We didn’t set out to be “different” in our church experience. In fact, for more than 40 years, we have been mainstream traditional church leaders, a lay pastor and worship leader, teachers in a local congregation. For the last 15 years, however, we’ve puzzled over trends in the church, declining attendance and a loss of longtime leaders. Mathematically, we could see that small churches struggle to stay afloat. But why? Are the leaders overworked from wearing too many hats and having too many responsibilities? Do people stop coming because we aren’t “cool” enough, not high tech enough? Because we don’t have great musicians or a worship band? Do they leave because of apostasy, some secret sin in their lives? Or are they upset about something someone said or did?
I was especially interested in the answers to these questions because I myself was struggling with church attendance. I continued to lead out because I felt needed. There were so few willing to be leaders in our small church. I was concerned that my not attending would cause someone else to become discouraged and stay home, too. And I told myself that my purpose for going to church was to BE a blessing, not to GET a blessing. It didn’t matter that I didn’t enjoy the weekly services, it mattered that I was contributing to the program, helping and encouraging others. And that rationale worked for a few years.
Ultimately, however, I realized I was dragging myself to church each week. I didn’t look forward to it; I even tried to find valid excuses to stay home. I thought about the situation for months and months. I’d been in churches trying to imitate the megachurches with their flashy worship services and bands. Some worship leaders tried hard to turn conservative churches into charismatic ones. That left me cold. It was like being part of a play; it seemed superficial and shallow, even manipulative. Underneath it all, there was something missing, something very vital and central that wasn’t happening.
Church became an increasing round of preliminaries: activities leading up to the sermon that took larger and larger chunks of time. No matter how carefully we chose the music for the song service, no matter how creatively we presented the Scripture reading, what wasn’t happening was worship and spiritual growth. We were tickling the emotions, but it wasn’t leading to changed lives and a closer walk with the Lord. And we discovered an increasing number of members who showed up “late” in the service, arriving just as the sermon was beginning. Apparently they didn’t think the preliminaries were all that important either.
As we studied and prayed over these concerns, we began to wonder if what we did week after week was really the whole picture. Was all of it necessary? Were we beating a dead horse, trying to regenerate something that was dead because it needed to die?
There’s a great podcast that expresses a lot of this “journey” we’re on, and a great website at unchurching.com that you would probably find edifying. But here’s their first podcast: