And a growing number of kids are playing on teams that require travel. Higher focus on kids’ activitiesĪ growing number of kids are playing sports. It’s perhaps fuelling some of the reasons outlined below.
And, arguably, that affluence may be one of the factors moving them further away from a committed engagement with the mission of the local church. I’m simply showing that this seems to be what’s happening.Īnd again…people with money have options. I’m not arguing things should be this way. Naturally, this leaves a huge theological void about ministry to and with the poor, but it helps explain what’s actually happening in the suburbs and increasingly with the re-urbanization of many cities as the affluent move back downtown. There are simply more affluent people than there were decades ago, which may in part explain why so many “average’ people indulge their obsessions with granite countertops, designer homes, and decent cars, even without being mega-wealthy. Both US and Canadian personal disposable incomes are at all-time highs. The middle class is shrinking, but as this New York Times report shows, it’s shrinking (in part) because more of the middle class is becoming upper class. If your church is at all engaging the middle class, the upper-middle class, or a suburban demographic, an interesting trend is developing. So…why are even committed attenders attending less often? There are at least 10 reasons. The first key to addressing what’s happening is to understand what’s happening. But attendance is a sign of something deeper that every church leader will have to wrestle with over the next few years. Of course, church attendance is never the goal. It probably marks a seismic shift in how the church will do ministry in the future. It impacts almost every church regardless of size, denomination, or even location. This trend isn’t going away…in fact (as the podcasts will show) it’s accelerating, 7 Ways to Grow Church Attendance By Increasing Engagement.10 Predictions About the Future Church And Shifting Attendance Patterns.5 Ways to Embrace Infrequent Church Attenders.John Mark Comer on Secular Salvation and Post Christian America ( Episode 316 of my Leadership Podcast).This topic comes up a lot, and some other resources that can help you do a deeper dive include:
#FREE TIME TAKES PRIORITY OVER COMMITTED TIME. SERIES#
This isn’t a post about why people have left the church (that’s a different subject.) This is the first in a series of posts about church attenders who love God, appreciate the local church, and are even involved in the local church, but who simply attend less often. But the conversation persists and, to many leaders, feels much more urgent. I first wrote about this in a post called 7 Ways to Respond as People Attend Church Less Often. Sure, the trend has been happening for years (gone are the days when people attended 50 out of 52 Sundays), but the issue has reached a tipping point in the church over the last decade. The issue? Even committed church attenders are attending church less often. It comes up in a surprising number of conversations a lot.Īnd no one’s quite sure how to respond to it.
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