I read an article a few years back that was talking about the decline of church attendance in North America. It's not that people have stopped going to church but that their attendance has dropped significantly. I remember growing up in London Ontario with a family that took me to church. My parents would make sure we were dressed appropriately, shoes shined and definately a tie for the men and a dress for the ladies. We would head out the doors of our house to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night and when youth rolled around Friday night as well. Now statistics say the average church attender is attending twice a month. In fact the article I read mentioned that people now consider faithful church attendance as attending once a month. We must have attended three maybe four times a week. When I look at the patterns of ACC I know that any given Sunday there seems to be about 30-40 per cent of the church away. We now minister to just under 500 people and would faithfully have approximately 280-325 who attend on a Sunday morning. The numbers are probably higher if you include our small group and midweek ministries.
I understand times have changed. People seem to be busier, more on the go and have a lot of activities. So I got thinking about church attendance in the first place. We tend to measure our faithfulness by how often we walk through the doors of a cathedral like structure or as the popular trend a warehouse turned into a church building. If we are thinking by attending the building on a Sunday morning is church attendance we are sadly mistaken. The church of old worked hard to build a habitual approach to church attendance, a pattern people would follow. I do have to say a pattern of church attendance is not all bad. Why? because many of us are weak in making good decisions and patterns allow us to make good decisions in moments of weakness. There is much more to church attendance than a good pattern of attendance.
So! if we are looking to a healthy approach to church attendance, what would it look like? I would venture to say that true church attendance is when we make a difference in another person or people's lives by being faithful to the call to worship, fellowship and prayer together. We have church by being the church. The church is called to so much more than sitting in a pew. We are having church by having a coffee and cookie together, by asking our friends how they are doing, by taking time to pray, reading his Word, sharing communion, giving to those in need and much more. Last I checked it was pretty difficult to do that from home.
Now with that said, if we are only attending a gathering a couple times a month with the summers off to enjoy the cottage we are probably not attending church faithfully enough. The church needs you, they need what God has given you to help edify and build up the body of believers you worship with. You are a valuable part of the church. If we don't go we can't be a blessing to someone that might just be counting on us. So this is not a guilt trip to get out of bed and put on some nice clothes to attend another music, preaching and fellowship time. This is a challenge to empower you to go and make a difference in somebodies life. They need you. Go and be the church. You might just need them too.
Blessings from a pastor who loves his church, the people of ACC.
