The good news: Mother’s Day is a big church attendance day, ranking in the top three (along with Christmas and Easter).
The bad news: Father’s Day is a low attendance day, ranking at the bottom of the churchgoing chart.
This news, both good and bad, comes from a recent survey conducted by LifeWay Research. Lifeway asked 1,000 Protestant pastors which special days of the year brought the most people to church. No surprise that Easter and Christmas took the top spots. But Mother’s Day came in number three.
Why is Mother’s Day such a popular churchgoing day? Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research, observes that “mothers want to be present for the affirmation that is typically offered in most churches, but families also are present knowing their attendance will honor their mother. Many families make church attendance on Mother’s Day nearly obligatory.”
McConnell may be right, but I think he misses a major factor: mothers want to go to church with their families, especially their children, on Mother’s Day. Actually, most Christian mothers would like to go to church with their families every Sunday. But on Mother’s Day they have extra clout, even among family members who would rather skip church.
But what about Father’s Day? Why doesn’t it draw the crowds to church? McConnell weighs in on this: “The attendance difference between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is telling. . . . Either churches are less effective in affirming fathers, or families believe Christian fathers don’t value their participation in worship services.” What McConnell fails to state is that families might believe fathers don’t value their participation in worship services because, in fact, many fathers don’t value going to church.
In a USA Today article, Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay, puts it more bluntly: “It seems that on Mother’s Day, moms say, ‘Let’s all go to church.’ But on Father’s Day, dads say, ‘I’m going to go play golf.’” I expect Stetzer is on to something here.
David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church, believes that churches are to blame for the tendency among fathers to skip worship on their special day. According to Murrow, on Mother’s Day “pastors tend to gush over women in their sermons. . . . But on Father’s Day, men get a ‘straighten up’ lecture: ‘Dad, get right with God, reconcile with your kids,’ etc.” I’m not sure Murrow is always right. But, to the extent that he is, I have an explanation. Pastors are blasting away at fathers because they are guilty about their own failures as fathers. They are saying to the fathers in the pews what they need to say to themselves.
Nevertheless, I fear that the main reason Mother’s Day is a big church attendance day and Father’s Day lags behind has to do with far more than what happens on these two special Sundays. In general, men are much less involved in church than women, fathers much less than mothers. Given the high correlation between churchgoing fathers and children who end up as faithful disciples of Jesus, this should be a major concern. I’m not suggesting that we all start pummeling fathers who don’t go to church regularly. But I am suggesting that we need to give this some serious thought. David Murrow, in Why Men Hate Going to Church, has some ideas about this. I wonder what you think. Why are men less inclined to attend worship services? Why is this true even among men who are believing Christians?
Thus I want to revisit something I wrote about in my last post, the vision of the church as a collection of thin places out in the world. If you think along the lines of the thin place model, with the earth and heaven being separated by some sort of thick barrier, then the people of God are millions of thin places in the barrier. Or, to mix metaphors, we are like holes in the Swiss cheese barrier between the earthly and the divine. The church would be, pardon the bad pun, a “holey” church, a church of holes through which God’s presence would be experienced.
Recommendations for a Nation of Heretics
In my last post, I began to comment on Ross Douthat’s new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. Well, actually, I focused on a recent interview Douthat did with Christianity Today. He does believe that much of American religion, Christianity, in particular, is “bad” because we have lost touch with Christian orthodoxy and with the institutions (churches, denominations) and guard and pass on classic Christian truth.
Ross Douthat at Faith Angle Forum, May 2012
In the last couple of days, I’ve been attending the Faith Angle Forum in Florida. As it turns out, Douthat was one of the featured speakers. He is as good in person as in writing, which made for an engaging conversation about the state of religion in America. Whether you agree with Douthat or not, he is a valuable contributor to this dialogue and I hope he continues to express his views on the matter.
Anyway, back to Christianity Today. In the interview, Douthat was asked: How can we begin to address a nation of heretics? “We,” in this question, means “we who believe ourselves to be orthodox Christians.” Here is Douthat’s telling answer:
There has been much healthy Catholic and Protestant dialogue and cooperation during the past 30 years. But ultimately the success of U.S. Christianity depends on individual churches and confessions, not on ecumenism for ecumenism’s sake. Protestants and Catholics need to recognize everything we have in common and then say we’re also going to focus on building separate effective churches.
Christianity’s failure in the United States is an institutional failure, and the answer to institutional failure is stronger institutions. America has more to gain from a more potent Protestantism and Catholicism than it does from even the most fruitful Protestant-Catholic dialogue.
For evangelicals, it means thinking more seriously about ecclesiology and what it will take to sustain Christianity across generations. Promise Keepers, Campus Crusade for Christ, and other parachurch groups have been important to evangelicalism. But “parachurch” makes sense over the long term in the context of a church. The danger for evangelicalism is becoming too parachurch without enough church. Some megachurches seem to function like parachurches rather than churches, as though everything else that’s going on is more important than the central life of the community of worship. It might be important for evangelicals to think of themselves as Presbyterians, Baptists, and so on, and recover the virtues of confessionalism, because it’s confessions, not just superstar pastors, that sustain Christianity over the long haul.
I think Douthat is substantially right. Though it’s popular these days to love Jesus and hate the church, in fact, the church is the context in which the truth about Jesus is told and passed on. It’s the context where Jesus is honored and worshiped. You cannot ultimately have a vital, sustainable Christian faith apart from the church.
I take seriously Douthat’s recommendation for evangelicals. I agree that we need to do much more thinking about ecclesiology (the understanding of the church). Though parachurch organizations can help to revitalize and strengthen the church, they should not suppose to replace it. As you may know, I work for a parachurch organization (Foundations for Laity Renewal). One of the reasons I joined this organization had to do with its longstanding commitment to support and partner with the church (in the form of particular churches).
By the way, if you’re looking for some serious reflection on the church and its relationship to Christian faith, I would recommend an outstanding book by my friend Tod Bolsinger. It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian: How the Community of God Transforms Lives has been well-received in a wide range of contexts: churches, small groups, seminaries, pastors’ retreats, etc. You can also find lots of insights about the church on Tod’s blog.
In my next post, I want to think with you about why the notion of “heresy” is an important one, even if it isn’t especial PC these days.