As a Lutheran pastor, I often find myself in conversations revolving around this question. In essence, the question being asked is why there is a void of younger people in church on Sundays.
There's not an easy answer to this question, because young people are in churches on Sundays, though not often in the same kinds of churches as those asking this question.
A deeper, related question is this: Why are churches that have existed for more than 100 years closing their doors now (in the 2000s and 2010s)? This is the question I am wrestling with most these days.
Let me share a few observations I've come to conclude about this complex issue:
- We live in a much different world today than in decades past. While some things never seem to change, many things have. Our world, and societal values, have shifted significantly. Religious attitudes have also changed. More and more people now claim "none" as their religious affiliation. In fact, the Pew Research Center found that, as of 2014, 23% of adults in the U.S. now describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”1 Many adults who were raised in the Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, or Episcopal faith traditions are disaffiliating from those traditions, choosing now to claim a title of "spiritual" or simply "none" at all. Some of this disaffiliation from the church can be traced to increased skepticism in an institution that once claimed a moral authority, but has, in recent decades, been embroiled in many monetary and sexual scandals.
- We live in a consumer culture. Almost every city in America has a Walmart ... and a McDonalds ... and multiple grocery stores. Many have the competitors as well ... Target, Lowes, Home Depot, Big Lots, Best Buy, Panera, Applebee's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Aldi, Starbucks, and on and on. We have a plethora of options for our shopping and dining needs. This fact has led us to consume church in the same way. A person today can be extremely selective as to which store (online or physical) has the most options at the best prices. Churches are now selected in a similar manner. Many people want an optimal service time, a preferred musical style, a relevant and topical sermon, a coffee bar, and a great environment for children—all in one church. And most people can find this very kind of church in their city. The churches that cater to all of these preferences are the ones growing and thriving today. Older churches with less resources simply can't compete (and yes, sadly, it has become a kind of competition).
- Sundays are now as busy as any other day of the week. This wasn't the case a couple of decades ago. Sundays were, even in the 1980s, still considered generally sacred by most people. That meant that the center of a community's activity, on Sunday, was the church. It was the place where one would go to see friends and colleagues...and to be seen by friends and colleagues. There was more of a societal expectation to attend church. Similarly, most businesses were closed on Sundays and youth sporting events were confined to weekdays and Saturdays. This is not the case today. There are many competing options for peoples' time, even on Sundays. And when a parent or grandparent has to choose between going to church or seeing their little one play soccer or baseball, guess which one wins the day?
- There is also a generational divide that still exists, perhaps more prominently than in decades past. Blame it on a digital technology gap ... blame it on changing societal and political attitudes ... blame it on whatever. What is hard to overcome is that younger people are often attracted to different styles of church worship than their parents or grandparents. And people also tend to migrate to people within their age bracket. That means that younger people tend to go to the church with other younger people, and older people tend to go to the church with other older people. There may be nothing wrong with this generational divide, but it's a factor not to be overlooked.
I have heard and read about many mainline Protestant churches that are now closing their doors, due to a lack of persons and resources to keep their ministries going. This is often very sad. It is always hard when an institution, which has done so much good for a community, ceases to be. But behind the laments are the lingering questions of why. "Why did we have to close?" "What did we do wrong?"
The purpose of this blog is to provide some answer to those "why" questions. There are a myriad of reasons as to why a particular congregation closes, but typically these churches didn't do anything wrong. They just found themselves in the middle of a changing culture and were unable to adapt ... because adapting would have meant losing the very essence of who they were.
Is there any hope left for smaller, mainline Protestant churches?
I'm certain there is hope ... but the factors above need to be thoroughly discussed, too. Changes may need to be made. And finding a new normal, in terms of demographics and attendance expectations, will be necessary. But there is still hope—a house of worship is always a place of hope.
1 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/14/the-factors-driving-the-growth-of-religious-nones-in-the-u-s/
