Church Attendance

[Amie]

Special Report: The American Church in Crisis
Attendance is down. The picture is bleak. New research reveals startling and sobering facts. What do they mean for you, your church and Christianity in America?
by Rebecca Barnes and Lindy Lowry
from Outreach magazine, May/June 2006

Sundays are quiet in today's America. Banks and businesses are closed. Rush-hour traffic takes a rest. Most Americans have the day off. But the reason for the "holi"day is no longer about anything holy for a growing number of people who don't attend weekend worship services.

Most of us suspect that fewer people are attending church regularly. We need look no farther than our neighbors' driveways on a Sunday morning. And daily, we're confronted with our increasingly individualistic, secular and narcissistic culture. Those in professional church work have heard the rumors: Membership in mainline churches is steadily declining. Organic churches are on the rise with people trading sanctuaries for living rooms. Even online faith communities are growing. But do we know what's really happening in the traditional Church? And to what extent that will impact the future of Christianity in America?

For this special report, we talked to prominent researchers, missiologists and church leaders to identify church attendance trends in America, and to glean wisdom and learnings from the information. Special thanks go to church planting director and researcher Dave Olson (theamericanchurch.org), who generously provided his research. The facts he offers are sobering, as the title of this special report suggests, but they are nonetheless invaluable for church leaders of every denomination, congregation size, location, ethnicity and economic class.

We lay out seven facts about the American Church that will likely surprise you. You'll hear from a host of church leaders, including Bill Hybels, Kirbyjon Caldwell, George Barna, Bob Coy, David Anderson and Wayne Cordeiro. Plus, we talk to author/apologist Josh McDowell about the growing faith crisis affecting the next generation. We hope the information and insights will spur you to discover what they mean for your church, the unchurched in your community and the Church as a whole. We have a map—perhaps it will help guide the next steps of our journey.

To be sure, church attendance is a moving target. However, researchers continue to ask questions and apply their methodologies to assess the realities of church and faith in America. In the words of church planter and researcher Dave Olson, we hope to "paint an accurate and realistic picture of the complexities to help our churches have an influence in the future."

Here, we explore seven discoveries about the American Church and what they tell us about our ever-diversifying landscape and culture. What do these facts mean for your church?

Read the rest: http://www.christianitytoday.com/outreach/articles/americanchurchcrisis.html

I noted that in the article it seems that whether a person was in support of attendance decline or not, all of them agreed that church attendance doesn't determine anything about Christians personally.

Freedom from the 'law of attending church' is resulting in change. Is this reflective of a growing number of people comfortable with questioning tradition? Hopefully, this is indicative of a trend towards freedom.

I divided this into two posts for length's sake..

[Amie]

Study identifies worldwide rates of religiosity, church attendance
EDITORS: A table, "Percentage of Adult Population that Attends Church at Least Once a Week," follows this story.

ANN ARBOR—Even though some Americans worship only once a year, weekly church attendance is higher in the United States than in any other nation at a comparable level of development, according to a worldwide study based at the University of Michigan.

Fully 44 percent of Americans attend church once a week, not counting funerals, christenings and baptisms, compared with 27 percent of people in Great Britain, 21 percent of the French, 4 percent of Swedes and 3 percent of Japanese.

Moreover, 53 percent of Americans say that religion is very important in their lives, compared with 16 percent, 14 percent, and 13 percent, respectively, of the British, French and Germans.

"The stereotype that the American public is more materialistic than other peoples seems to be very misleading, at least by these criteria," says Ronald F. Inglehart, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research and director of the World Values Survey, now covering 60 nations.

Funded by a variety of public and private sources, including the National Science Foundation, the series of global surveys started in 1981. They were last conducted between 1995 and 1997, using representative national samples of each nation's adult population. The latest U.S. figures are based on a sample of 1,839 people.

In addition to comparing religious attitudes and behaviors among nations, the data provide a look at how the religious beliefs of each society have changed over the years.

