Where have all the Christians gone?

Why is it that with surverys suggesting that the vast majority of people in the UK say they are Christians and yet the churches are empty?

I know some people will want to argue that it’s because the people who claim to be Christian are not really Christians. They think they are because there parents were but this doesn’t make them a Christian. Of course I have to accept this arguement because being a Christian means accepting Jesus as your saviour. It’s a matter of faith and not of birth.

I have to agree on this point but with churches declining we discover that there are many people who still have a faith but have given up on the church. They voted with their feet – not because they fell out with God but because the church was so dissapointing to them. Sadly many of these people then feel so guilty about leaving church that they stop having any meaningful relationship with God.

Most of the surveys I’ve read on this topic say that people leave the church because church is irrelevant and boring.

Amen to that I say.

Anyone who has ever been to a good number of church services (especially the established churches) will know how boring and irrelevant they can be. Some hymns have the capacity to make you wish you had never been born and some preachers make you wish you had a pencil to poke in your eye just for a little excitement.

But you know I’ve been to sports events that were the same and I’ve certainly watched plenty of T.V. that made me feel this way. Perhaps the problem is that you always know that a sports event or T.V. might be better next time but you can’t be so sure with church.

However if you read the gospels you discover that Jesus has as much to say now as He ever did and some of it can even be inspiring just to read. The problem isn’t with God it’s with some of His followers.

So if you are fed up with church don’t blame God because it isn’t God’s fault.

Perhaps the question then that every Christian should be asking is:

“What on earth are we going to do about the church?”

What makes a church?

What are the basic requirments for a group of people to be called a Christian church?

Here is my suggested list:

1. The people who are gathered together need to be Christians.

2. There needs to be more than one of them (people that is).

Being a church is not about how many people you have and it’s not about what constitution you follow or what your mission statement is. You don’t have to have a church office or building of any sort. You don’t even need to have a fancy name.

For many hundreds of years we have been persuaded that the only option for churches is to belong to a denomination of some sort. Now I’m actually in favour of denominations because they help keep churches on the straight and narrow (at least some of them anyway). I guess we have all had experiences of churches that had drifted too far from the teachings of Jesus that they can’t really be called Christian churches any more.

I think though that there are implications for the way we think about church when we get beyond the restrictions of what we normally think of as a church. For instance it would be possible to have a church that had no denomination at all (actually I know there are already but I’m trying to make a point). It would mean that if a group of Christians got themselves together to meet in someones home they would be quite entitled to call themselves a church.

However there is something else we need to think through – perhaps in more detail another time – that in truth there is only one church with lots of different groups all belonging to the one big body called the church. Jesus said the church is His body. Does Jesus have lots of bodies or is there only one? Whatever distinctions mankind has created there is only one true church of which all denominations and independant churches are a part.

Can you be a Christian with no church?

Churches hate to admit it but you can be a Christian and not be part of a church. It’s also true that sometimes you can worship better at the kitchen sink than you can at a Sunday meeting. This is hard even for me to admit.

However there are reasons that Christian’s should try to be part of a church.

1. God has said we should. In the Bible we have been told we should belong to a church. The church is God’s chosen way of interacting with the world (the body of Christ). If we are on our own then we lack the power to be involved in doing God’s work in the same way we could if we were a part of a church.

2. Christians need other Christians. It’s tough being a Christian and being with others can help us deal with some of the pressures of life. I know for myself that it is easy to drift away from the things of God if you don’t make an effort. Belonging to a church helps you to make the effort and when you share your needs and concerns and joys with other Christians it can really be a good source of strength.

3. It helps you to remember the message of Christianity. It’s a sad fact that there is always a temptation for Christians to distort the message so that it fits their lifestyle and wants. I don’t actually think the Christian message is hard to cope with but when everyone else you know is telling you that money is the most important thing in life it’s hard to live the Christian way where God is the most important. We can easily distort good and bad so that what we want is good and what we don’t want is bad rather than basing it on God’s ways.

4. Going through the Christian calender is a powerful way to remember the whole of the story. I’m afraid the rest of the world is not particularly bothered about the Christmas or Easter stories other than it gives them an excuse for a holiday. An obvious example of this is the moaning we get about the moving of the date of Easter because it upsets peoples holiday plans (especially when Easter is in March and the weather is likely to be bad).

I’m sure there are many other reasons but I’m running out of time.

These reasons are very valid but what do you do if you don’t have a church near by? I also want to suggest that not everything that calls itself a church actually is one. Perhaps we can look at that later.

Are you a Christian who has no church?

Then this blog is just for you.

I’m an ordained Christian minister without a church to call my home. I know it sounds crazy and un-Christian but I’m so fed up with the way churches are in my area that I refuse to attend any of them. I would like to go to a particular denomination but I live in a country area and there are not any of that denomination near enough to make it reasonable to go. I’ve always felt that if you are going to attend a church it should be more than just the occasional visit on a Sunday but that seems to be all that is open to me.

Shouldn’t a minister put up with anything? Perhaps you would be right in asking that. I’m not perfect and do make mistakes but surely going to church shouldn’t just leave you feeling angry? Is it really church if you feel closer to God when you are out of it than when you are in it?

Statistically I’m not alone. People have been leaving the church for years because they have just got fed up with the nonsense they experience when they are part of a church. It’s not that they give up on God but just that someone the church has let them down.

I’ve spent many a day with people who have been hurt by insensitive Christians in the past. I’ve talked with people who found church so boring that I just couldn’t take it any more.

I don’t myself believe that church should be the most entertaining of places to be. Reading a book is just not as exciting as watching a film but it doesn’t mean the book is boring – the experience is just different (don’t get fixated on my analogy I know some will think a book is more exciting than a film). The point is that the church is not just not exciting its often downright boring! When I read of how thousands came to hear Jesus speak and how society is reaching out for all things spiritual I have to ask why is it that most churches are empty?

You may be someone who finds church boring, or someone who has been hurt by Christians, or you may have other reasons why you don’t go to church.

I hope that you will feel able to bookmark this blog and perhaps start to participate it in.

I don’t want it to degenerate in to a rant at the church – there are plenty of other blogs doing that. This is not the place for Atheists to get off on bashing Christians – I will remove comments that are like that so don’t bother. I want this to be a place where Christians who have no church can receive some Christian ministry.

Thanks for reading.

Chris