Church Attendance Declines

In 60 years of regular and involved church life, I’ve watched congregations come and go. Mostly go, as in attendance. Down, down, down.


Every group has attendance fluctuations; that’s normal. Trends up or down tell part of the story; movement of data doesn’t explain the why or what to do about it. For churches – whether Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Jewish Synagogues, Muslim or protestant Christian denominations, attendance has been down.


Ask a cross section of individuals if they are currently regularly attending church, you will likely find them not. Less than 30% attend regularly. In fact, the number is more like 23%.  This figure is much different if you asked the same cross section of individuals if they consider themselves a believer in a specific religious tradition, and the results would soar to 60% or higher. Ask those same people if they are spiritual rather than religious, and you would get even higher participation.


There is more interest in spiritual matters and general religion than there is in church attendance. Why that is so remains an open question in need of more research.


I know my kids were raised in a protestant church tradition. So was I. And the kids witnessed my church activities through the years. We asked them to attend church and Sunday school as regularly as possible up to the age of 13 or 14. After that they were on their own to decide if they wished to retain a relationship with the congregation. In college, I suspect they ceased all church connections.

But that’s my family – white Anglo-Saxon protestant. I think both Catholics and Jews have better attendance and participation rates. They too, however, have the same drop-off of young adults from high school through college. In the past young families returned to church when babies arrived. Not so much today.


What else is happening in modern churches?  It is easier to say what is not happening. As America’s demographics shift to more diversity, churchgoers are more diverse but separated. Ethnic churches remain ethnic; white congregations remain white. Economic groupings keep to themselves. Educated groupings remain close to one another. In short, we are self-selecting ourselves into ghettoes of similarity.


As a society we are more diverse. As social associations, we are segregated.


If we pride ourselves being diverse in so many ways, then why are our special associations not as diverse?  This conclusion is fairly made with churches. If churches wish to grow and prosper in their interests and accompanying finances, then they must grow in diversity to mirror society’s growth in diversity.


Period. If your church is not a cross section of your community or your county, then you are not welcoming those different from yourselves. How do we claim to be relevant to our society when we are not representative of our own national diversity?


Diversity. Inclusivity. Of all God’s people: ethnicities, genders, gender identities, ages, skin colors – all of these things. And yes, socio-economic diversity as well as educational experience.


How can we be relevant when we don’t even know people different from us?  How is that relevant?

Transitioning to relevancy via full diversity will not be easy. Ask the southern states how easily they accommodated integrated public schools? Ask Kansas City how they managed finally to gain integrate public schools. How did California, New York, and major cities throughout the nation handle integrated public education?  You know this was difficult. Proof is the present state of segregation and unequal schools within most communities of America.


If public accommodations are difficult to integrate, how will churches accomplish it?


I don’t have answers to this. I do have a question: if we claim to be inclusive churches, where are the membership and attendance data to support such claims?


If we want this to be the outcome, how do we make it happen?


July 10, 2019