You may have not noticed but there is something happening in the Church.  There has been successive waves of growth and wane.  Waves of people coming in the door staying just long enough to figure it all out and then move on to the next congregation.  I don’t know what they are looking for, I do not know what would keep them long term, or for that matter do I even desire them to stay longer.  You see they are what I call locusts.  They fly in, sometimes in great clouds, to land and partake of the feast.  There is great excitement about these new numbers.  Energy is spent to make them comfortable, liked and accepted.  Some of them proudly proclaimed how much they loved our church and they attended only sporadically at times, they saw themselves as a part.  Some saw attendance as a once a month thing, others a little more.  However, when the time comes for them to fly away there is no warning, they are just not there anymore.  As suddenly they appeared out of the dark, they simply disappeared.  No amount of email and visitor cards stopped their vanishing.

Oh there are those who are there all the time; never wavering, steady, resolute.  I used to say, “saved, justified, sanctified and petrified.”  Never-the-less why has this phenomenon happening?  Why has the Church become more of a Flash-mob experience?  If an individual church has two-hundred members, but only one-hundred is ever there at one time, what does that say about our new church culture?  The church becomes like a roller coaster. Has it always been that way, or has something changed?

I think it is not the preaching or even the preacher.  It is not the musicians or ever the type of music.  It is not the thousand hours of video work put into the presentation of the week splattered up on the white boarded front of the church.  It is that our culture has changed.  Changed from a Church oriented, family empowered, God designed culture to one of emphasis on the individual.  The individual who can determine what they like.  The individual that sets the boundaries.  There are no moral absolutes.  We have to be tolerant to everyone’s feelings and “specialness”. We want the new younger crowd to be welcome and comfortable.  To draw them out of the world to a God that fills them with awe and wonder.  But the church seems at times more like a “Me generation” rally than worship of God.

The church attendance roller coaster is simply a response to change from THEE to me.

What do you think.  Leave a comment.