All
around me are churches that are nearly empty on Sunday mornings. The church
where I have been preaching has four members who still come to Sunday morning
worship. In the vicinity are many other churches whose attendance has steadily declined.
Churches that once had 250 or more in attendance now see 35 or 40. Yet the
population has not decreased, it has increased.
You
can blame any of a number of factors – television; more activities on Sundays
such as shopping and sports; the breakdown in traditional families; demographic
changes; more people are working on Sundays. The sad fact is that church
attendance has steadily declined in importance. It is steadily losing priority
to more and more other claims on people’s time.
The
churches have responded in various ways. Some have tried to make worship more
attractive with colored lights, upbeat music, drama, and shorter sermons.
Others have focused on community outreach in various forms – feeding the
homeless, clothes closets, food pantries, community activism. Church services
have become more and more about being happy in this life and less and less
about pleasing God and looking forward to eternal life with Him.
Churches
advertise in a variety of ways in the newspapers, on social media, with outdoor
signs and billboards, on the radio and television. What the churches have
failed to do so far is to give people in their ads a compelling reason why they should come
to church. In the early days of the church the message that Jesus Christ rose
from the dead drew people of every nation to hear this good news proclaimed.
That
is still the Gospel the churches have to proclaim. Why isn’t it a compelling
reason for people today to come to church? Why is living for the here and now so
important that people do not consider what will happen to them when they die?
Is their working assumption that everyone who dies goes to heaven or else
everyone who dies ceases to be?
If
there is no everlasting punishment, then there is no compelling reason to go to
church to find out how to escape it. Worse than that, if there is no belief in
everlasting punishment, there is no effective deterrent to violence or
terrorism or any other sin. The decline in church attendance should be a
flashing red light warning of disaster ahead for civilization.
