities all throughout the week. The church just isn't the center of the community that it once was. This has little to do with religion, either. It's just that there are more choices and priorities than there once were, and the church as the social core has taken a back seat.
On the other hand, I think that's why you find older people attending some of the liberal churches. It is a social center for some who don't fit into other social settings. You'll find a lot of single, older women, for example.
When evangelical churches left evangelism for political influence the decline started and continues to accelerate. Dr. Thom Ranier is a former CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources, an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention:
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The evangelistic deterioration of churches across North America has been a reality for decades. There is a lot of bad news out there showing that churches are not reaching people with the gospel. But there is good news, too.
My team recently looked at data from a random sample of 1,000 Southern Baptist churches to see what happened in those churches from 2013 to 2016.
We found 65 percent of churches are either declining or plateaued—56 percent are in absolute decline and 9 percent are plateaued. That means 35 percent of churches are growing in worship attendance.
1. We are a nation of small churches. Over 61 percent of the churches studied average fewer than 100 in worship attendance.
2. The smaller the church, the greater the rate of decline in attendance. This study found that a declining church with an attendance of 200 or more declines at a rate of 4 percent a year. A declining church with less than 100 in attendance declines at a rate of 7.6 percent.
This is one of the greatest areas of concern from this study. Once a church declines below 100 in worship attendance, it is likely to die within just a few years. The life expectancy for many of these churches is 10 years or less.
3. Growing churches are primarily growing through transfer growth. Only 6 percent to 7.5 percent are growing through conversions. The majority of growing churches are simply recirculating the saints.
4. If a church is growing, it is highly likely to be growing faster than the community in which it is located. In fact, 91 percent of the growing churches are outpacing the growth of their respective communities.
5. Churches growing through conversions are intentionally evangelistic. This was an area of particular interest. How many churches are reaching people who are not believers in Christ? And among those that are, how are they doing it?
Point number 5 is why I like Andy Stanley, a man of God so far beyond his father Charles that he makes Charles look absolutely pagan.
Quote:
North Point Community Church is a non-denominational, evangelical Christian megachurch located in Alpharetta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. North Point currently averages more than 38,000 people in attendance among its six campuses each week, making it the largest church in Metro Atlanta and according to Outreach magazine, the 2nd largest church in the United States as of 2017. Andy Stanley is the senior pastor. Clay Scroggins serves as the church's lead pastor and, in turn, leads the North Point Community Church staff
in worship.
Not bad for a church founded in 1995. I listen to a lot of Andy's sermons on Youtube. His messages center around bringing "nones" back to church and challenging agnostics and atheists to have a second look.
One of the major advantages conservative Stanley has is that he is constantly under attack by jealous fundamentalists. Here is one commenting on Stanley's address to 2400 pastors at a three day conference. The writer is upset with the content of the sermon, but Stanley is right on concerning the change of focus of the church over the centuries:
Quote:
Stanley’s concern was that unless “evangelicals in particular—change their approach in communicating with unchurched people, [the] followers of Christ will lose their voice and forfeit opportunities to share the Gospel.” Stanley complained that we “sometimes keep people from ever coming close to church” because “we have given culture a lot of other things to argue with us about.” According to Stanley, believers must experience a dramatic shift, if “we are to speak into the culture of a world that needs to know there is a God in heaven” who “has invited each person to call Him Father.”
Stanley claimed that believers “assume a culture that doesn’t exist anymore, where correctness and accuracy no longer are the key delineators. We can’t take the “I’m right…you’re wrong” approach, which is supposedly one of the major obstacles in winning people. Stanley contended that “a major reason for the decline of the church was that we “have focused too much on policing the behavior of outsiders without looking at the inside.” Stanley alleged that love, prayer and caring for one another are not what outsiders see when “people think of the church.”
Stanley claimed that the reason the church “grew in the first century” is because “women were valued . . . children were treasured . . . and slaves attracted” because “everyone was equal before God.” The need of the church is to “go back and speak the way the first century Christian did.”
Cellphones and social media are having an affect on relationships and those things people used to do. They appear to be permanently attached to the thoughts, deeds and actions of everyone who is addicted to, or using them. I have even seen people sitting across the table in restaurants texting each other.
If people today are “smarter”, then God help us.
We are no more intelligent, wise or enlightened than we were 100 years ago.
Technology is more advanced, but we’re much worse at being functional human beings.
The internet most certainly has NOT debunked superstition. If anything, it’s created much more superstition with everyone being paranoid about everything and each other. We’re allowing ourselves to become high-tech Neanderthals.
So anyway...
The decline in church attendance simply follows the same trends as most any other organized groups.
Civic clubs often have the same problem. People don’t unionize much anymore. For whatever reason, fewer people feel the need to be a part of something more than themselves or their immediate circles.
I can also see how watering down the faith through things like anything-goes theology or shallow, commercialized pep rallys would run people off who might be looking for real alternatives to the world around them.
If people today are “smarter”, then God help us.
We are no more intelligent, wise or enlightened than we were 100 years ago.
Technology is more advanced, but we’re much worse at being functional human beings.
