I recently had an opportunity to speak with a young man at his grandmother’s funeral. He was wrestling with issues of faith and of knowing.
Earlier in the month I had spoken to the spouse of an active church member and he pointedly told me he had been forced to go to church in his youth by a very strict guardian and he had no intention of ever going again.
On more than one occasion I’ve been told that you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian. I used to
think that was patently false. Now I think it is just sad. It is sad because the church isn’t a place most people want to go to anymore.
Statistics show church attendance continues to drop and even those who are considered regular attendees only show up once or twice a month. At first we blamed junior sports teams and then Sunday shopping, both of which occupied people at the hour of worship. The temptation to accept the work or to play the game seemed too great.
The deeper question we never seemed to ask was, why were people choosing to do other things with their
Sundays than go to church?
Three things come to mind.
First, there are the seekers like the first young man I spoke to. He is earnest about the search but he has
been taught in his education that he is responsible for discovering truth. He no doubt goes on the worldwide
web to seek various opinions and has a world of different points of view and philosophies to draw from. It doesn’t occur to him that the church has a lot to offer in his search.
I’ve heard some say that we don’t teach like they like to learn. We are still producing catechisms that have set questions and answers. It isn’t that I don’t believe in the value of catechizing or of memory work, but we need to know that these tools are mostly useful for those already in the faith who already accept the value of
the church’s experience and authority.
Secondly, there are those like the man who was wounded by the legalism and sense of duty foisted upon him
at an early age. Others have been wounded by the members or leaders of the church, or have been caught up in conflict within the church and have abandoned it in despair.
They see the church as hypocritical—as teaching love but acting without kindness.
We need to remember Jesus’ words: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” Each of us needs to be willing to do the inconvenient work of mending fences if we don’t want the sheep to run away.
Thirdly, the church needs to demonstrate a quality of life that is attractive to all who love life. An early
Christian father once wrote: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” We need to show the world that kind of Glory. We will need to recover our sense of identity as ambassadors for Christ. We will need to demonstrate that, as Peter called us, we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that we may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
It is time for us to call out for mercy again; it is time for us to be renewed in the Spirit of God again. It is time for us to stop living no differently than the world and live in our identity as God’s holy people.
When we become the people we ought to be, I believe belonging to the community of the church will become
the priority more and more for those who want to know and serve God
