Attendance

Every December, churches across the United States prepare for an influx of visitors, but fewer Americans than ever are including church in this year’s Christmas plans. According to a Lifeway Research study, only 47% of U.S. adults say they typically attend church during the holiday season, while 48% admit it’s not on their agenda, and 5% remain undecided. While 9 in 10 Americans do something to celebrate Christmas, less than half typically attend church at Christmastime today.

The study reveals a sharp divide in Christmas church attendance, particularly among the religiously unaffiliated—a group growing fastest among younger demographics. While 71% of this group say they’re unlikely to attend church at Christmas, 40% admit they might consider it if personally invited by someone they trust.

Among those who do attend, the motivations are surprisingly diverse. Sixty percent of Christmas churchgoers say their attendance stems from faith, but others are only doing it to keep up with tradition (16%), appease family and friends (15%), or simply embrace the festive ambiance (8%).

As churches prepare for Christmas Eve services — often the highest-attended service of the year — the message is clear: intentional outreach matters.

Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against his church, but sleet and hail will keep many churchgoers out of the pew on a Sunday. In fact, some may even skip to get a little extra sleep or watch their favorite team.

Respondents were asked how often they would skip a weekly worship service for six different scenarios—to avoid severe weather, to enjoy an outdoor activity in good weather, to get extra sleep, to meet friends, to avoid traveling when it’s raining, or to watch sports.

Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research said, “Churchgoers are not on autopilot. Each week they are faced with a choice of whether to attend church, and there is more than one tradeoff when it comes to this decision.”

Most regular churchgoers say they would miss a weekly worship service at least once a year:

To avoid traveling in severe weather (77%)

To enjoy an outdoor activity (55%)

To get some extra sleep (54%)

To meet a friend or group of friends (50%)

To not have to travel when it was raining (43%)

To watch a sporting event or their favorite team (42%)

One in 10 Protestant churchgoers (11%) say they would never skip for any of these reasons. Twice as many (22%) say they would never skip due to the five options besides severe weather situations.

Additionally, the oldest group of churchgoers (65+) and those of other ethnicities (not white, Hispanic, or African American) are among the least likely to say they’d miss for those reasons.

In her book, The Toxic War on Masculinity, author Nancy Percy writes that research has found that evangelical protestant men who attend church regularly are the least likely of any group in America to commit domestic violence.

But nominal Christian family men do fit the negative stereotypes of bad husbands … shockingly so. They spend less time with their children. Their wives report significantly lower levels of happiness, and their marriages are less stable. Whereas active evangelical men are 35% less likely to divorce than secular men, nominal Christian men are 20% more likely to divorce than secular men.

Finally, the real stunner: whereas committed church-going couples report the lowest rate of violence of any group (2.8 percent), nominal husbands report the highest rate of any group (7.2 percent)—even higher than secular couples. Sociologist Brad Wilcox, one of the nation’s top experts on marriage, writes, “The most violent husbands in America are nominal, evangelical protestants who attend church infrequently or not at all.”

Percy summarizes: “It seems that many nominal men hang around the fringes of the Christian world just enough to hear the language of headship and submission, but not enough to learn the biblical meaning of those terms—like skimming the news headlines without reading the actual stories. They cherry pick verses from the Bible and read them through a grid of male superiority and entitlement.”

There’s a particular trend that has come to dominate videos on social media. It’s called “retention editing,” because of its ability to keep users visually engaged, and it’s typified by quick pacing, loud sound effects, and cutting the natural pauses that typify live speech. With the rise of short-form video on apps like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, the style is everywhere.

Dara Pesheva is a teenager who moonlights as a video editor for content creators. “Every clip should be under two seconds,” says Pesheva, who says that flashing graphics, subtitles, and movement are staples in the average user’s video diet. Noah Kettle of Moke Media Company, refers to this as the “Beastification of YouTube,” referring to influencer superstar Jimmy Donaldson, known on his channel as “MrBeast.”

MrBeast uses a similar style, punctuated by ambitious action sequences, and with over 250 million subscribers, his aesthetic choices have a huge trickle-down effect as many other users copy it hoping for similar success.

