Why people don’t go to church
Writing this column during July, when attendance at my congregation is less than stellar, I began to reflect on the question of why people don’t go to church. Latest statistics show a 20 percent maximum rate of attendance at weekly Christian church services in Canada, with wide regional variations, and with the 15-24 year old group running at about 15 to 16 percent.
I checked
www.excuses.com. Some reasons listed were: “The preacher moves around to much. I'm too young - I'll go when I'm too old to have any more fun. I'll go to church after I stop smoking. Church Excuse: Veni, Vidi, NoN-Velcro. (I came, I Saw, I didn't stick around.).”
On a more serious vein, I looked at what the sociologists are telling us. A 1998 study in Australia showed reasons for not coming to church there as follows: “Boring or unfulfilling church services 42%; Belief of the churches 35%; Churches' moral views 35%; No need to go to Church 34%; Prefer to do other things 31%; My beliefs are too weak 27%; The way churches are organised 24%; Too many other commitments 21%; Bad experience of church people 16%; Not enough time because of work 15%; Uncomfortable with church people 14%; No previous involvement 8%; Family or friends don't like church 6%; No churches of my denomination nearby 4%; No good churches nearby 4%; Poor health/disability 3%; No transport to get to church 2%.”
Reginald Bibby, a professor of sociology at the University of Lethbridge, has found similar reasons for low Church attendance in Canada (see for example Fragmented Gods: the Poverty and Potential of Religion in Canada). But He sees an emergent renaissance in spirituality: “Canadians still believe in God, Bibby says. “Our research supports the fact that God has been very much alive in Canada and is moving across Canada," he said. “When we ask Canadians if they believe in a God that cares about them personally, about 80 per cent of them say they do." And he says 75 per cent of Canadians say they pray at least occasionally and one in two Canadians claim they talk to God personally at least once a week.
Bibby sees this renewed interest in spirituality as an opportunity for the established churches to structure their programs to meet people where they are at and thus experience a renaissance themselves.
Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain (2001); Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (2002) in contrast, argue that decline in religiosity in Great Britain and Europe is real As Stuart Macdonald Associate Professor for Church and Society, Knox College, Toronto puts it, their findings tell us that “participation is down, and because of this religious memory has died and is continuing to die. The church will continue – religion will play a role in individual lives, but not in society as a whole. That society will be secular, in the sense of divorced from religion.”
This is not the case in the United States. Attendance at church services is high and interest in religion and new forms of spirituality is flourishing. Religion is very much a part of public life there.
Bibby’s description about what is happening in Canada and what to do about it are based on the assumption that what is happening here culturally is closer to the American than European or Australian-New Zealand experience.
Professor MacDonald begs to differ. “From what I’ve seen and experienced, I believe the church in Canada is much closer to that in the United Kingdom and Europe – as well as Australia and New Zealand – although we are slower in reaching their level of secularization.”
I suggest that the Christian churches (similar trends are being found in the Jewish faith community also), look both to the United States and to Europe.
From my experience as a pastor we still have a large group, who while their religious memory is faint, still turn to the churches for rites of passage (baptism, weddings, funerals). They tend to come to the church as highly selective consumers.
How long their memory and affliation with particular denominations will lead them “church” to meet these “consumer needs,” is a question I believe Bibby in his research has not addressed. But in Canada, this phenomena still exists.
So, as Bibby argues, “churches are going to have to decide if they will be satisfied with providing religion à la carte for these selectively minded religious customers.”
Most churches with any integrity, I believe, would say no. The key seems to be for the churches to focus their programming on their primary reason for existence: to witness to a way of understanding God, society and self that is truthful, life giving and life fulfilling. And then, to communicate this “package deal” in a way that can be understood and “bought into” by today’s consumer citizens. This is the eternal mission of the church.
Then,
www.excuses.com may list as many excuses for going to church as for not going.
