In my last post, I talked about the shift toward multi-site churches that has occurred over the past decade or so. This shift has been so subtle and also has met with such little resistance that it has become commonplace today without many people even realizing it.
One of the other shifts that has occurred in recent years has to do with church attendance. As I mentioned in a previous post, I grew up as a pastor’s son. When we said went to church, we went to church. In fact, when I was a kid, our Wednesday night attendance was nearly that of our Sunday morning and Sunday night attendance. If the doors of the church were open, we went to church. It was the same for our small community. Attending church regularly meant that you were there every Sunday morning, at least 3 out of 4 Sunday nights and no less than 2 out of 4 Wednesday evening services each month.
Going to church was just one of those things you did if you were a Christian. Even as I got older and had a choice about whether to go to church, I went. I didn’t have many friends in school. All of my best friends went to church with me. It may not have been the right motivation, but I went to church to see my friends. We had the same ushers every week. The same person taught our Sunday School class each week. The pianist and organist were there every week. At every service!
But if we look at statistics for church attendance today, we will see that church attendance has been steadily declining over the past decade or so. Yet, despite the decline in attendance, nearly 80% of people self-identify as Christians. Where is the disconnect? It’s in the frequency that people attend. Where everyone went to church every week in the 50’s, 60’s and even the 70’s, the frequency with which people attended church has declined over the past 20 years.
As Thom Rainer points out in his post on this subject, If the frequency of attendance changes, then attendance will respond accordingly. For example, if 200 members attend every week the average attendance is, obviously, 200. But if one-half of those members miss only one out of four weeks, the attendance drops to 175. Did you catch that? No members left the church. Everyone is still relatively active in the church. But attendance declined over 12 percent because half the members changed their attendance behavior slightly. [1]
There are several reasons for this trend. First, Cultural Christians no longer see the need to go to church every week. Going to church weekly used to be normal behavior for Christians. But despite attending church, there were a lot of attenders who never got involved in the church. They sat in their pews or seats each week and listened to the preacher preach and then went home and had Sunday dinner and watched football. There was no engagement with the church. That is no longer the case. Attending church every week is no longer seen as one of the necessary requisites for sustaining Christianity. There are several reasons for this shift in thinking that I won’t go into in this post.
The second reason for less frequent attendance is the proliferation of single and blended families. If we consider that having shared custody of a child may mean that you get that child every other weekend, that has affected church attendance. Those with smaller children may attend church only on the weeks that they have the children – in order to take them to church. On the other hand, many families who share custody, particularly with older children will not come to church on the weeks that they have custody in order to spend more time with their children.
The last reason I want to focus on has a couple of different factors that affect it. First, the rise of technology, and second, a valid reason to attend. With the relatively quick rise of technology, it is no longer necessary to go to a local church to hear great music and listen to a great message by a nationally recognized leader. Anyone with a smartphone can tune into great services each week that are headlined by speakers such as Andy Stanley, Steven Furtick or Brian Houston just to name a few. Why get out of bed and go to a church when I can stay in my own living room with a cup of coffee and listen to whoever I want on my computer or phone? Sure, we had TV preachers back in the day, but with the technology available to today’s youth, in particular, they no longer view community in terms of flesh and blood connection. They’re perfectly comfortable with connecting through technology.
There are a number of other reasons that are affecting church attendance. There is a definite shift toward less frequent attendance though. If we are going to combat or offset this issue we’re going to need to create an environment in our churches that give people a reason to attend more frequently. For help creating that environment in your church, contact us! We have solid, proven plans for closing the back door and keeping more of the people who visit your church.
Check back next time for more trends in the church. Follow me on twitter for more trends, leadership and church growth tips.