“It’s designed to be addictive,” says David McNamee, who heads a social media brand agency. “It’s like a slot machine with bells and whistles that are keeping you entertained because the [video] is so bright and it’s loud. It doesn’t matter what the content is, because your brain is being told this is entertaining because it’s flashy.”

But even MrBeast is now having second thoughts. On X he tweeted out a plea: “get rid of the ultra-fast paced/overstim era of content.” His most recent videos have trended toward better storytelling, yelling less, and letting scenes breathe more. Though these have resulted in longer videos, his views have only increased.

Pesheva says retention editing is problematic long-term because of its prolonged impact on the end user. “People around my age can’t focus. They have very short attention spans. They’re used to TikTok, and so editors have to adjust for Gen Z. They have to adjust to the fact that people can’t keep their attention on something for more than a second if it’s not entertaining.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In this frantic world of information overload competing for our attention, it is crucial to learn to slow down and take time to evaluate and absorb the information we are consuming. This is especially true in our reading and meditating on the Word of God.

While many Americans report that they attend church at least occasionally, that number could be slowly shrinking. Recently, people were asked in an online forum, “If you used to go to church and don’t anymore … Why not?” and the answers were interesting and insightful.

1. There Are Too Many Judgmental People - Yes, there are many, many kind, loving Christians. But there are plenty of not-so-kind ones too.

2. They Were Hurt at Church - Unfortunately, church hurt is a very real issue that way too many Christians have had to endure.

3. The Service Is Too Loud - Many former church members reported that they didn’t appreciate how loud and showy the services can be these days.

4. There Were Too Many False Teachings – Some churches have turned aside from their original purpose and turned the sermons into self-help seminars with the Word of God only occasionally sprinkled in.

5. The Church Split - Church splits are incredibly painful for those involved, and can easily lead to some walking out of church altogether.

6. Their Schedule Is Too Busy - People are busier than ever. This can mean church attendance takes a back seat to other matters.

7. They Stopped Attending During the Pandemic - Multiple people mentioned the recent pandemic as a reason, whether this was due to ongoing health concerns or simply a change in routine.

8. The Church Focused On Religion Over Relationship – The church should focus on building a good relationship with God and others, not simply following rules or measuring up to an impossible standard.

9. The Church Became Too Focused on Money - Too much emphasis on money and giving simply isn’t healthy. This is problematic if church members are treated differently due to their differences in giving.

10. They Have Social Anxiety - Anxiety is a common mental health condition, so this prevents some from regularly attending and enjoying time at church.

Editor’s Note: The original survey was conducted by Equipping Godly Women on Reddit. You can read the original survey and comments here.

More millennials attend church weekly now than before the start of the pandemic. According to a Barna Group survey of 13,000 adults, roughly 16 percent of regular churchgoers have not returned to services at all in 2022, but weekly attendance among those born between 1981 and 1996 has risen from 21 percent to 39 percent this year.

The trend can be partly explained by life stage. Across age cohorts, church attendance is highest when people have young children, drops off for “empty nesters,” and then increases again when friends start to pass away. The oldest millennials are 40 and 41

The term “deaths of despair” was coined in 2015 by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton. The researchers were seeking to find what was causing the decline in U.S. life expectancies in the later part of the 20th century. They discovered the dramatic increase in death rates for middle-aged, white non-Hispanic men and women was coming from three causes: drug overdoses, suicide, and alcoholic liver disease. Deaths from these causes have increased between 56 percent and 387 percent and average 70,000 per year.

The researchers said, “The pillars that once helped give life meaning—a good job, a stable home life, a voice in the community—have all eroded.” Those pillars are certainly important, but another factor may have an even more detrimental effect.

Research suggests a potential cause of deaths of despair could be the decline in religious participation that began in the late 1980s. The researchers found “there is a strong negative relationship between religiosity and mortality due to deaths of despair.”

In 2010, country singer Jason Aldean released a song called “Church Pew or Bar Stool” in which he complains about how he’s stuck in a “church pew or bar stool kind of town.” He sings, “There’s only two means of salvation around here that seem to work / Whiskey or the Bible, a shot glass or revival.” That’s a crude dichotomy, but it appears to increasingly be the choice many Americans face. They’ll either find hope from a community of faith or the lonely despair that leads them to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs.

