Why Have People Stopped Going to Church?

Why have people stopped going to church? The number of people attending church weekly in the UK is half what it was in 1976. It has fallen from 10 per cent to 5 per cent. Many churches are full of old people and wondering if they will still be there in 20 years time. The same situation is effecting most western countries. 

On an Irish radio station, a reporter said to a Catholic priest, 'You must despair.' He said, 'I don't despair. People have got freedom of choice now.' In a Catholic country, 50 years ago, everybody had to go to church. In the 4th century, Pope Gregory believed in Christianising a whole nation. This was a disaster. Jesus said, 'Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction and many find it but narrow is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life and only a few find it.' Mathew 7:13,14. If we force the whole country to become Christians, we have created another religion that isn't really Christianity. This can't be the narrow road that leads to life because only a few find that way. We will reduce our religion to something most people can cope with. An intellectual acceptance of some Bible stories, receiving holy communion from the priest and then being accepted as a Christian as long as I obey God's commands and don't do anything too badly wrong.

This kind of false religion is more likely to prevent people finding God. Jesus said, 'No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they have been born again, first of water, then of the Spirit.' John 3:1-8. We are born of water when we are born naturally the first time. Jesus wants us to be born of the Holy Spirit. The church talks about the Holy Spirit but reduces it to some magic rite you receive from the priest. You receive the Holy Spirit when you are christened - what does a little baby understand? - when you are confirmed as a teenager - you receive it twice? - and when you take bread and wine at communion you receive the body and blood of Christ. The Salvation Army doesn't allow baptism or communion as people think they make you into a Christian. Such religion convinces people they are all right with God. They have received their sacraments from the priest. They would only go to Hell if they committed gross immorality. These people are not born again of the Spirit of God. But it is impossible to tell them they are not born again. One street corner preacher told me, 'The hardest people you could ever try to resch with the gospel are church people.' One pastor commented how much more open people are and how much easier it is to talk to people about God now that they have stopped going to church.

How bad is the decline in the number of people going to church? If we look at the weekly church attendance figures, they are terrifying. The church is half the size it was 50 years ago and our tiny congregations are so old there will be no churches in 50 years time. But if we look at the monthly attendance figures they tell a different story. Monthly church attendance is increasing, especially among the young. Why are so many young people especially attending Catholic or Pentecostal churches? Listening to one of my favourite preachers from a rapidly growing Pentecostal church in Barnsley, I think that people respect someone who is prepared to be honest and say what they think, particularly if they have a controversial point of view. Pastor David Jones certainly has some controversial points of view. So does the Catholic church. In the Church of England, we are almost apologising for believing that Jesus is the way to God. The Church of England in Newcastle celebrated the millennium with the sermon, 'Jesus belongs to all religions, not just ours. Do you realise he is the prophet of Islam and the great teacher of the Buddhists?' They had a noticeboard in the cathedral about the ten commandments in all the world's religions. If there is compromise people can see straight through that. It is also true that when the Catholic church is small in number and no one is forced to belong to it, when only a small percentage of people are practising Catholics but they want to be there, that it loses the faith suffocating atmosphere of a state religion. When I was young many of my friends were Catholic and they didn't believe in God. I overheard this conversation. 'Should we go to church tonight? We have to. Dad will ask us what the priest said.' If I wanted my sons to go to church that badly I'd be there myself. Too many people like that man's sons in a church will change the atmosphere. Far better to have a country where 1 in 30 people go to church but the vast majority are born again. In 1976 1.5 per cent of the population said they were committed Christians. 3 per cent of  people in Sheffield are still going to church, perhaps half of those are born again committed Christians.

Most people still have faith. A radio presenter was asked if he was surprised that the BBC daily prayer had lasted for 100 years. BBC radio began in the 1920s. He said he wasn't. Most people pray. When a drummer collapsed and had a heart attack at a pop concert, Sting stood behind a microphone and said, 'We're all praying for him.' Not a Christian, as far as I know, and I wouldn't expect him to say everyone would be praying. People pray but this doesn't transfer itself into church attendance. Why not? People are afraid of church and have heard bad things about it. I had found God as a teenager but had all sorts of hang ups about church. Would they let me in if I wasn't wearing a suit? Would the service be in old English I didn't understand? Would it be boring? Another reason is that people have a very individual experience of religion. My friend Pat told me he had been to see Billy Graham. I asked him what he thought about it. He said, 'I've got my own views about religion.' People have a very individual understanding of what God is like, of what the afterlife will be like, and they will try to put together their own religion. Andy had been healed of severe suicidal depression when I had asked people to pray for him at several different churches I had visited. He came to tell me about it. He had been walking along the road to Sunnyside when a light had come down from the sky and he had felt electricity tingling in his hands for the next few days. Did he want the Christian leaflet I had in my pocket? No. We all had to find our own path to enlightenment. I was on mine, he was on his. I met a woman in the university who had lots of crystals on a table in the corridor. I offered her one of my Christian leaflets. She wasn't interested. I asked her, 'You obviously believe in something, what do you believe in?' She thought for a moment and said, 'The individual.'

This leads to my next question of what church in the 21st century should be like. If people are likely to spend a long time searching for God before they attend a place of public worship, it's helpful to ask questions. That's why I started this blog. To ask questions like why is Jesus the only wsy to God? Is Christianity boring? The Alpha course has a slogan, 'Ask anything.' 3 million people have attended the Alpha course but few of those people actually become permanent church members. Should we make the church more like Alpha? A discussion group where people can ask questions. Informal. There is a group in Rotherham who meet on a Thursday morning for Bible study and pizza. BBC news reported a Spanish church who surf together on a beach and had baptised someone. Our congregations are not simply down to small numbers, they are elderly. A small church of 20 people can be quite healthy but if those 20 people are over 60 it will not be there in 30 years time. How do we get more young people into the church? One of our problems is that we expect young people to come into our church and to do things the way that we do them. We must let young people find their own expression of church. Instead of meeting religiously for 2 hours on a Sunday, why can't we spend a whole Saturday afternoon and evening together once a month? I used to enjoy Anglican mass but preferred to go there once a month as the words of the service are the same every time. We could have communion once a month, or perhaps every few months, and spend more time simply being together. Why do we have Sunday school? It was great in the days when children worked in mines and factories and their parents couldn't afford to send them to school. But why now? Why do we have youth work? I look at the church youth club I went to and wonder why the young people in the church were allowed to go bowling together, to have a baked potato together or to go to the coast together but no one else was. This was also why the majority of people stopped going to church when they are 18. The youth leader we had at the time started a house group called the 18+ which continued for 20 years, and was there even after he left.

Most of the evangelism Christians do consists of getting people into a building where they will hear the gospel. In the days when most people went to church at least occasionally, that worked reasonably well. Now it doesn't. Our gospel services are usually empty of anyone except the usual congregation and many churches have stopped doing them. Street evangelism is ineffective if it involves simply inviting people to attend a meeting somewhere they would never actually go. We must have church events on the street, Bibles and pizzas on the street corner, Bible study groups in cafés. This is not painless. My experience is that street Bible study attracts people who are drunk or people who find it amusing. This is survivable if the people who are doing it know that the reactions of people may not always be sincere. That man who was on his knees giving his life to Christ was drunk but if he remembered anything or if a few people have actually engaged with the gospel it wasn't a complete loss. People in that situation feel less vulnerable if there are more of them. One or two people on their own will be terrified. A street event should involve the whole church not just a few designated evangelists. It could even be the main church service or the main activity of the congregation.