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Missed you in church on Sunday

04 Nov 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

After Jesus skillfully answered the scribe’s question in this Sunday’s gospel, “no one dared” to ask him anything more. Americans hoping to give the “right” answer when asked in surveys about their church attendance seriously inflate the frequency of that attendance, a sociologist says. Neutral questions that measure actual church attendance suggest that about twice as many people claim to go to church weekly as really do on a given Sunday.“Nearly half of all Americans report that they attend church every week—that's every single week—compared to Western Europe, for example, where maybe about 20 percent of people say they attend church” that regularly, reported National Public Radio’s science correspondent Shankar Vedantam. For many years, however, leaders of religious denominations in the United States have said that if 45 percent of Americans were attending church every Sunday, the pews would be packed. And in many churches, in many denominations, that's simply not the case.Philip Brenner, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts who studies church attendance, suspected that when you ask people whether they go to church, they actually end up answering a different question. “What you're really finding out here is, ‘I think I'm the sort of person who should attend church and I don't want to admit otherwise, so I might tell you I go, whether I do or not.’ ”To get an alternate number, Brenner looked at studies that use what is called the Time Diary Method to survey people. “Rather than tell people you're asking about their church attendance, what you do is you march people through their week and have them describe to you exactly what they're doing at any given moment.“And when you march people through the week in this manner, it turns out only about 24 percent of Americans actually report attending religious services in the past week,” said Brenner. What that suggests is that in actual religious practice Americans might not be that different from people in Western Europe when it comes to what they do, but they might be very different from people in Western Europe when it comes to reporting what they do, Brenner said.“I don't know if there's a better way to put it, but it turns out that when it comes to religious behavior, Americans report attending church the same way they report flossing their teeth: Lots of people say they do it, not many people actually do," said Brenner.Homily hint: The research in this news story offers an opportunity to remind listeners that church isn’t about keeping up appearances; it’s about experiencing the living body of Christ in communion with others. Source: An interview by Shankar Vedantam and Steve Inskeep for NPR.org

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Americans stretch the truth on church attendance

25 May 2014 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In "Ten ways Jesus remains with us," Prepare the Word scripture commentator Alice Camille offers the following about the paths where we find the post-Ascension Jesus in our midst: "Jesus said he would be with his church always, to the end of time. So that's one good place to seek and find him: within the community of faith." Most Christians would agree that makes sense, but when it comes down to it believers are prone to exaggerate the frequency of their church attendance, a new survey suggests.According to the data from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), many Christians—and nonbelievers, too—will exaggerate about attending worship in live phone interviews. When asked in an anonymous online questionnaire, however, people will answer more realistically.On the phone, 36 percent of Americans report attending religious services weekly or more, while 30 percent say they seldom or never go. But online a smaller share (31 percent) of people surveyed said they attended church at least weekly, while a larger portion (43 percent) admitted they seldom or never go.People who don’t attend worship—but say they did—may not mean to lie, said PRRI CEO Robert Jones. People respond to phone surveys as they think a "good Christian” would or should answer, he said. “There’s an aspirational quality here,” he said. “People see themselves as the kind of person who would go.”Once you remove the social pressure of speaking on the phone, “you see people willing to give answers that are probably closer to reality,” he said. “People feel less pressure to conform.”Some other of the findings by group: By phone 29 percent of mainline Protestants say they don’t go to church. Online that jumps to 45 percent; for Catholics on the phone 15 percent say they do not attend, but online 33 percent say so.People don’t even have to be religious to inflate claims of religiosity, PRRI found. Those one in five Americans who are “nones” also may feel greater pressure to fib because “they are the farthest outside general social expectations,” said Jones. On the phone 73 percent of “nones” say they seldom or never attend, but 91 percent say so when interviewed online.Homily hint: Yoga classes often begin with a moment when participants are invited to get in touch with the intention or aspiration that brought them therer that day. A similar moment might help those who are confused or ambivalent locate the reason they are present—and thus deepen their experience of the liturgy. Source: An article by Cathy Lynn Grossman for Religion News Service

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Fudging on church attendance

