Monthly Archives: May 2016

In this post on some of the shifts taking place in the American Church, I want to tie into some of what I posted last week. In my last post, I discussed the shift taking place in church attendance. One of the factors in that shift has its roots in technology. This brings us to a shift in the focus of the church. People are attending church less often because they don’t see the benefit of attending. And often times, there isn’t any real benefit in church attendance.  Why would I get out of bed on a Sunday morning, get dressed and go to a local church if I can sit at home in my pajamas and watch some great worship, preaching or teaching on my TV, computer or phone? This brings up the shift that is taking place in churches by necessity. The experience of attending a local church must be greater than just the content alone.

Great content can be found anywhere on the web. So in order to continue attracting people to our churches, we must make the experience greater than simply great music and an engaging sermon. There must be something else. Something that answers the question for you: Why would anyone want to come to my church? As we discussed last week, it is simply not enough to expect that all Christians will come to church weekly. That mindset has shifted in our culture. We need more than just an expectation that people’s sense of Christian duty will drive them to our churches week after week. What are some of the things that will attract and keep more people?

1. A sense of something bigger. People – and especially younger people – feel a need to be a part of something bigger than themselves. People don’t need more entertainment. They can find entertainment more now than at any other time in history. They don’t need to be entertained in church. They need a sense of God. People can find great content online, but they can feel like they are a part of something greater than themselves spiritually only through attending a local church. The church as a whole is shifting toward a more focused sense of mission as opposed to vision. Knowing why you exist is becoming more important that the methods by which you carry out that mission.
2. Community. People can enjoy great content online, but they don’t get a sense of community by streaming a service from a church on the other side of the country. Even younger people who have grown up with technology and who have a different definition of “community” than us older folks, want real, genuine community. The trend of multi-site churches has reinforced the idea that people actually want smaller, more intimate settings for church. If you want more people in your church, you need to place more emphasis on things like small groups, discipleship classes, and ministries that cater to specific needs, such as single parenting, marriage, and finances. If we’re talking about attracting more young people to the church, the most positive church experiences among millennials are relational.
3. An opportunity to serve. One of the things that you absolutely cannot do by streaming church on Sunday is to be actively involved in the mission of the local church. You can only do that through attendance. Depending on the level of involvement, you may even be required to attend more often than you normally would. The key to active involvement though is not simply plugging bodies into positions. That may actually lead to less attendance. The key is to find people’s passion and plug them in where their passion lies. To do this may require some up-front work on the part of the church, but it is well worth the investment of time and, in some cases, a little money. At our church, we use three tools to help us identify passion. We use StrengthsFinder to help us identify natural talent and abilities, and we use the True Colors personality test to help us identify personality types. We also use the Saddleback Spiritual Gifts test to help identify spiritual gifting. I am not involved in any way with these products. I am just giving you the tools that we use. They may or may not be suitable for your use. Once we have identified a person’s natural abilities, their spiritual giftings, and their personality types, it becomes much easier to plug them into a ministry that they will enjoy being a part of. If they enjoy doing something, chances are that they will burn out less often, show up more often, and be better equipped to do the work of the ministry than if we had just plugged a ministry hole with a body.

Of course, there are many other factors that affect a dwindling frequency of church attendance. Quality child care, friendliness of current members, and relevance of not just the message, but the overall experience to their lives. As the baby boomers age out, a younger generation shifts into place in our churches, as it did when our parents grew older. While THE church will always survive, if individual churches are to survive. there must be some further, intentional shifting toward this younger generation. I’ll address that in my next post.

Remember to follow me on twitter (@RealTomRawlings) for more leadership and church growth posts as well as more trending ideas.

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 in to 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 connection 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 gives people a reason to attend more frequently.

Check back next time for more trends in the church. Follow me on twitter (@RealTomRawlings) for more trends, leadership and church growth tips.