Laments about the decline in church attendance usually focus on young people. But it turns out that large numbers of middle aged adults, including some who were once highly committed, are also dropping out of church.
In 2020, 41% of people between 39 and 57 attended a worship service during the week, either in person or online. In 2023, just three years later, that number has dropped to only 28%. That was the largest drop of all age groups.
And even among members who still attend, participation in church activities is way down. In 2020, the percentage of members who volunteered for church activities was 40%. In 2022, a span of only two years, that rate had declined to 20%.
So reports the Wall Street Journal, which published an article By Clare Ansberry entitled Why Middle-Aged Americans Aren’t Going Back to Church [behind a paywall].
Ansberry, trying to find the reason, interviews a number of ex-church goers. Some said they just got out of the habit because of the pandemic. Some had gotten active because of their kids, but now that the kids are gone, they lack incentive. Some cite disillusionment over scandals.
Some did cite their church’s opposition to LGBTQ issues or other cultural issues, with one saying that now that she is older, she has more confidence than she did when she was younger to stand up for her beliefs.
But, as social scientist Ryan Burge has shown, many Republicans and other non-progressives are also becoming “Nones.”
Or, as Christianity Today calls ex-churchgoers, “Dones.” That magazine has also studied what it calls “the great dechurching.”
The biggest reason for the middle age dechurching, though, seems to be that people are just too busy to go to church. According to the deck of the Wall Street Journal article, which summarizes the story, “Americans in their 40s and 50s often identify with a religion, but they’re also in the thick of raising kids, caring for aging parents and juggling demanding jobs.”
Jake Meador of Mere Orthodoxy wrote about the dechurching phenomenon for The Atlantic in an article entitled The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church. His conclusion, as expressed in that article’s deck: “The defining problem driving people out is … just how American life works in the 21st century.”
But people in this age-group have always been busy, sometimes busier than they are today! But they still went to church.
In fact, these articles also agree that the adults who have given up on church still for the most part say they have their faith. “It’s not like they are walking away, saying, ‘I’m now an atheist and don’t believe,’” [Sociologist Josh Packard] says. “They still believe in a God and live life with purpose but are done with the institutional church.”
To me, this is very telling. Let me propose a theory: The decline of church attendance is, in at least some measure, caused by the success of evangelicalism. That movement has long been teaching that faith consists of a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” And that individuals can form their own beliefs based on their personal Bible study. And that the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are, at best, symbolic and not really necessary.
Related teachings also play a role. The Baptist teaching of “once saved always saved” means that if you once “made a decision to accept Christ,” then you can never lose your salvation, no matter what. Also the Baptist teaching of “soul sufficiency,” that individual Christians have the right and the ability to interpret the Bible for themselves. Also the Pentecostal teaching that the Holy Spirit communicates with Christians directly in their hearts. Also the widespread misinterpretation of the “priesthood of all believers” according to which we don’t really need pastors, reducing the office of the pastoral ministry to just that of an organizational “leader.”
All due respect to churches and Christians who believe those things. My point here is that this type of Christianity has no real need of a church. And people who have internalized those teachings have no real need to go to church. People who no longer go to church but still profess Christianity will say as much.
In sacramental Christianity, we need and crave Baptism, Holy Communion, confession and absolution, and the preached Word. A worship service is where we receive God’s gifts. But the privatized, internalized version of Christianity has also permeated sacramental churches, such as Lutheran and Catholic congregations.
The reason that privatized, internalized Christians go to church, as I have often heard expressed, is simply as a matter of obedience. We should go because the Bible says we should in Hebrews 10:24-25. They classify worship as Law. In fact, their version of Christianity is highly law-oriented. They do believe the Gospel, of course, but they consign that to their conversion, the very beginning of their Christian life, conceived of not as an objective event, as in Baptism, but as an inner decision. After conversion, though, they feel that they are under the law.
And this brings us to the other major factor in today’s de-churching: burn out. Congregations become centers of intense activity. This law-orientation manifests itself not just in an imperative for good works—or, more usually, avoiding bad works—but also in the notion that we must serve God (not so much our neighbors) in church work.
I have heard it said multiple times by megachurch pastors that while the whole congregation “gathers” on Sunday, the real action in the church happens in the array of small groups that meet throughout the week.
What with Bible studies, book studies, service projects, evangelism activities, music rehearsals, committee meetings, board meetings, visitations, special services, and special programs, it is very easy for the church to take up every night of the week.
This really does take away time from one’s marriage, parenting, work, civic affairs, and other obligations. The doctrine of vocation teaches that all of these realms—the family, the workplace, the society—are spheres in which we are called to serve God by loving and serving our neighbors. But today’s churches are often such busy places that they do indeed take us away from our vocations.
I think that’s what the Wall Street Journal is describing when it found that “Americans in their 40s and 50s often identify with a religion, but they’re also in the thick of raising kids, caring for aging parents and juggling demanding jobs.”
When you’ve devoted yourself to so many church activities for years and years and years you may well eventually get burned out. Especially when some of those activities involve conflict and controversy, which is not uncommon in congregations. Add to that the constantly high emotional pitch expected in evangelical piety and worship, which is hard to sustain for long, and of course churchgoers will burn out.
That sense of physical and emotional exhaustion—indeed, spiritual exhaustion—is what I’m picking up in those articles’ interviews with long-time churchgoers who now say they are “done” with church.
Going to church used to be associated with the Sabbath; that is, with resting, not working. This weekly rest is emblematic of the Gospel: “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has enters God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9-10).
Setting aside one hour per week to rest in Christ by receiving the Word and the Sacraments will not take time away from the obligations “of raising kids, caring for aging parents and juggling demanding jobs.” More likely it will energize you for those tasks and show you what they mean in your Christian life.
What churches need to do to reverse the current exodus of longtime church goers is to recover the doctrine of vocation, convey the sense that the Gospel—not the Law—is the essence of Christianity, and restore the centrality of Word and Sacrament worship, which brings that Gospel to us every week.
I realize that this is a very Lutheran answer, but I also acknowledge that we Lutherans are falling short in these areas just like every other theological tradition. Not all of those traditions have the high view of the sacraments that we do, but they generally have a high view of the Word, the Gospel, and the Sabbath that can serve as the basis for their own reformations. That would involve preaching the Gospel to believers, as well as non-believers; recasting worship to make it a place where that happens; cutting way back on extracurricular church activities; and teaching how to live out one’s faith in vocation.
Image by Sam Williams from Pixabay
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