The internet most certainly has NOT debunked superstition. If anything, it’s created much more superstition with everyone being paranoid about everything and each other. We’re allowing ourselves to become high-tech Neanderthals.
People may not be "smarter" per se, but they are certainly more "well-informed" when it comes to the world around them. We know much more about our world now than they did in Bible times, and people are moving past the whole "I don't understand it, therefore, God", mentality. Not all of us, obviously, but a lot, hence the decline in church attendance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sub
So anyway...
The decline in church attendance simply follows the same trends as most any other organized groups.
Civic clubs often have the same problem. People don’t unionize much anymore. For whatever reason, fewer people feel the need to be a part of something more than themselves or their immediate circles.
I can also see how watering down the faith through things like anything-goes theology or shallow, commercialized pep rallys would run people off who might be looking for real alternatives to the world around them.
Most of the people I know are involved in all sorts of things outside of their immediate circles, and that goes for both the religious and not religious. Whether they are involved in charitable activities, sports, running clubs/crossfit/MMA/Spartan Racing, or whatever, they aren't just sitting around with their inner circles. Sure, there are people that sit around and do nothing, but they have always been around.
One of the problems I think, which you hint at above, is that if you are too liberal, you lose people. Too conservative, you lose people. Too middle of the road, can't attract enough people. Then you have the churches that aren't losing attendance, or the mega churches, that aren't much more than a social club where they talk about God an hour a week while making connections for future opportunities.
When evangelical churches left evangelism for political influence the decline started and continues to accelerate. Dr. Thom Ranier is a former CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources, an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention:
Not bad for a church founded in 1995. I listen to a lot of Andy's sermons on Youtube. His messages center around bringing "nones" back to church and challenging agnostics and atheists to have a second look.
One of the major advantages conservative Stanley has is that he is constantly under attack by jealous fundamentalists. Here is one commenting on Stanley's address to 2400 pastors at a three day conference. The writer is upset with the content of the sermon, but Stanley is right on concerning the change of focus of the church over the centuries:
The mainstream Churches are corrupt. Not only do they teach all the foundation doctrines wrong they create Church groups the Apostles would not recognize. They have testimony service but not body ministry. Many Churches are led by women and 95% of them dont cover their heads in ministry.
They practice paganism in the guise of Jesus birth and resurrection.
The sincere disciples are probably opting out of these corruptions by looking for house Churches where they might find a more pure approach to Christ so it may seem there are less believers than before.
I stopped going to church about a month ago for a lot of the reasons you mentioned, save one. The start was the corruption. I am Catholic and I got sick of the corruption. Every time I thought thing were out in the open and the church was going to stop covering things up, something else would bubble to the surface.
That corruption lead me to read into the history of the Catholic church and Christianity as a whole. And no one is anything like the original Christians were years ago and there has been a lot introduced over the years (not just to Catholicism but to all branches of Christianity). I won't get into too many details since I am not here to debate things, just give my personal experience on why I stopped going to church. But the more I learned, the more I was drawn away from "religion." I still have some kind of faith, but it's more agnostic in flavor. But I stepped away from the rituals of religion (including going to church).
On the women thing, I don't agree with you there. Honestly, from what I've seen, if women weren't involved in churches, they would have declined a lot sooner than now. It always seems like it's the women volunteering to do things to keep the churches going and Catholic or Protestant, the churches I've visited I see more single women than single men or women with kids vs. a man with kids. Pew did a study and more women identify as religious than men too. Scaring away women would be a death knell I would think.
What's interesting, I discovered in my digging of Christian history is that is back in the days of the ancient Christian Church, women were very much involved and in a lot of ways in charge of the "churches" as there weren't church buildings for hundreds of years and people met in homes (which was the domain of women.)
You could cite many causes for the decline in church attendance. But really is pretty simple. The Bible teaches a pretty rigorous moral code, no to fornication, no to adultery, no to adultery and divorce, etc. So most churches have dropped teaching these things because it is not popular. Because of this, the church leadership has turned the church into a business. So they tell people what they want to hear, which has boiled down to almost everyone goes to heaven.
So the bottom line people figure out is that there is no reason to go to church. But God does not conform himself to peoples beliefs. They will find out on judgment day.
Btw, women have always been and active and significant part of the Christian church, just not as leaders.
You could cite many causes for the decline in church attendance. But really is pretty simple. The Bible teaches a pretty rigorous moral code, no to fornication, no to adultery, no to adultery and divorce, etc. So most churches have dropped teaching these things because it is not popular. Because of this, the church leadership has turned the church into a business. So they tell people what they want to hear, which has boiled down to almost everyone goes to heaven.
So the bottom line people figure out is that there is no reason to go to church. But God does not conform himself to peoples beliefs. They will find out on judgment day.
Btw, women have always been and active and significant part of the Christian church, just not as leaders.
It always creeps me out when the secret delight about others "finding out on judgement day" seeps through posts of people like you.
But putting that aside, how do you know that people don't go to church for those reasons? I doubt very much you actually asked people or had a real conversation with anyone about why they don't go to church, but if you did, please provide that information.
Because it sounds an awful lot like something that just came out of your head.
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