"In general, the importance of religion has been declining in the developed world," says Inglehart, "whereas in countries experiencing economic stagnation and political uncertainty, religion has remained strong."

The collapse of religion in Northern European countries is particularly striking, he observes. Not only has weekly church attendance plunged, but Latin American countries are now sending missionaries to save the souls of their former colonizers.

Why America is an exception to this global trend is uncertain, although Inglehart suggests several possible explanations. Religion could be a legacy of America's frontier mentality, in which a strong sense of faith was necessary in order to brave the unknown. It could also have a more contemporary cause: a social welfare system less developed than those in most Nordic or European countries.

Finally, according to Inglehart, high American church attendance and interest in religion may also reflect a well-educated and rapidly aging population's search for the meaning and purpose of life. "Besides providing a sense of orientation and insecurity in an insecure world," he says, "one of the functions of religion is to help satisfy the need to know where we come from and where we are going."


Nigeria 89 Ireland 84* Philippines 68 N. Ireland 58* Puerto Rico 52 South Africa 56 Poland 55 Portugal 47* Slovakia 47 Mexico 46 Italy 45* Dominican Republic 44 Belgium 44* U.S.A. 44 Turkey 43 Peru 43 India 42 Canada 38* Brazil 36 Netherlands 35*

Venezuela 31 Uruguay 31 Austria 30* Chile 25 Argentina 25 Britain 27* Spain 25 Solvenia 22 Croatia 22 Hungary 21* France 21* Romania 20* South Korea 14 Switzerland 16 Australia 16 Lithuania 16 W. Germany 14 Czech Republic 14* Bulgaria 10* Ukraine 10

Taiwan 11 Moldova 10 Georgia 10 China 9 Armenia 8 Azerbaijan 6 Serbia 7 Montenegro 7 Belarus 6 Latvia 5 Denmark 5* Norway 5 East Germany 5 Sweden 4 Iceland 4* Finland 4 Estonia 4 Japan 3 Russia 2 Source: Based on latest available data from the 1990-1991 or the 1995-1997 World Values surveys. Results with an asterisk are from the 1990-1991 survey; all others are from the 1995-1997 survey.

Full article above. Source website: http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=1835

I think that it's somewhat humorous that the author uses evidence of America's supposed higher church attendance to support the idea that America is less materialistic, lol!

Is it true though that American attitude is more fundamentalistic than other parts of the Christian world?

I realize that Michael Moore is opportunistic and exaggerates and dramatizes to create propaganda. However, I am still left wondering the truth in his observation that America perpetuates more fear.

Acknowledging that I'm talking about the same people who used religion as evidence for not being materialistic, lol, they connect economic uncertainty with higher church attendance world wide.

That would truly create a commonality between America and countries having less economic stability -- a bondage to hypervigilance.

Hypervigilance: "An enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats."

This makes me wonder whether there is a lower percentage of child abuse as well, within countries less plagued with fear.

Any thoughts?

As well, has anyone visited America from another country and found the television to promote more fear than your home country? What have you observed from your visit all together?

What about those from America who have visited other countries? What were your observations?

Amie :)

[Jason Hall]

As long as Christians opperate in a church-building-on-sundays-only(and sometimes wednesday) manner, the religion will decline. But that's ok with me, since I'm anti-religion. Jesus made many anti-religious statements, and still, those that didn't "get" that decided to re-establish the Law-based system of worship, but with crazy Greek styles thrown in to feel more universal. The fact that Christianity is a "type" of religion, along side Judiaism, Hinduism, Islam, and whatever else you can think of, is rediculous. It's insulting actually. We pay to hear the same guy tell us over and over what's in the book we tote back and forth to a building we all throw money toward every week? The quicker the churches die out, the more God's love can spread.

All that said: how is it there are so many new churches popping up everywhere if attendance is so low and declining? I think maybe the percentages stay basically the same, yet the numbers of people in traditional churches may decline, as so many move out into newer churches.