Two Harvard health professors (one an epidemiologist) note that declining church attendance is a public health crisis.

Of course, the point of the gospel is not to lower your blood pressure, but to know and love God. ... But there are many public health benefits of church attendance. Consider how it appears to affect health care professionals. Some of my (Tyler’s) research examined their behaviors over the course of more than a decade and a half using data from the Nurses’ Health Study, which followed more than 70,000 participants.

Medical workers who said they attended religious services frequently (given America’s religious composition, these were largely in Christian churches) were 29 percent less likely to become depressed, about 50 percent less likely to divorce, and five times less likely to commit suicide than those who never attended.

And, in perhaps the most striking finding of all, health care professionals who attended services weekly were 33 percent less likely to die during a 16-year follow-up period than people who never attended. These effects are of a big enough magnitude to make a practical difference and not just a statistical difference.

Our findings aren’t unique. A number of large, well-designed research studies have found that religious service attendance is associated with greater longevity, less depression, less suicide, less smoking, less substance abuse, better cancer and cardiovascular- disease survival, less divorce, greater social support, greater meaning in life, greater life satisfaction, more volunteering, and greater civic engagement.

The findings are extensive and growing.

Actress Diane Kruger (National Treasure, In The Fade) was once offered a role that required her to play a young wife and mother, experiencing the loss of her husband and child. Since she hadn’t personally experienced such painful losses in her own life, Diane realized that the only way she could prepare herself for the important role, would be to connect with people and groups that were walking through extreme grief and similar experiences.

It is said that initially, she began to offer her own thoughts and responses with those who shared their stories in the groups she attended. However, she gradually realized that it would be far better for her to stop talking, and to start listening with empathy to their stories. That decision brought about a meaningful learning curve that helped her adapt to the role she had to play in the film.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In conversations, how often are we eager to air our thoughts and views without listening to the other person? The Bible however advises us to be careful of the words we speak, and about the importance of being willing to listen to others. James 1:19 says, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak.”

On the topic of work/life questions, Marie Le Conte writes in The New Statesman, that “Working From Home Is Killing Our Social Lives.” For now, there are far fewer opportunities for the WFH crowd for random, chance meet ups.

As much as loneliness has been a watchword for decades now, the post-pandemic reordering seems more acutely lonely and isolated. In a poll that the Pew Research Center conducted in May 2022, 21 percent of respondents said that socializing had become more important to them since the coronavirus outbreak. However, 35 percent said it had become less important.

Some people are probably seeing their loved ones less because of continued fear of disease. But when pressed, the typical response is, “I just got out of the habit.” This anecdotal evidence is backed up by data: Most respondents in a spring 2022 survey of American adults said they found it harder to form relationships now, and a quarter felt anxious about socializing. Many of us have simply forgotten how to be friends.

Loneliness tends to be self-perpetuating. If you’ve been seeking remote work instead of in-person work for convenience, choosing solitary activities over group ones because of awkwardness, or electing not to reestablish old friendships because of sheer torpor, you may be stuck in a pattern of learned loneliness. But it is worth noting just how vital other people are for our own wellbeing—even at the most basic level of casual friendships.

Looking for a bright spot? One study found that while the post-pandemic unhappiness of the unreligious rose, those who attended church were comparably happier.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The pandemic lockdowns and health scares have greatly affected local church attendance as well. Staying home and watching streaming church services, also harms our spiritual lives. “Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb. 10:25).

Does church attendance accomplish anything good for society? A recent Duke University study shows that it does. Here’s the gist of the study: When it rains on Sunday morning, fewer people go to church. When fewer people go to church, more people commit at least three crimes—buying drugs, committing forgery, and embezzling money. That’s based on the correlation between church attendance and crime data collected from over 1,300 US counties.

The research found that an hour of Sunday morning rain reduces church attendance in America by about 17 percent. Laying historical records of precipitation on Sundays between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. next to year-over-year crime reports, the study found that more rainy Sundays regularly resulted in more drug-related and white-collar crimes. According to his paper, “Sinning in the Rain,” the relationship is consistent across decades.

Editor’s Note: The main researcher also noted that “more research is needed to disentangle the mechanisms driving these results.”

