Building a Church

Overheard at church. "So, where is your daughter going to church now?" "Oh, they chose a bigger church. That way they don't feel any pressure to get involved with ministry or anything." Barna is reporting that something like 1/3 of those who attended worship in person quit during COVID restrictions and haven't returned, even to the electronic version. Gallup has tracked church attendance since the late 1930's. They report that up until 1999 it remained around 70%. At the turn of the century it started declining and, in 2020, it dropped to 47% -- the lowest ever.

Concerned Christians everywhere might wonder what they need to do to bring people in again. In 2017 Gallup reported that the thing that appeals most to churchgoers was good sermons. But you can get good sermons online and people are dropping out at church and online. If church is treated like most other things, most people will do at least a kind of cost-benefit analysis. "What does it cost us to go versus what do we get out of it." And apparently it costs (in some sense or another) more to go than what (whatever that might be) they get out of it. So what are concerned Christians to do?

I think the problem is elsewhere. I think the difficulty is that we no longer have a clue about what church is for. "I don't want to feel any pressure to get involved" misses the point entirely. "Good sermons" are a good thing, but that, too, misses the point entirely. "What I get out of it" is the wrong question. The fact that we don't see that says that we don't understand church.

The Bible describes the church as "the Body of Christ" (1 Cor 12:27; Eph 4:12). We often speak of those in our church as "family." "What I get out of it" doesn't seem to factor into these kinds of images. Not getting involved doesn't make any sense if church is a body, a family. Paul describes the church as an actual body with many members (1 Cor 12:12) where each of us is important and each of us plays a critical role and the body cannot afford to lose any of those inputs (1 Cor 12:14-25). The primary aim of this body is to glorify God and to edify each other (Eph 4:12). Indeed, John argues that love of fellow believers is the central, essential mark of a Christian (1 John 4:21). If we do not love God's people, we do not know God (1 John 4:7-8). And church is designed to be a place to exercise that love. "Everyone who loves the Father," John writes, "loves whoever has been born of Him" (1 John 5:1). If we're just not that keen on loving other believers, John is suggesting we're not too keen on loving the Father. The two are irrevocably linked.

Church is more about "what I get out of it." It is more than "attractional ministry" -- "What draws me in?" It is more than good preaching and good presentation and good programs. The church is designed to be the Body of Christ, the family of God. Both are a dynamic interrelationship that is hard to fathom. Neither of these two images can successfully operate when their composing parts don't connect. We need to see a more robust image of what God intended the church to be and we need to participate in building what we have toward that .. starting with ourselves.