I read an article recently stating that church attendance has been on a steady decline for the past twenty years. According to this article, an average of 48 percent of adults regularly attended weekly services 20 years ago. Today, that number has dropped to 30 percent. Flip it around, and 70 percent of adults do not attend church regularly, if at all.

If the parents ain’t going, then you can rest assured the kids are not.

You do get your Mother’s Day, Easter, and Christmas services bump, but other than that, church attendance continues to hover around 80 percent of what it was pre – COVID.

Even more interesting, three out of ten adults say they are religiously unaffiliated. Meaning they are agnostic, atheist or have abandoned their childhood faith. The religious unaffiliated is the only group that has experienced steady growth over the past ten years.

The craze today is to tell people that you are spiritual, not religious. I’m not even sure what that means.

I am certainly no religious scholar, nor can I speak as to why we are seeing such a disinterest in churches, but I can’t help but wonder why.

Listed – in no particular order – are a handful of the reasons why church attendance is dropping according to this article.

• Youth sports – kids play ball on Sunday mornings and throughout weekends.
• Millionaire preachers – makes no sense for those struggling.
• Not finding community – being judged by hypocrites.
• Not finding God – authenticity is missing.
• Social Media and television – easier to stay in bed and watch on your phone or laptop.

I’ll admit, I find a great deal of my spiritual guidance and Godly encouragement from people I follow online. Guilty!

I have personally attended mega churches, tiny country churches, African American churches, even a “Mother Earth” church. It seems like they are all chasing God, they just have different approaches and opinions on how to find Him.

While living in Lubbock in the early 1980’s, I attended a large non- denominational church. I thought it was pretty charismatic at the time because attendees would raise their hands during worship!

The reason I started attending is because I saw a commercial on television promoting the church. On the TV ad, the preacher was standing in front of a bar in a popular Lubbock restaurant. There was a wall full of whiskey and wines bottles behind him and empty glasses hanging above his head.

Obviously, he had received special permission to film because the restaurant was closed. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he talked about why people went to bars. They go to bars to socialize with like-minded people and talk about their day. They go because they feel welcome, and it feels like family. They don’t feel judged regardless of how they look or what that may have done. They go because it feels like they belong.

Then he ended the commercial by saying, “We like to think our church is as welcoming as this bar. Come visit us.”

I do remember he caught some grief for comparing a church to a bar. But he made an outstanding point. We don’t need to serve alcohol or have a smoking section in churches today, but maybe part of the reason we are experiencing a significant decline in church attendance is because we’ve lost that loving feeling?

“Man is a social animal, gregarious by nature, and finds his greatest sense of security and satisfaction in the company of others who share his interests and attitudes. Of all the many groups into which humans have collected themselves, of all the many tribes, clans, organizations, and societies throughout history, none has been so powerful, so far-reaching, or more universal than the church.” – Billy Graham

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Todd Howey is a columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose articles appear on Fridays. Email comments to [email protected].