Regular Worship?

Get ready for a rough ride when it comes to worship attendance.

People who considered themselves "regular worshipers" used to be in the pew nearly every Sunday. Now if people show up twice a month they consider themselves regular.

My buddy, John Lestock, at Trinity in Owatonna, MN (my first church) wrote an article on the cover of their monthly parish paper lamenting the fact that they have grown to 4200 members in the last decade (I think there were 3000 members when I left), but have gone DOWN in worship attendance 15% in that same time.

Yeah, you heard right.

How can you grow by 1000 members and lose worshippers?

I'd love to entertain some threads on this, and the future of the Google Generation's idea of what it means to belong to the church.

Post something and let's get going.

Comments

[Lynn Scarpine]

I may be a tad late to this conversation, however this is what I think: have and are we teaching/preaching about worshipping God everyday in our lives? To truly "be on one's knees" in front of His cross daily in whatever form it takes; physically kneeling, mentally kneeling, emotionally kneeling, and spiritually kneeling as we go about our busy lives. I have found preaching about daily personal worship of the Lord, that intimate relationship which is not replicable, leads to a sense of natural-ness about corporate worship on Sundays. Just saying...

[Brianferry]

I'm not so sure anyone has told people otherwise. We shy away from letting people know what's expected of them. It's a new antinomianism bred from a hyper-politeness that will accept the scraps and leftovers (of people's time) from the world's table. Have we told people they OUGHT to worship weekly? And if we have do they not believe us because all we've done is create a snappy, third rate Christianized "show" where all they are ever challenged to do for participation is MAYBE clap their hands? I'm just saying...

[Bryce Fellbaum]

In the "old days" when they had multiple points and traveling preachers some of the folks still alive and worshiping now only had church once a month. The habit stuck with many people.