The longer I am a pastor, the more I worry about the future of the Christian church. One of the biggest stressors in my life is to work on ways to keep church attendance and church membership growing. Just about every day I get something in the mail telling me that they have the secret to growing my church and that if I just attend this or that conference and do this or that program, my church is sure to grow. At the same time, often location has a lot, if not everything, to do with it.
Still our churches should be growing at least a little bit, just as Warrenton is growing. The problem is that they aren’t. Instead they are declining in membership and worship attendance. And when I say “they” I mean all Christian churches in general. If you look at any census of any major denomination you will notice that the majority of them are declining.
Why? Why are we declining? Why aren’t our churches busting at the seams? Why aren’t we having to add worship services instead of taking them away for lack of attendance? Why are so many churches struggling to keep their doors open because of finances?
I have a few answers to this question, but only one main one that I would like to share with you all today. It is because over the past couple of decades we have failed our youth. I am not saying that we haven’t tried to do everything possible to keep them interested in church. No, we have done that to a fault. We have employed every possible means of entertainment and attention grabbing devices and ploys to keep our children’s attention at church.
What I am talking about is that we have failed to teach them the utmost truths of Christ and the theology of the cross as it has been laid out for us in the Scriptures. We have worked hard at keeping the kids in church for the church’s sake instead of for Christ’s sake. For many churches including my own at times, it has been enough for us to get them into the doors, while we often don’t really care about what they believe or how their lives are affected by what they believe. We don’t care what they know about Christ. We simply want the kids to be in the church building and somehow maybe they will learn by osmosis or something like that.
As long as I have been in ministry, which is about 12 years all together now, I have seen a lot of well meaning parents, youth directors, and even pastors entertain the youth of the congregation just to keep them interested in church. Then, as soon as there is something important to teach them and it requires a lecture or a lesson, or something gets “boring”, or they aren’t entertained like they want to be, they leave, or at the very least, continue to whine and complain to their parents about forcing them go to church or forcing religion down their throats. The parents in turn, out of frustration, give in to their kids or use the copout that they want their kids to decide whether they want to go to church or not or how much they want to be involved, which is usually not at all.
It is hard to be something you are not. The church is not an entertainment venue, so when it tries to be it may succeed for a while but eventually it will fail to keep people interested. It is not a full service store where everyone will get all of their wants met, notice I said wants not needs. So, if a person is going to church to get a certain want met, they may get it met, but then when their want is filled and they have another want, and that one isn’t filled, they move on to the next church that can fill that want, and so on and so forth. Do you get my drift?
My point in all of this is that we need to be about the business that Christ gave us in the first place, which is very simple. Matthew 28:19-20 says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and behold I will be with you to the very end of the age. ”
We, as the Christian church, can’t be in the business of keeping people interested in the church for the church’s sake. Because then it is nothing but an empty knowledgeless religion based on feelings and what I want from day to day. The church needs to be about the business of making disciples of Christ for Christ’s sake, teaching them and baptizing them, so that the body of Christ may be built up and we all may be in heaven together on the last day. We especially need to be about this business with our young people so that they can grow up in a good relationship with their Lord and Savior as they go through their most difficult years.
To this end, St. John’s Lutheran Church has started a before and after school program, which focuses its attention on the spiritual welfare of each of the children who attend this program. The program is called Kingdom Kids. It is not just a babysitting service but also a program that teaches kids all about Jesus and helps them to grow in their relationship with him in many ways. If you would like more information about this program, please call our church at 456-2888!
Always remember this verse, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Peace to all!
