Typically, when we think about the decline in church attendance, we think about youngsters’ increasing disillusionment with religion and religious organizations. However, a surprising number of older adults are also spending less time at these institutions.
This list reveals 17 reasons why many boomers are deciding to skip church.
What are your thoughts about the reasons given?
Some of them are valid enough, and some of them seem to be little more than "I heard some guy at the pub say that churches are (whatever) and so I won't go to church".
If you have to work on Sundays you can't go to church on Sundays. Whatever people say about going to church, if you don't work you can't pay your bills. Maybe you can find a church with a service in the evening or midweek but if not, you're pretty much shut out from attending church. Maybe if church is important to you, you can find a job that doesn't require Sunday work but depending on what skills you have it might not be an option.
Some issues, like the perception that churches simply demand you belief something blindly and don't ask questions, seem fair enough. I've encountered people in the church whose attitude towards questions have been dismissive and it's the kind of thing that does turn people away. Sometimes churches can give the impression that "people like me" don't belong there based on not fitting in with the dynamic of the church or even something as simple as what people should wear. If someone believes that attending church requires them to dress up but they can't afford to dress in a way that they think the church will accept, it can be exclusive. I'm not a big fan of live streaming services but if someone watches a service and sees that some people are wearing suits and others are wearing jeans or baggy shorts and a T-shirt they can at least see that they don't particularly need to dress up.
The desire for authenticity and transparency also seems like a fair point. Sometimes church gatherings can feel like a contest to see who can say the holiest sounding things and church communities can easily appear to be made up of people who have everything together, who never have any doubts about anything, and whose lives are more or less perfect. To the person who hasn't got it all together and who is wondering what else there might be to life it can feel like they will never measure up. Throw in the way some churches can operate like a glorified social club and it's easy to see why they would move on. I loosely know a guy who lives in a conservative area and found himself feeling unwelcome at local churches because he was divorced, so he ended up at a wacky Pentecostal church with the weirdest theology I've ever seen in any church, because they were the only ones that would accept him.
