Dwindling Attendance in Churches – II

In part one of the series about dwindling church attendance in churches, I looked at children and youth ministry. A church in decline often is lacking in prioritizing children’s ministry. Today I look at another aspect from the local article. …Traditions and inability to change.

The article states, “While long serving as centers of urban social and worship life, city churches are self-managed, independent of government, and even denominational oversight in many cases. That lack of coordination and communication made adapting to the changing demographics of the city a more difficult transition.” I find it interesting that the article notes that the churches being independent is a leading factor of the churches being unable to change and adapt to the culture around them.  If the church is working in the community, reaching out to them, living among them, then wouldn’t they have a sense of the culture and more easily adapt than if an outsider was directing them?

Could it be that the inability to adapt was the comfort of traditions and the ways things have been done?

The article also spoke about the potential for churches to merge as they decreased in size to make one larger, more viable community, but it was stated that, “They (the churches) are not ready to merge yet,” …. “Mergers are more difficult than they sound. The attachment to buildings is strong.”

“The attachment to buildings is strong”. Buildings hold a lot of memories and sometimes a lot of invested “sweat equity”. We cling to buildings and things and forget that we are mere stewards of them.

In this age of declining attendance, some of the factors may be the focus being removed from serving God, to serving traditions or facilities. The building does not make a group of people a “church”, it is a place to meet and as noted in the article, to reach the community.

There may be an upside to the decline in church attendance. We’ll take a look at that in the next post.