WHY ARE SO MANY LEAVING CHURCH (Declining Attendance)?

 

Why are people leaving church?

“Please don’t leave!!”

(Declining Church attendance)

Barna’s research points to multiple factors rather than one single cause.

Among the factors it has identified over the years are:

• changing generational attitudes toward organized religion;
• declining identification with institutional Christianity;
• perceptions of church involvement in politics;
• church scandals and failures;
• dissatisfaction with “church as usual”;
• changing concepts of church membership (often perceived as manipulative);
• alternative forms of Christian content and spiritual engagement;
• cultural secularization; and
• people distinguishing faith in Jesus from participation in a particular congregation.

• America is experiencing a significant decline in traditional church participation and institutional religious commitment, but the decline cannot simply be equated with a decline in all spiritual interest, belief in Jesus, or desire for spiritual growth.

One particularly relevant finding is that Barna found 48% of self-identified Christians and 45% of practicing Christians agreeing that people they know are tired of “church as usual.” (Rote).

And this raises a very important question for the church: If people are still interested in Jesus but increasingly disengaged from traditional church structures, what is it about contemporary churches that is failing to convert spiritual interest into committed discipleship and congregational participation?

That question actually fits very closely with the church/ministry issues —particularly what a Bible-centered, spiritually balanced church should look like in the current culture. And exploring to this for application can become a mechanical attempt at ‘doing church’.

But before looking at what a Bible-centered, spiritually balance church should look like in the current culture, let’s do a quick comparison of the practices and the employment of the methods of the early church.

First, there was nothing new about religious meetings similar to our idea of ‘going to church’. For example, Muslims perform Islamic prayers and rituals in a mosque. Buddhists practice their religion through ceremonies, meditation, prayer, and offerings in temples, meditation halls, or viharas for worship. Jews do their “church” activities in a synagogue, which is a place for Jewish prayer, study, and community services. Instead of church worship, they hold congregational prayers such as Shabbat and other ceremonies, and they keep Torah scrolls in the sanctuary. But, Jesus broke the mold when it came to ‘church.

Jesus preached in the Jewish Synagogues, on the streets, on hillsides, in the mountains, from boats and on the seashore. Christians met in homes. Christianity was an spiritually organic movement.

With the resurrection of Christ Christians became the temple of God. Christ became a “life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45). Therefore, He could take up residence in the believers, thus making them His Temple, His house. It is for this reason that the New Testament always reserves the word church (ekklesia) for the people of God. It never uses this word to refer to a building of any sort.” (Excerpts within quotation marks are from Frank Viola & George Barna’s book, “Pagan Christianity”, Tyndale Publishing, 2002, 2008)

“When Christianity was born, it was the only religion on the planet that had no sacred objects, no sacred persons, and no sacred spaces.

“Although surrounded by Jewish synagogues and pagan temples, the early Christians were the only religious people on earth who did not erect sacred buildings for their worship. The Christian faith was born in homes, out in courtyards, and along roadsides. For the first three centuries, the Christians did not have any special buildings!

“As one scholar put it, “The Christianity that conquered the Roman Empire was essentially a home-centered movement.”

“Meeting in homes was a conscious choice of the early Christians.” It was a coming together in a more intimate setting, a ones’ home. Very little could be hidden in such an environment. Christians, out of necessity, lived the model of Jesus.

THE DRIFT BEGINS – 391 A.D.

The Church was barely out of its infancy when the religious spirit of innovation appeared, in the late second and third centuries, and a shift occurred thanks in large part to Augustine of Hippo (later, sainted by the Catholic church), began his work of making the Christian Movement ‘legitimate’ by government and Catholic standards.

“Interestingly, he named his church buildings after saints — just as the pagans named their temples after gods. Constantine built his first church buildings upon the cemeteries where the Christians held meals for the dead saints. (I ask, WHAT WOULD YOU CALL AN ACT LIKE THAT?)

