Few people will argue that church attendance in many churches in America is declining. Our own research indicates that the majority of churches in our country are not growing.
Most of us have our own ideas why attendance is declining. Many have suggested that our nation is shifting away from its Christian roots, and thus the churches are declining as a smaller proportion of our country are believers in Christ.
I certainly will not argue with that premise. Certainly attendance declines are related to massive cultural shifts in our nation. But I would also suggest that one reason for declines has a greater impact than others.
The Frequency Issue
Stated simply, the number one reason for the decline in church attendance is that members attend with less frequency than they did just a few years ago. Allow me to explain.
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.
This phenomenon can take place rather quickly in an individual church. And leaders in the church are often left scratching their heads because the behavioral change is so slight, almost imperceptible. We really don’t notice when someone who attends four times a month begins to attend only three times a month. Nor do we typically catch it when the twice-a-month attendee becomes a once-a-month attendee.
Five Possible Approaches to the Problem
Of course, the heart of the problem is not declining numbers but waning commitment. As I addressed in my book, I Am a Church Member, church membership is becoming less and less meaningful in many churches. As membership becomes less meaningful, commitment naturally wanes.
While I don’t want to suggest there is a magic bullet to this problem, I do want to offer some approaches to address it. These five have proven to be the most helpful in hundreds of churches:
- Raise the expectations of membership. You may be surprised how many church members don’t really think it’s that important to be an active part of the church. No one has ever told them differently.
- Require an entry class for membership. By doing so, the church makes a statement that membership is meaningful. The class should also be used to state the expectations of what a committed member looks like.
- Encourage ministry involvement. Many members become less frequent attendees because they have no ministry roles in the church. They do not feel like they are an integral part of the church.
- Offer more options for worship times. Our culture is now a 24/7 population. Some members have to work during the times of worship services. If possible, give them options. One businessman recently told me that he changed congregations to a church that offered a Saturday worship time because his job required him to catch a plane on Sunday morning.
- Monitor attendance of each member. This approach is often difficult, especially for worship attendance. That is why the traditional Sunday school approach of calling absentees was so effective. Perhaps churches can incorporate that approach in all groups. Members are less likely to be absent if they know someone misses them.
When Church Membership Becomes Meaningful
People want to be a part of something that makes a difference. They desire to be involved in something bigger than themselves.
Unfortunately, in many churches membership has become less and less meaningful. Until we get our churches back to the committed membership the Apostle Paul mandates in 1 Corinthians 12, we will continue to see declining attendance. But when membership becomes truly meaningful, our churches will become an unstoppable force for the Kingdom and glory of God.
Posted on August 19, 2013
With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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280 Comments
The idea promoted by Al Mohler and others that we can equate church growth, personal Christian growth and maturity with a certain style of preaching is irrational and unbiblical. It is not what Jesus did or taught. Anyone who knows anything about education, especially adult education, understands that lectures of talking heads of any kind are very poor as producers of change, growth and action.
For every hour of lecturing Jesus and Paul spent days of personal interactions in very close relationships that have talks, modeling, experience, assessing effectiveness, etc. it is like trying to prepare a ball team for games with a 30 minute lecture and 10 minutes of cheerleaders singing old battle songs.
Thom, thanks for the timely article – our staff was discussing this in our meeting just yesterday! I believe you make some great points and you obviously hit a nerve with the number of replies posted. As you mentioned in #5, Sunday School (or some small group ministry) is a great avenue to address this situation. First, it shares the load. The bigger the church = the more absentees. Plus, in my experience, you can’t wait until they miss several times to contact them or they develop the habit of not attending. Second, in sharing the responsibility with the church members thru something like Sunday School, we are teaching people to be responsible and accountable to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.
There will always be absentees that staff pastors should follow up. As churches get bigger pastors tend to work with the people less and less becoming managers of a corporation instead of shepherds of the flock. But most churches have too many absentees for the staff alone to pursue.
My biggest leadership issue with this is convincing my small group leaders to do this consistently. “m not sure why they don’t do it. My theory is that is not necessarily flashy work and it is something that must be done week after week. But I wish my leaders would see the value of the loving personal contact.
Thanks for the post!
Thanks so much Jeff!
Just stopping back by in Baptist territory to encourage all of you with your proposals for new methods and techniques to read one of your own denominational leader’s comments on this subject. Albert Mohler’s comments can be found on his blog at this link:
http://www.albertmohler.com/2013/08/19/expository-preaching-the-antidote-to-anemic-worship/
I wonder how he would respond to your telling of the businessman who “changed congregations to a church [i.e. another congregation] that offered a Saturday worship time because his job required him to catch a plane on Sunday morning.” Do you think Dr. Mohler would move corporate worship service to a more convenient time/day, or might he instead preach on the Fourth Commandment? What is your objective of corporate worship: To worship God as He has directed in His Word or to increase your head count? Are some of you really asking how are WE going to save all of these lost people and recover our “dying churches” if we have to do corporate worship God’s way instead of OUR way? Which one of you wants to tell God that His directions on how He tells us to worship Him are … well, that His directives are just out of touch and no longer work? We almost sound like Dostoevsky’s tale of the priest who told Jesus that His unexpected return was a real hindrance to the work of the church. According to the priest, if only Jesus had agreed just that one time to bow down to the devil, we would have had all these people in all of these kingdoms.
