The REAL Reasons People Don’t Attend Church

Over the past few months I have been reading many articles and blogs on the subject of why people don’t go to church. It is a popular subject for those of us who are concerned with dwindling attendance at Sunday worship in our churches.

We (Church lay leaders and pastors) think people should come to church for several reasons.

• It is what we do. If it is important to me, it should be important to you.
• We like the people in our churches.
• When people don’t show up, we feel like failures.
• When people don’t show up we think they don’t like our preaching. (We preachers have rather fragile egos.)
• We really do think church attendance can have a positive effect on your life and is good for you.
• Churches spend most of their energies, time and resources preparing for Sunday worship so small attendance figures are disappointing.
• Attendance on Sunday mornings is one of the basic ways we measure success.

So we church leaders are very concerned when you don’t show up to worship. We worry about it. We study the phenomenon. We talk at length about it. It is the central topic of discussion at our staff meetings. Articles and blogs are written on the subject every week. Why, we want to know, are fewer and fewer people attending church worship services?

The answer is easy. People don’t go to church because they don’t want to. I’m sure there are many reasons for them to feel this way.

• Non churchgoers believe they have better things to do than spend most of Sunday morning sitting in a church worship service. It looks like a waste of time.
• They believe church sounds boring.
• Church people sound like they would be no fun to be around – serious and more interested in rules than people.
• There are some pretty interesting news programs on Sunday morning television.
• We are watching the Breaking Bad marathon this weekend.
• Taking up Sunday morning with church shoots a hole in the day.
• The family wants to go away for the weekend.
• Living the Christian life (really living it) is very difficult.
• If church is so unattractive perhaps heaven is too.
• It’s a whole lot easier to make up my own God and worship him, her or it at my convenience.

I can understand why the self-made God many in our culture choose to worship is so alluring. Allow me to share an email from an old friend that speaks to this allure.

Dear Bill,

Just a thought I want to share.

So I heard some woman the other day say:

"Oh I took a walk in the woods and I just felt so close to God and it was wonderful and warm feelings and happy and fuzzy and nice things and smile" and so forth and so on.

After a moment I thought "What the heck?  When I feel close to God....He tells me to do stuff!  And it's usually stuff I don't want to do.  I mean stuff like "Get involved more"  "What have you been doing lately?"  "You haven't read your Bible much lately...but you've got time for Facebook, I see"  "Some kids need a scholarship for Bible camp"  "Have you been praying for your guys in your Men’s Group?"

God is not always warm and fuzzy and surrounded by flowers.

There are many reasons that I attend church on Sundays. Central to them all is a belief that it is where God wants me to be.

Copyright © 2015, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Bill McConnell is Senior Minister at Lindenwood Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee and is a Church Transformation consultant and a Christian Leadership Coach. He is a frequent speaker at Church Transformation events. His latest book on church transformation is DEVELOPING A SIGNIFICANT CHURCH and is available at Westbow Press.

He can be contacted @ bill45053@gmail.com. Connect with him on Facebook @ William T. McConnell or on Twitter @billmc45053 or visit his Amazon Author Page @ Amazon