In a candid conversation yesterday with some of my peeps, here's what I learned about why they don't go to church.
1.
Church does not fit into their schedule and culture. It's not only that church is too long, but you can't multi-task at church. It's rude to check your phone and it takes out a big chunk of your day. There's Sunday School, and morning worship, and eating/fellowship. All of this is seen as church and for most black folks, this is an all-day event.
2.
Church people are mean. They have bad attitudes and generally
do not seem happy. They are unpleasant to be around. They judge all the time and don't get to know people. They don't treat others the way they'd like to be treated. Sure they don't steal or kill, but they don't treat others right. Church people are very hypocritical!
3.
Church is not welcoming. Someone is always holding a seat for someone who isn't there and guests have to find seating elsewhere, or stand, or go to the overflow room (also known as I could've stayed at home and watched church on TV). Would you come back to someone's home if they didn't offer you a seat and you knew they would be there for a while? Someone also expressed that church is exclusionary. If you don't fit a certain mold, you feel out of place.
4.
Church people are crazy. God said this. God said that. Don't date - God told me you would be my wife.
Wait, what? I didn't get any of these memos. My peeps were extremely leery of all of these
specific messages. Basically, when did God become so talkative about so many interpersonal topics?
Now here's the kicker - all of these people believe in Jesus Christ and what He came to do. What I heard from the conversation is that
their experience with church does not reflect their values and what they believe the message of Christ is.
It's easy to say "get over it - someone didn't offer you seat," or "you can't make everyone act right" but can you see the problem here? It's not Jesus that's the problem, it's His people.
We are the problem!
We are the modern day Pharisees! We think we know so much about God and His word, yet still can't seem to make church a pleasant, welcoming, accepting community where people come drink of the waters of life. And the bad part is that
we refuse to change. We refuse to make church shorter, we look down on preachers who make the messages more simple (saying they're not teaching people nothing because it's not fire and brimstone), we don't announce to our congregations not to hold seats, or teach people to be careful and wise about sharing prophesy. Yet we think folks should just "come to church" because its the right thing to do.
Newflash: people don't go to places where they don't feel wanted. They don't go to places that seem laborious. They don't go to places where people who have attitudes go. They don't go to places where the people are pretentious.
My experience as a lifetime church-goer is that we'd rather place all of the burden on the non-church-goer than to place the burden on us to change. Until we change, we can expect for Generation X, Y, and all that follow to remain non-church-goers.
