For the past couple of days I've addressed some common complaints often made by smaller churches. Today we are looking at a complaint I often hear from these churches: their inability to attract younger families with children.
I had such a conversation with a small church just this week. The people with whom I was talking were certain that reaching such people was critical to the continued existence of their church. It really isn't, and if you doubt that I encourage you to go back and read the post from Monday. Churches tend to reach persons who are most like the current membership, and if you are in a church that is primarily older you will probably be more successful in reaching out to other seniors. The good news is that there are plenty of folks in that age category who are not involved in any church, and if you can successfully minister to them your church will not have to worry about remaining open. While wanting to reach younger families with children sounds appealing, it's going to be very difficult for many smaller churches to successfully achieve.
When I grew up churches faced little competition on Sundays. Today, children are involved in numerous activities, many of which occur on Sundays. Drive through most communities on Sunday mornings and see how many soccer, baseball, and football fields have games being played. Even if the games don't start until after lunch, families have to drive to the sports complex so the players will be ready for the game. Sports are not the only competition to church. Many parents work on Sundays, especially younger parents who may be working entry level jobs that require them to work on Sunday. Due to the large number of divorced parents, many children are with a different parent every other weekend making it difficult for them to become involved in any church. More and more schools are going to year around schedules with only short breaks in between terms forcing families to squeeze vacations in during those breaks. When one adds all these distractions together it becomes easy to see why many of these families find it difficult to become involved in a church.
Compounding the problem is the fact that many of these families simply see little value in church. When I was growing up most of the families in the communities in which we lived attended church on Sunday. Few people considered not doing so except in very unusual conditions. The church was at the center of much of our lives. That is not the case today. For many younger people the church isn't even on their radar screen, and if it is it is on the periphery. It's certainly not at the center. Even if they are members of a church they may attend only if there is nothing else demanding their time that particular Sunday.
The third factor that makes it difficult for many smaller churches to attract young families with children is that children want to be with others in their age range. If the church doesn't have any young people it will be very challenging to interest other young people to attend. Early in my pastoral ministry we were trying to get a youth group started at our church with little success. One day I visited a family that consisted of a single mother with four children. She told me they had left a church a few years earlier and had never began attending church since. When I invited them to our church she asked how many young people we had in our youth group. I explained we were trying to get a youth group started, and her four would make four. Very quickly she said they would not attend a church that did not already have an established youth group. Again, we are more likely to attract who we are.
The final reason we'll mention in this post is that many smaller churches are not very attractive to younger families. That may be painful to admit, but it is a reality. Attending services in many of these churches is like stepping back in time. Most people today do not sing 19th century songs to pipe organ music, sit in rows on hard pews, and listen to someone wearing a robe read Elizabethan English to them before delivering a 30 minute message with no commercial breaks. All of these things may be quite proper and enable those in my generation to worship God, but for many younger people it all seems odd and irrelevant to today's culture. If such families do begin seeking a church to attend they will be more likely to look for one that seems to speak to their needs and allows them to worship in a way that is more meaningful to them.
If a traditional, smaller church is serious about wanting to attract young families with children it will have to decide that it is willing to make the necessary changes to do so. These will not be minor changes and are likely to be quite disruptive to the church with no guarantees that even then the church will reach that target audience. In most instances these churches will enjoy a much more productive ministry by targeting people most like the ones who already attend the church and allow other churches to reach those younger families.
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