Want your kids to do better in school? Church might be the answer, according to a study conducted by the University of Notre Dame. An article titled, “God, Grades, and Graduation,” suggests that religion can play a critical role for success.

According to the study, abiders are youth who remain active in religious communities and who have adopted their family’s faith as their own. They “are likely to have an academic advantage because religion and schools are complementary institutions.” In particular, “adolescents who thrive in one institution are likely to thrive in the other.”

Among the survey’s participants, the probability of getting grades of all or mostly A’s was about 10% higher among "abiders" than among non-religious students in the same socioeconomic group. According to Professor Horwitz, at Tulane University, a religious foundation can actually overcome challenges associated with growing up in lower socioeconomic circumstances.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Our society treats faith as a game people choose to play, a tradition to be mindlessly followed. But a foundation of faith has far-reaching implications. When we lose faith, we lose our way.

Something about the communal religious experience seems to matter. Something powerful takes place there that enhances health and well-being; and it is very different than what comes from solitary spirituality.

Recent research has shown a reduced health risk for regular church attenders versus never-attenders:

29% reduced risk of depression

33% reduced risk of death

33% reduced risk of adolescent illegal drug use

50% reduced risk of divorce

84% reduced risk of suicide

This research should challenge the growing number of Americans who self-identify as “spiritual but not religious,” to consider whether their own spiritual journeys might be better undertaken in a community of like-minded seekers and under the discipline of a tried and tested tradition of belief and practice.

Research suggests that those who neglect to meet together (Heb. 10:25) likely miss something of the religious experience that is powerful, both for health and for much else as well. The data is clear: Going to church remains central to true human flourishing.

Dr. Tyler J. Vanderweele, an epidemiology professor at Harvard, spent a decade researching how regular church attendance impacted health care workers. He summarized his conclusions:

Medical workers who said they attended religious services frequently (mostly in Christian churches) were 29 percent less likely to become depressed, about 50 percent less likely to divorce, and five times less likely to commit suicide than those who never attended. And, in perhaps the most striking finding of all, health care professionals who attended services weekly were 33 percent less likely to die during a 16-year follow-up period than people who never attended.

He also found that regular service attendance helps shield children from the “big three” dangers of adolescence: depression, substance abuse, and premature sexual activity. “People who attended church as children,” he added, “are also more likely to grow up happy, to be forgiving, to have a sense of mission and purpose, and to volunteer. Regular church service attenders also had far fewer “deaths of despair”— deaths by suicide, drug overdose, or alcohol—than people who never attended services, reducing those deaths by 68 percent for women and 33 percent for men in the study.

These findings aren’t unique. Many other studies have found that religious service attendance is associated with “greater longevity, less depression, less suicide, less smoking, less substance abuse, better cancer and cardiovascular disease survival, less divorce, greater social support, greater meaning in life, greater life satisfaction, more volunteering, and greater civic engagement. The findings are extensive and growing.”

The Bookseller magazine runs a competition to find the book with the oddest title of the year. Competition rules stipulate that the work had to be of serious intent and non-fiction. One year, the winner was “Highlights in the History of Concrete.” Runners up included “The Illustrated History of Metal Lunchboxes,” and “The Development of Brain and Behavior in the Chicken.” Special mention was given to “Soviet Bus Stops,” and “Butchering Livestock at Home.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is amazing what interests people enough to spend the time and energy to write a book! Why should people be passionate about metal lunchboxes? As Christians, we should be passionate about what God has done for us. Are we passionate enough to pass it on to others? The Apostle Peter says, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15)

In a poll of 2,000 Britons the 'Perfect Sunday' involved: waking at 8:30 a.m. to the smell of breakfast cooking, a cuddle, and three hours of television. A quarter of Brits thought an ideal weekend morning starts with a full English breakfast in bed and a third wanted to start their Sunday morning with a cup of tea or coffee, before pottering around the house for an hour.

The perfect roast is said to be best served at 3:15 p.m. with, ideally, four people. Other activities Brits enjoy doing on Sunday include reading a book, listening to music, and doing some gardening. Nearly one in 10 said they spend their Sunday afternoon at the pub, while one in seven think Sundays are made for doing food shopping to keep the cupboards stocked for the rest of the week.

