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Stay at Home Christians
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A growing number of Christians are staying home on Sunday mornings. But
how will this trend affect today's church? |
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Tammy loves the Lord, praises His name and studies His Word daily. Yet
on Sundays you won't find her in church. Instead she'll be much more
likely doing laundry, house chores or catching up on her rest.
"I'm sick and tired of listening to pastors talking for themselves and
about money all the time," she admits boldly. "I don't want to go and
hear the same thing I did last week, sing the same old songs, and waste
all day in church. I'd rather sleep in, do my laundry and prepare for
next week."
Tammy is one of many Christians who are devout, even zealous in their
beliefs, but no longer have a church that they can call home. Many
believers in today's society are electing to become "Stay-at-home
Christians"
"It's not like I've lost my love for God!," she strongly cautioned. All
day I listen to Christian music and sermons on the radio. I attend
Christian conferences, Bible studies, and even give liberally to many
Christian organizations. I just have a hard time dealing with the Sunday
routine."
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Tammy is part of a growing trend that is worrying many church leaders,
pointing to what is being seen as a serious threat to the spread of the
gospel, or of the coming revival that many Christian leaders have
dreamed about for years.
These stay at home saints are not just the Bedside Baptists of the old
joke. The movement transcends every denomination and includes Pillow Top
Pentecostals, Comforter Charismatic's and Laying Down Lutherans. The
Bible is clear about not forsaking fellowship with other believers. But
the "New Church" as the 21st century unfolds could be very different
from traditional ones.
Although the church leaders we spoke with agreed that stay-at-home
Christians are a significant movement, they were were unable to back
their beliefs with hard facts--citing instead widespread anecdotal
evidence. Perhaps the closest there is to hard proof is a recent study
by The Barna Group, a California-based Christian research organization.
It found that about 13 million Americans whom the researchers identified
as being born again were "unchurched ... not having attended a Christian
church service, other than for a holiday ... at any time in the past six
months."
According to senior Barna researcher David Kinnaman, their work suggests
that the number of non-churchgoing Christians has stayed fairly constant
over the last 10 years. But many other observers see the figure
increasing--like Thom Rainer, dean of the Billy Graham School of
Evangelism, Missions and Church Growth in Louisville, Kentucky. He says
the few denominations that closely track membership and attendance
statistics are observing a widening gap between the two groups.
Revival historian and teacher Andrew Strom found painful evidence of "a
worldwide phenomenon." After speaking on radio about what he has dubbed
the "Out of Church Christians," and writing about them in one of his
e-newsletters, he was bombarded with responses from people around the
world telling him, "Me too!"
He found "people leaving the church in droves," he says. "It got so bad,
I got carpal tunnel problems trying to answer them all," Strom said. "I
was really surprised by the response. It told me this was no longer a
small thing--it had become much bigger."
David Barrett, author of the World Christian Encyclopedia, estimates
there are about 112 million "churchless Christians" worldwide. He
projects that number will double by 2025--though it includes both
nominal believers and those part of underground churches in nations
where they face persecution for their faith. If the movement is virulent
in Europe, then in the United States, where church attendance has for
decades been proportionally much higher than across the Atlantic, it has
reached epidemic proportions, some believe.
Concern about the growing number of Christians she had met who no longer
attended church regularly prompted Pat Palau, wife of international
evangelist Luis Palau, to collaborate last year on a book, "What to Do
When You Don't Want to Go to Church" (AMG Publishers).
Ted Haggard, senior pastor of 11,000-strong New Life Church in Colorado
Springs, Colorado, and president of the National Association of
Evangelicals, sees the abandonment of regular churchgoing as more than
just a personal preference.
"It's a huge problem in the fulfillment of the Great Commission because
God is the one who established the local church as His primary method of
discipling people. So we lose the united prayer support, the financial
strength, the missionary efforts," he warns. In some cases, although
skipping church isn't caused by a crisis of faith, it can lead to one.
Even though Jesus says He is in the midst when two or three gather in
His name, something happens that can't be explained when more come
together intentionally, says Bill Effler, a former Presbyterian pastor
who is now professor of pastoral studies at Lee University in Cleveland,
Tennessee.
"The church is to be a school where people are educated, and if the Word
is rightly being divided and presented in a biblical way, with
challenges that lead to transformed lives ... if people aren't in church
they will miss that," he suggests.
Observers trace several factors behind the trend. They point to the way
the increasing fragility and mobility of the family has weakened the
"brand loyalty" that historically meant children grew up with a strong
sense of connection to the church of their parents.
They also see the church-dropout wave as a barometer of the influence of
the wider culture's me-centered nature as well as the unfortunate
excesses of the "seeker-sensitive" movement that has aimed to make
church less intimidating to people with no religious heritage.
Says Larry Lewis, national facilitator of denominations for Mission
America: "There's a consumer mentality that says I go to church not to
give anything or to be challenged or instructed, but to be helped, and
there's a tendency to turn the prophetic message and its challenge into
the ear-tickling messages of self-help lectures with very little
biblical content.
"You can't reduce ministry to that," he adds. "We have a prophetic role
that we must fulfill if we are to be true to our calling. ... I can't
imagine Nehemiah or Job or Amos going down the street with a clipboard
in hand and asking, 'What do you want us to preach about?'"
"It's a biblical fallacy to say we don't need church," Rainer comments.
"The New Testament pattern is very clear--that there was some type of
formal gathering of believers on a regular basis who had accountability
to one another. I quite frankly don't buy that church can be anywhere."
But even those with serious concerns about the results of so many
Christians bailing on church commitment see a potential silver lining in
it--if, rather than just deciding that they don't like what church is,
those leaving get serious about what they think it should be. "I'm happy
that people are asking the questions," Hunter says. "I'm sad that it is
keeping them away from church."
Steve and Ellen, who say they felt led to leave their Spirit-filled
church after more than 20 years, believe there is a growing "new
counterculture of the disaffected and unsatisfied ... looking for
something authentic, a real expression of the kingdom of God."
They are still in touch with friends from their former church but now
take Sundays as they come--recently hosting guests, going on a retreat,
hunting and praying for the U.S. national elections on consecutive
weekends. "We are just out here trying to be obedient to God," they
said. "[He] is breaking us of reliance on anything other than Him. We
are the broken, the needy, the helpless."
From his studies of the phenomenon, Strom sees not just a bunch of
belligerent, AWOL worshipers but "a grass-roots hunger for change in the
church, for reality ... more than the latest church-growth stuff or
conference. They want to see revival, not some latest fad that sweeps
through the church," he says.
Though some church dropouts are finding new expressions of church life,
the answer is not to bury the institutional church. We need to get it
healthy and dynamic once again. There's no mystery to that--just as
there's no mystery about how to have a healthy marriage and wonderful
children.
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