Posted on 04/05/2021 9:37:29 AM PDT by Heartlander
Church is essential. That’s what many of us have said in the face of ongoing COVID restrictions. But to a growing number of Americans, church is not essential — even among those who believe.
Gallup surveys the religious attitudes and practices of Americans twice each year. They roll this data into three-year chunks for comparison over time. From 1998-2000, 69% of American adults were members of a church, synagogue, temple, or mosque. By 2008-2010, that figure had dropped to 62%. And by 2018-2020, just 49%. So over one decade, a drop of 7%. Then over the next decade, a drop of 13%. This also marks the first time, in 80 years of polling, that Gallup found church membership to be less than half the population.
A caveat: It’s not clear that Gallup asked people about church participation vs. membership. Some folks attend church but haven’t joined a church. This dovetails with a larger trend of people today opting for less social or civic commitment to organizations, not just houses of worship.
The drop in church membership is primarily a function of the growing number of Americans who have no religious preference. The percentage of Americans who did not affiliate with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 21% from 2018-2020. Only 4% of non-religious Americans belong to a house of worship. That may seem obvious: If you’re not religious, why be in a church? Well, from 1998-2000, about 10% of non-religious Americans belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque.
So, there are two things happening here. One, far more Americans today lack a religious affiliation. Two, within this (much larger) non-religious group, a smaller portion belong to a house of worship. The good news, then, is that church membership is more pure — increasingly...
(Excerpt) Read more at stream.org ...
Could you please remove me from your ping list?
Episcopal Church: “Yeah, we got a diocese that probably won’t reopen when this is over...”
https://juicyecumenism.com/2021/03/22/episcopal-diocese-northern-michigan/
The pruning of the tree.
Our church has been around for over a 100 years and is still in good shape fiscally and financially.
Before the pandemic, my wife and I were a followup team after someone or a couple filled out a card wanting more info on the church.
So we would call or text them to bring over a small gift and church info. We had about a 30-50% success rate of getting people to come back to our church. About 30% of those people stayed as members. That barely kept even with the people leaving due jobs or to be with family and those who passed on.
Many of who didn’t show up again really wanted to watch our services live on tv or streamed online via tv. Our pastor retired and as usual we lost some due to his retirement and gained back some.
My mother and her sisters basically at age 80 just wanted to watch church on tv. Their senior living centers allowed that or had vans to take them to their churches. Those who went to the live church services were the younger ones under 80.
Our interim pastor was either liked or not. We lost a few and gained a few new members.
Our new pastor is great and was gaining back a few, who left and bringing in new people.
When, the pandemic hit and basically our church was shut down. Fortunately a few new couples funded some excellent tv equipment and training. So, now, we have live tv for most services or the services can be streamed. That has worked out well, and we have more contributing members now than when the pandemic hit.
The members are mixed re wanting both live services and streamed TV services .
My wife and I will like both. It is nice on some days to sit at home and watch and participate in the church services in our everyday sweats.
Our choir director has found a new system where the choir Members can stay at home and sing together even though everyone is at home. It was developed by some Stanford people. It is similar to Zoom but geared toward having a choir with members still in their home, singing. So, we get to hear our choir at least twice in a service and to see them in action.
Next month we will start allowing a % of members to come in person to one of the services on an appt. basis.
One possibility is to cancel one of our 3 weekly services re live attendance and only have live tv or streaming for that service.
Live tv or streaming tv is here for now with our church services and even messages from the pastor or whomever.
Some churches stay full - at least at Easter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js8h3NC3b3Q
What a horrible message to send.
Written one year ago....very prophetic:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/03/church-as-a-non-essential-service
“Unless religious leaders reopen the churches, they will appear to value earthly above eternal life.”
There can also be 2 problems.
Some of us are very lazy.
And also there is the issue that everywhere we turn, churches are taking the lib stance.
We are being accused of being racist bigots, by our own churches. I mean, we’re all sinners but church does not have to officially sign on to the false premises of BLM. Why don’t they just ignore it? No, they have to put it on their websites and so on.
As usual ‘news’ guiding opinion rather than reporting fact.
Right when oppressive government keeps people from attending and wokechurches drive real Christians away, let’s poll people to see if they attend church.
Church Membership......I go to church, not a member.
Many people are not members of the church they currently attend and that is for various reasons.
Wrong question to highlight on this survey.
I agree with you. Churches should have a liberal or conservative stance. They should just preach what the Bible says.
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