Attending church did not appear in the poll. Graham Nicholls from Affinity, a network of evangelical churches, said:

I suppose I was sad that attending a gathering of God's people, in a church, wasn't kind of anywhere on the majority of people's lists. … It means that they're not hearing the gospel, they're not coming to an encounter with God … It's also that churches are great places for taking our families, for making friendships and for learning who we are and why we're here.

"There can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life, apart from an immersion in, and embrace of, community. I am not myself by myself."

Eugene Peterson

According to a study from the Public Religion Research Institute, Americans may not be telling the truth about church attendance. But the real story here isn't just the headline; it's where the exaggeration of church attendance comes from in the first place. For context: gauging exaggeration in a poll is notoriously difficult—after all, your numbers are only as good as people's honesty.

So, to see how much exaggeration was present in people's reported church attendance, this study gathered data by using two platforms—a phone interview and an online survey. In the impersonal online survey, participants were less likely to exaggerate their church attendance … showing "much lower levels of worship attendance." Why? Because of what sociologists call "social desirability bias." We've all felt it, it's the desire to exaggerate something about ourselves that we feel will impress others.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Here's the bottom line: we live in a culture where church attendance is dropping dramatically, but people still feel a strong bias to be perceived as attendees. Where does that hypocrisy come from? Is it positively or negatively motivated? If church is socially desirable, why aren't we attending it more? I guess we need another survey …

Katelyn Beaty wrote a creative, semi-humorous, but deeply moving piece titled, "An Open Apology to the Local Church." Beaty's letter isn't a letter to defend the church.

Beaty writes: ‘I'm writing to apologize. While claiming publicly to have loved you as Christ does—like a spouse—in spirit I have loved you like an on-again, off-again fling. My faithful attendance suggests a radical commitment to gathering with your people. But many Sundays, my heart is still in it for me. By now you have likely received word of a popular blogger confessing his boredom with your recent Protestant iterations. And while I think the blogger is ultimately misguided about his relationship (or lack thereof) with you, I can appreciate his honesty. At least he's not leading you on. Here's where I need to confess my true feelings about you, Church: The romance of our earlier days has faded. The longer I have known you, the more I weary of your quirks and trying character traits…. While we're at it, let me make one more confession: I resent how much you want to go out these days.’

Editor’s Note: Read the whole thing. It's a wonderful, quotable illustration about the church.

John Knight and Denise Knight were happily anticipating the birth of their first child, a son. They had already decided to name him Paul. But when Paul was born, there was a big problem: Paul was born without eyes. John and Denise would later discover that their son had other serious issues, including severe autism and a growth hormone deficiency.

Two months after Paul's birth, as John was looking at his son hooked up to tubes and sensors and surrounded by medical professionals, he quietly told God, "God, you are strong, that's true, and you are wicked. You are mean. Do it to me—not to this boy. What did he ever do to you?" Shortly after that prayer, John and Denise quit going to church.

But one couple from the church refused to give up on them. Karl and Gerilyn never pressured John and Denise about spiritual issues. Instead, they would often stop by and leave simple gifts, like a loaf of fresh bread or a basket of soap and shampoo for Denise. John said that it was like Karl and Gerilyn were saying, "I notice you. I see you. I know you're hurting and I love you."

Eventually John and Denise accepted a dinner invitation from Karl and Gerilyn. During dinner John told Karl, "You can believe whatever you want. I don't care. I have evidence that God is cruel." Karl softly replied, "I love you, John. I have regard for you, and I love your boy."

Karl and Gerilyn's four children also displayed unconditional love for their son. John described it this way:

They'd throw [my son] up in the air and make him laugh and do funny bird sounds and—and that was confounding, because most people, most adults couldn't do that. And so I would have this extraordinary expression of love and affection at the dinner table here, and I would turn to my left—and there would be at least one of these children playing with my boy like he was a real boy. I wasn't even sure he was a real boy at times.

Based on this family's quiet, persistent love, John and Denise finally returned to the Lord and to their local church. And when they returned Karl and Gerilyn stayed by their side, making sure their son made it into the nursery. John would later say, "They persisted. That was a big deal that they persisted with us."