“Constantine brought peace for all Christians.'” Under his reign, the Christian faith had become legitimate. In fact, it had risen to a status greater than Judaism and paganism. “For these reasons, the Christians saw Constantine’s rise to emperor as an act of God. Here was God’s instrument who had come to their rescue. “Christianity and Roman culture were now melded together.” (Again I ask, WHAT WOULD YOU CALL THAT?)

“The Christian building demonstrates that the church, whether she wanted it or not, had entered into a close alliance with pagan culture.’ As Will Durant, author of The Story of Civilization (a sweeping, eleven-volume work on world history that earned him a Pulitzer Prize), put it, “Pagan isles remained in the spreading Christian sea.”

“This was a tragic shift from the primitive simplicity that the church of Jesus Christ first knew. The first-century Christians were opposed to the world’s systems and avoided any contact with paganism. This all changed during the fourth century, when the church emerged as a public institution in the world and began to “absorb and Christianize pagan religious ideas and practices.

“As one historian put it, “Church buildings took the place of temples; church endowments replaced temple lands and funds.”

“Under Constantine, tax-exempt status was granted for all church property.

“Consequently, the story of the church building is the sad saga of Christianity borrowing from heathen culture and radically transforming the face of our faith.

“To put it bluntly, the church buildings of the Constantinian and post-Constantinian era essentially became holy shrines. The Christians embraced the concept of the physical temple. They imbibed the pagan idea that there exists a special place where God dwells in a special way. And that place is made “with hands.”‘ (Once again, I ask, WHAT WOULD YOU CALL AN ACT LIKE THAT?)

“As with other pagan customs that were absorbed into the Christian faith (such as the liturgy, the sermon, clerical vestments, and hierarchical leadership structure), third- and fourth-century Christians incorrectly attributed the origin of the church building to the Old Testament. But this was misguided thinking.”

“Most Americans are struggling to clarify their identity. They tend to see themselves as unique individuals, Americans, members of their family, occupational professionals, consumers, and then as followers of Christ — in that order of priority.

“In the minds and hearts of most Americans — even those whose beliefs classify them as “born-again Christians”— their identity as a follower of Christ pales in importance in comparison to the other roles they embrace. (WHAT WOULD YOU CALL THAT MINDSET?)

“Oddly, most of the born again Christians consider themselves to be servants of God and to have been transformed by their faith in Christ.

“Clearly, there are some missing connections in this self-evaluation. Perhaps the confusion is due to the enormous number of inter-actions and responsibilities that people take on each day.

“Maybe it has to do with the disjointed, topical teaching that most of us receive from our churches. It may even be attributable to the lure of competing perspectives and images bombarding us from the ever-present media.

Whatever the reason for the drift from the Jesus model, it seems that people in general and Christians specifically are just tired of the ever-expanding institutional, 501-c-3, tax-exempt, nationalistic, politically oriented, culturally influenced, entertainment and leisure centered church. Most of us are looking for relief. Relief from sin, sickness, worry, doubt, anger, conflicts, poverties, guilt, shame, loneliness, suffering personal loss, rejection and all that this world inflicts upon us. A spiritual connection to and with God that transcends the systems, methods and ways of this world. A spiritual connection that is tangible and transformative – into the likeness and means of Jesus. A spiritual connection that visible in the life of a believer; One that overcomes this world’s troubles in fact and in the mind and heart of a believer. We want to belong. We want to be loved. We want to truly experience a love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, patience, and self-control that the world does not and cannot offer.

So, please dear Christians, dear pastors, dear church leaders, dear churches, stop it. Stop saying one thing and doing another. It can no longer be “we 4 and no more” attitude and practice, (a mindset where a group believes they often exclude others outside their formed circle. This attitude creates division and a lack of love among different Christian denominations or groups.).

There. Now I have said it! Let’s move on to what a “Spiritually Balanced Church in This Culture Might Look Like”.

Your Brother and Friend,

Mike Young