Timed Competiton

Active church friends recently revealed that as a family they are having a hard time making it to church.  As a pastor, I know the time competition so many families face to be active, involved parents, responsible and competent workers (for wages or volunteer), faithful parish members, caring adult children of aging parents, and so much more.  I know that on average household attend church once a month. That is considered normal. And, it is the growing national norm.

Our church friends don't attend the same parish that we attend.  Their parish is different in size, background, location, and emphasis.  Yet, they face the same challenge the parish we attend faces.  Its the challenge that I believe every congregation is facing and it is the challenge that no one is talking about:  church is no longer one size fits all.  They don't regularly attend church anymore because what drew them as a family to that congregation- lively, intergenerational worship, is no longer the emphasis.  What drew them to church has been replaced by a one size fits all model, the form of Sunday morning that follows the pattern where all the generations sing adult hymns with adult theology most adults don't understand, listen to a sermon written to adults.

As I reflected on their story, I became aware of how many other stories from many other pastors who have the resources, the know how, the passion, to offer more than one Sunday morning worship experience.  Stories where they seek to enliven worship, use cross cultural resources and prayers, other forms of music, all telling the Christian Story yet in new ways.  What too often results in their efforts is that a debilitating fight in the congregation begins about what is 'real worship.'  And real worship means the one size fits all model.

We are in a timed competition for the families of our communities.  They have many good options and church is only one of them.  The time competition is to engage them in short window of three to five years around the key transitions of birth, entering school, entering high school, and then re engage the parents as the children move to college.  Theses timed windows means the worship and offerings are in place when the households are looking for that particular spiritual nurture.  If its not there when they show up on our doorstep, then we've lost them.  The timed competition also means it happens on Sunday, when people are there, or it doesn't happen.  The other days of the week there are even more good options, demands, good community causes for volunteering, and the space needed to keep our lives knit together.

Congregations are in timed competition not only for the time resources of households but in a few short years, if we don't diversify our worship beyond one size fits all, many more families will be choosing other options on Sunday.