In the words of the Psalmist, in your corporate worship may you both bless God and bless His Holy name.
Brother Andy,
You have hit the nail on the head. If we, the Church, fail to submit to God’s will in the process of working out our attendance problems, then we can no longer claim that we are the Body of Jesus Christ. Obedience to God’s Holy Word must be the foundation of any plans or decisions we make.
Thank-you for calling me brother. Maybe I should visit your congregation’s worship service. Don’t worry about a “system “to catch this visitor as I will be easy to spot: I will be the guy who stands up with a Bible while the Scriptures are being read. (Luke 4:16)
I am not sure if Dr. Mohler would preach on the 4th Commandment. Dr. Thomas R, Schreiner, one of the premier Professors at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is a proponent of an antinomian view of Christianity. Does Dr. Mohler hold to the same view?
“When discussing Passover, I noted that believers are not required to observe the feasts, festivals, and special days of the Old Testament calendar. This includes the Sabbath, even though the Sabbath is part of the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:8-11). Such a judgment surprises some, but it must be recognized that the entirety of the Old Testament law is abrogated in Christ.” – Thomas R. Schreiner “40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law” page 91.
From my experience, I no longer attend because a minister and members of his church judged me based on a long-time member speaking untruths of me. The minister even told me that he believed the long-time member because he “knew her longer” And my money just doesn’t smell as big as hers either. A lot of judgment and no communication. I’ll volunteer throughout the community, “do good” for others through area events and my own efforts to help others but my faith, prayer and studies of the Bible will rest in my own hands now. And how many others around the world feel the same way? Probably a larger number. I don’t think your 1 – 5 suggestions is enough….it goes beyond that. Trust. Honesty. Understanding. Communication. Acceptance.
In order to grow in Christ, a person has to be accountable to other believers. There are other churches and other bible studies. Look into Bible Study Fellowship in your area. No one is allowed to say what church they attend while studying the bible together. It helped in my healing to be around people that came from many different churches and denominations that were all a part of the body of Christ.
In one church I served we wrestled with the question of “What constitutes faithful attendance?” This was during a period when the church grew from 500 to 3000 over three years’ time. We reached out to others in our network, did a bit of research and reading and came to the unhappy conclusion that “faithful attendance” was two worship services per month.
Then we started to ask, ‘Should regular attendance in a high-function small group be factored into this? If someone attends worship twice per month but never misses small group, does that constitute a significant commitment to the ‘little ekklesia’?” Since our small group ministry was still in roll out phase at that time (our penetration was about 40% participation in small groups) we decided to table that and revisit later. (I’ve since moved on from that church four years ago, so I don’t know if they ever did pick it up again)
So I don’t have a good answer to the question of “What constitutes faithful attendance?”, but I do suspect there’s an unspoken cause here that we’ve not touched on in this discussion.
Our collective experience with over 150 client churches in the last 15 years is that there is a significant problem and widespread failure in the American pulpit.
Specifically, most preaching (at least in the churches that become our clients) boils down to little more than Christian moralism: “Don’t do this, do that, and you’ll be happy/have a rewarding life.” There is precious little effort at biblical exposition and even less at training believers how to think from a Christian worldview. There is still less effort at showing believers *how* to make the truths of passages like Romans 5-8, Galatians 2:20, 5:18ff work out in daily life.
In fact, I would venture to say (working from memory here, which is always a risky proposition) that I have in all the years of doing interim work followed only one good expositor (he left under duress related to health issues). The rest of them were, well, not good expositors of the Word. I have not polled my colleagues on this but I’m confident they would say much the same
The American pulpit has trained churchgoers to gather up three points, a puppy story and a poem with an application or two for the week. But they’re not challenged to think deeply, rarely encouraged to engage the values and systems of thought that conspire to make the blandishments of the world, the flesh and the devil so enticing and they’re never left wondering “Can these things be true? I must study this for myself.”
If the nostrum is true that “the church becomes like its pastor in seven years” (and I believe it is true), then perhaps we pastors need to look in the mirror and ask, “What am I doing that has contributed to or exacerbated the problem of less than acceptable attendance?” Or perhaps we should let the mirror of the Word (2 Corinthians 3, James 1) look at us for a while?
Maybe the problem lies with the physician rather than the patient?
I apologize if this has come across as a rant rather than passion and conviction!
perhaps if we quit running the church like the world runs j.c.penny etc. we’d see more spiritual results vs. carnal results. just a thought.
i concur, “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”…its a teachers task to instruct/direct but not to always teach….we must pick up our bibles and read, study and mature in the word…Pastors ought to be encouraging their flock to read! why aren’t they doing this? maybe bc if they insisted they would be out of a job?? furthermore, it is my position that pastors ought to keep a day job just like the rest of us….Sunday is just one day of teaching….what exactly are they doing the other 6? it is not up to the body to support it’s leaders… j/s
Change the title “member” to “owner.” Membership implies entitlement, ownership implies commitment. Owners behave (or should behave) differently than members. Let’s start having Ownership Classes.