WHO WORSHIPS TODAY?
Remember the good ol' days in church when the attendance was posted at a prominent spot each and every Sunday?
In some churches it was a surprise if attendance figures went up or down by more than three or four people each Sunday. It was so predictable in the church where I grew up that if attendance was off by a handful, a special meeting of the church council was called for Sunday afternoon.
That's not the case anymore. Nobody worries about attendance. Everybody knows it's way off. Everybody knows also that only old people go to church regularly. They know too, that mostly women attend church, and only God knows what the men are doing.
You have to wonder why nobody cares if our churches are empty. In the congregation where I worship nearly every Sunday, the sanctuary is about one-fifth full on a given Sunday. One-fifth full means if your sanctuary holds 250 people, most Sundays there would be only about 40 people to 50 people in attendance.
Further, almost all of the people who do faithfully come to worship are elderly, a sea of gray hair and fallen arches. It's really not funny. When we look at Sunday morning populations, it's obvious the church has lost at least two generations of people.
What a shock, to awaken from a deep slumber that started back in the 1960s and discover the people have found other things to do on Sunday morning.
No more boring worship. Now you can take a Sunday morning off from worship duty and see the action. You'll find some people jogging or heading off to a gym where they will ride exercise bikes, run on treadmills, lift weights, play basketball or volleyball.
Coffee shops are full of people on Sunday morning. Bookstores are doing a hearty business. Grocery stores consider Sunday morning important retail time.
There are concerts, art exhibits, lectures, discussions, classes and seminars to ease the troubled body or soul. You can go to your yoga instructor to loosen that clenched joint or rush over to your meditation guru and get tips on how to latch on to serenity.
So ABC News did a survey and found that only 38 percent of Americans say they attend worship once a week. Sixty percent of people 65 years and older attend once a week. But only 28 percent of people in the 18 to 30 year old category go to church weekly.
And it's also a gender and geographic issue. In the Southern United States, forty-four percent of women attend worship weekly while only 32 percent of southern men.
And here's the big turn-about: 46 percent of Protestants attend church weekly while only 38 percent of Catholics do. That's because 42 percent of Protestant men, but only 26 percent of Catholic men, attend weekly.
The point is, nobody pays any attention to attendance figures anymore. In fact, I believe church leaders are afraid to tell parishioners what's really happening to worship. Truthfully, worship will be gone in 20 years if present trends continue.
There will be islands of activity - big, bully churches that draw five to ten thousand people a weekend. But most of our ordinary churches, the little congregations on the corners of our neighborhoods, will be empty. Does anyone care?
Clark D. Morphew
Posted For 3-20-02