It is a pretty commonly accepted fact that not a lot of Americans today attend church. Most data suggests that between 40 percent and 50 percent of people in Generations X and Y did not grow up attending any kind of church at all.
Those who were born after 1970 (X and Y are generally defined as people born between 1965 and 1990) had Baby Boomer parents who lived through the tumult of the 1960s, saw JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr., shot, and were involved in the Vietnam War in one way or another.
Many Boomer parents did not send their kids to church because they themselves were breaking out of the norms of the day. And how much more “normative” do you get than going to church? Even those who did send their kids to church or who attended as a family often did so in a very relaxed fashion. There were the “Christmas and Easter” families, of course, but also the families who went to church only when their kids were little or, in the Catholic faith, until their youngest child “made First Communion.”
As a result of all this, and other factors, many churches today are dying. People don’t go because they never have. They may visit a few times, but don’t find it relevant. They sing songs they don’t know, recite prayers they have never heard and get asked to be on committees. Sometimes they stay. More often, they leave.
Yet the fundamental religious need has not changed. The desire to have a life full of meaning and purpose is alive in all of us. The questions about faith and God and death go through all of our minds.
So what are we looking for from churches? My theory is that we are looking for a place to share our experiences and ask questions. We don’t want a place that tells us what to do, but we do want guidance. We want to enjoy our time, because life’s too short to do something that is more “work,” and we could always be playing Farmville. We want to laugh, do something meaningful, and know that we are not alone.
What do you think?
Would those of us who are committed “institutionalists” be able to expect that the “something meaningful” folks may be looking for might at some point involve SOME work on behalf of the church? Not right away of course! Some of us get a little tired of doing all the work of providing a place for people who seem only want to enjoy themselves. Can these folks (and it’s not just young folks) understand that our churches cannot sustain themselves, much less offer relevant programming, without their involvement at some level?
Great question, Mary. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for you specifically……
I do believe, though, that if people really care about something they will be willing to put in the time and energy resources to make that something work. If people are not willing to help, perhaps there is a disconnect between understanding what is needed and what people can do to help? Or perhaps there is less strong support for the current programs than the church initially thought?
I can strongly recommend Peter Bowden (uugrowth.com) as a consultant if you are looking for transformative change in your specific church. Good luck!
@Mary Andrews – I think you can definitely expect involvement, so long as the request is missional. If the request is, “we are desperate for someone like you to serve for 3 years on a steering committee,” then forget it. If the request is, “we think you have the a God-given gift for ministering to young people/homeless people/the elderly/new moms/men etc., would you add your talents to that ministry at our church?” then I think people will jump at the chance to be involved. The problem is that so many of our churches have forgotten that they exist to heal, support and empower people – not keep the “institution” running for its own sake.
@Anna – great point – I think a lot of churches probably miss the boat by not getting to know their newcomers well enough to even guess what their gifts are. I guess when we have been in survival mode for a while, we do tend to forget the fundamental reason for our existence. Thanks to you and Christana.
I’m not sure I agree that most folks have a “fundamental religious need.” I think we have a fundamental spiritual need that is well-met in a community…but religious? Naw, I don’t think so. Or perhaps I don’t know what you mean by “religious.”
To me, as a person who likes to take a long view of things, the interesting questions are how church-going came to be normative in the first place, and why it has stayed that way much longer in some places (say, rural and Southern US) than others (like most of Europe).
My impression is that many people used to go because it was simply the thing to do and all their neighbors went, rather than because of any deep personal need; and what will remain of church once all of these (forgive me, I call them “pew potatoes”) have stopped going may be something healthier and more meaningful than it ever was before…
allogenes wrote:
“To me, as a person who likes to take a long view of things, the interesting questions are how church-going came to be normative in the first place, and why it has stayed that way much longer in some places (say, rural and Southern US) than others (like most of Europe).”
If we start asking why religious expression is more normative in the American South than it is in other parts of the world (e.g. Western Europe, New England), we may not like the answers.
I think that it’s not coincidence that the most religious region in the US also had slavery. It’s also the region of the US that has the hardest time dealing with racial equality, gender equality, and sexual orientation equality. Based on the letters to the editor in my local paper in my northwestern Louisiana town, most of the objections to racial, gender, and sexual orientation equality are based on religious reason.
Parts of the US that are less religious (New England, west coast) seem to have an easier time with these issues. And Western Europe seems to have an easier time with them as well.
@Steve – there’s much to what you say, but on the other hand there was always also a strong religious element in abolitionism and other pro-equality movements as well… actually it’s even more complicated than that, many abolitionists were also nativists and prohibitionists; in the early 1850′s that the Republicans and the Know-Nothings appealed to similar sub-cultures and it wasn’t at all clear which party would be the one to take the place of the northern Whigs. Later, William Jennings Bryan led a movement that joined economic populism with “old-time religion,” while his Republican opponents were associated both with big capital and with urban moral “laxity.” All very interesting.
As to present-day church attendance, there’s a rural/urban dynamic cutting across the north/south dynamic; outside the South, attendance seems inversely proportional to urbanization… Maybe it’s just that cultural heterogeneity and social and geographical mobility militate against church membership everywhere, but that these factors have been resisted in the South in large part because of the racial polarization you describe…