Shouldn’t Twice A Month Be Enough?

Have you heard that church attendance in America is down? Actually, when you get into the details, you find that more people are attending evangelical churches in America today than ever before. 

As it turns out, we have more church attenders today, but a lower frequency of attendance. The Greatest Generation attended church religiously, every Sunday. Boomers were the first to break that trend and averaged 3x/ month. But now Gen Xers, Milllenials, and Gen Zers, are feeling pretty good about just twice a month.

We blame it on busyness. And I get it. Sports, school functions, community clubs, etc., all hold their events 7 days a week now, and there’s no respect for Sunday as a church and rest day. But that only happened because professing Jesus-followers caved and continue to cave. Let’s be honest, you don’t miss church only because of an event. If a sporting activity takes priority over church, you probably miss for lots of other excuses. The sniffle that would never keep you from work does keep you from church, right?

And all of this is sad. It’s such a departure from the attitude towards corporate worship in the Bible and also all of history. It took a lot more commitment for first-century Christians to make the trek to church, and yet missing on a Sunday for the lame excuses we use would have been unheard of in their day…as well as among Christians for all of history, up until the late 20th century. 

Church attendance is about corporate worship, learning the Bible, getting together with other believers, etc. But it’s also about sending a message that God is first place in your life, and nothing gets in the way of doing what He’s asked you to do. Setting aside Sunday mornings or Saturday nights for Him, and not letting other things get in the way is such a simple thing. But it does send a powerful message: to yourself, to your God, to other believers, to your kids/family, and your neighbors. 

If Jesus doesn’t matter enough to us to gather with His Body just one hour a week, how can we say that He matters enough to us to do the hard things in following Him throughout the week?

This is not about guilt. If you come twice a month, I’m really glad you are here. But to answer the title of this blog post, ask God that question. I think you know the answer :-). And I challenge you: stop giving yourself a pass, and if you haven’t already, turn your periodic practice of church attendance into a weekly commitment. I think you’ll see yourself starting to grow a lot more than you realize.

“And let us ... not stay away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do…” (Hebrews 10:24–25 HCSB).