In the Seattle area where I live less than three percent of the population attend church on a regular basis. They attend the mall regularly. They attend the movies or the movie rental store regularly. In fact, here in the Pacific NW most people spend more time in a Starbucks per month than in their local church. I can here some faithful churchgoer right now saying, “These people need to get saved!” Maybe the same churchgoer would also agree that a person who spends more time at the mall, watching a movie, or drinking coffee than in church has their priorities out of order. I’d say that before we jump to take the seat of judgement, perhaps we should ask ourselves, “What causes a person to drive right past our churches each Sunday taking little thought of attending our services?”
Months ago I remember being asked to participate in a church leadership meeting. In this particular meeting the leaders were being asked to give a report of their progress of following up with recent church guests and regular attendees. The facilitator of the meeting went around the table asking each leader questions like, “Where has so and so been?”, “Did you call or contact them this week?”, “Were you able to find out why they have not attended service regularly?” Each leader shared the reasons the people told them for their lack of church attendance (work, school, family, sports, too busy, too tired, don’t know anyone etc.) Then I realized something, “These were not the real reasons why they chose not to attend church, these were just excuses people gave them to get them off their back. As our meeting came to a close I was becoming very eager to hear the facilitator’s solution to the challenge the leaders were having encouraging people to attend their church more consistently. Suddenly the solution stated, “As ministry leaders you need to get these people plugged into the church!” That was it! I could not believe what I was hearing however I did learn a powerful lesson from this meeting. “If we fail to discover the real reason(s) people don’t want to come our churches, we will be forever unsuccessful in growing our churches.”
What then, is the reason, or reasons people choose not to attend church?” The answer is easy, “They don’t want to.” Now that was deep but it’s the absolute truth. It’s about time we begin to face reality and ask ourselves the more important question, “Why is it that so many people don’t care or have any desire to step foot inside the local church? Not long ago, a friend and I were sharing the Lord with a man in the lobby of a hotel. This man told us that his faith in God was wavering. As he continued sharing with us, he mentioned that he had recently visited and/or attended five churches in the local area. After sharing his many frustrations with his church experiences his said something that shocked me. He said, “Church is stupid!” Being a Christian, my first thought was church is not stupid.” In contrast, the church is an important part of God’s plan of salvation and expressing His love toward us. My second thought was, “What could I do in this moment to help this man to see the church from a different perspective?” My third thought was one I couldn’t even believe I asked myself, “Is there such thing as a stupid church?” Now I know that third thought was a bit on the edge but remember I’m sitting right across from a man who is searching for genuine Christianity and had recently attended five churches near his home. So why then was this man sitting before me saying, “Church is stupid?”
Two full days after sharing Christ with a stranger in a hotel lobby, I found myself unable to shake this man’s comment to me that church is stupid. I think it was just hard for me to see the word stupid and church right next to each other. That word “stupid” just kept bugging me! Oddly enough, the word stupid had never really sounded that harsh to me until I heard it said in front of, and connected to the word church. In fact, I admit to being one who has done stupid things, said stupid things, and had numerous stupid thoughts. Even though I felt that I and everyone else knew what the word stupid meant, I decided to just look up the word stupid in the dictionary. The dictionary defines the word stupid as lacking intelligence, lacking common sense, dazed, unable to think clearly, a word used to express irritability or boredom. Have you ever irritated in church? Have you ever felt you lacked the intelligence to understand what was being taught? . Have you been bored in church? I don’t know about you but after reading the definition of the word stupid, I can better understand how an unbeliever would come to the conclusion that church is stupid, Honestly, even being a believer, I have experienced these feelings during church many times! Let’s be honest, without a real, relevant, and genuine personal relationship with Jesus Christ it’s not too far fetched to think that church is stupid.
In life, we all have to come to our own conclusions about what we believe or don’t believe. With that being said, my personal conclusion is two-fold, 1. Church is not stupid. 2. It is a reality that many people have the perception that “Church is stupid.” This perception is not only a common one, but is creating a real and active attitude that is rapidly becoming an epidemic! I believe God is calling us to reconcile people back to Him no matter what it costs us or how weird or fanatical we appear. Instead of turning a blind eye, we should rise up and take the perceptions of the people God has called us to reach seriously and accept the challenge of demonstrating true authentic Christianity.
-DJ Rabe