28 Sep 2014 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The disconnect between what a landowner’s sons say and what they do is the theme in this Sunday’s gospel where Jesus uses the story to hold a mirror up to his audience’s hypocrisy. These days, there seems to be a disconnect between the number of people in surveys who say they regularly attend religious services and the number who actually do.In Pew Research Center studies over the past decade, the number of people who report attending services weekly has remained pretty stable, dropping only from 39 percent to 37 percent. Yet Pew says that time diary studies, in which respondents report on concrete activities over a limited span of time, often show lower rates of church attendance than data from surveys, which perhaps better reflect how people see themselves or would like others to see them rather than how they actually behave. A study at the University of Michigan looked at the rate of self-reported church attendance by Americans in contrast with actual attendance. “America maintains a gap of 10 to 18 percentage points between what people say they do on survey questions, and what time diary data says they actually do,” said the report. Among the growing share of religiously unaffiliated adults in the U.S., few (5 percent) say they are searching for a faith tradition or going to services weekly or more often. But what keeps people who have a religious affiliation—that is, who identify with a particular religious group—out of the pews? A Pew Research poll several years ago asked respondents to answer in their own words. Among religiously affiliated Americans who attend worship services no more than a few times a year, 24 percent cite personal priorities—including 16 percent who say they are too busy—as reasons they do not attend more often. Another 24 percent mention practical difficulties, including work conflicts, health problems, or transportation difficulties. Homily hint: Declining church attendance rates (whether reported accurately in polls or simply noticed in the pews) are a reality in many congregations. Aside from quality preaching and well-planned liturgies, other steps that can help reverse the trend include innovative transportation programs such as “buddy” programs that team those who have transportation up with those who need some help getting to church. Source: Articles by Michael Lipka for Pew Research and Tina Dupuy for City Watch

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Religious trends: Formal religious identity on the decline

13 Dec 2015 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In the January 3 gospel for Epiphany, King Herod is greatly troubled by news of an approaching birth that he finds threatening. Christian religious leaders have cause to be troubled by news from an extensive survey showing that the Christian share of the U.S. population is declining rapidly while the number of adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks, and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high-school education; and among women as well as men, the Pew Research Center reported earlier this year. Homily hint: We can read the poll results with dismay or we can choose to take them as a challenge to present the life-changing gospel in new ways and new places. Pope Francis challenges church-going Catholics to take their faith to the people, not wait for the people to show up at the churches. Let this be at the top of our New Year’s resolutions! For more on the Pew Center study, see: America’s Changing Religious Landscape

religious identity church attendance mission

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Religious trends: Formal religious identity on the decline

20 Dec 2015 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In the January 3 gospel for Epiphany, King Herod is greatly troubled by news of an approaching birth that he finds threatening. Christian religious leaders have cause to be troubled by news from an extensive survey showing that the Christian share of the U.S. population is declining rapidly while the number of adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks, and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high-school education; and among women as well as men, the Pew Research Center reported earlier this year. Homily hint: We can read the poll results with dismay or we can choose to take them as a challenge to present the life-changing gospel in new ways and new places. Pope Francis challenges church-going Catholics to take their faith to the people, not wait for the people to show up at the churches. Let this be at the top of our New Year’s resolutions! For more on the Pew Center study, see: America’s Changing Religious Landscape

mission church attendance religious identity

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Religious trends: Formal religious identity on the decline

27 Dec 2015 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In the January 3 gospel for Epiphany, King Herod is greatly troubled by news of an approaching birth that he finds threatening. Christian religious leaders have cause to be troubled by news from an extensive survey showing that the Christian share of the U.S. population is declining rapidly while the number of adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks, and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high-school education; and among women as well as men, the Pew Research Center reported earlier this year. Homily hint: We can read the poll results with dismay or we can choose to take them as a challenge to present the life-changing gospel in new ways and new places. Pope Francis challenges church-going Catholics to take their faith to the people, not wait for the people to show up at the churches. Let this be at the top of our New Year’s resolutions! For more on the Pew Center study, see: America’s Changing Religious Landscape

mission church attendance religious identity

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Religious trends: Formal religious identity on the decline

03 Jan 2016 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In the January 3 gospel for Epiphany, King Herod is greatly troubled by news of an approaching birth that he finds threatening. Christian religious leaders have cause to be troubled by news from an extensive survey showing that the Christian share of the U.S. population is declining rapidly while the number of adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks, and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high-school education; and among women as well as men, the Pew Research Center reported earlier this year. Homily hint: We can read the poll results with dismay or we can choose to take them as a challenge to present the life-changing gospel in new ways and new places. Pope Francis challenges church-going Catholics to take their faith to the people, not wait for the people to show up at the churches. Let this be at the top of our New Year’s resolutions! For more on the Pew Center study, see: America’s Changing Religious Landscape

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Practice, practice, practice

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Why do we “need” to go to church? Putting theological questions aside for a moment, it is reasonable in our time to look at regular religious practice with new eyes. In a time of concern for efficiency, we know why we go to work or why we go to the grocery store. But why do we need to go to church when we effectively find ourselves doing the same thing, week after week? Why all that repetition? Doesn’t repetition just make it boring and irrelevant? Maybe repetition is precisely why we need to do it. We need the practice, the repeating. When it comes to going to church, it seems, we sometimes fail to appreciate what we have learned about human physiology and how the human brain works. Nerve endings need to “fire to wire.” If we don’t fire those God-connecting, religious-experiencing senses, they will not come together nearly as richly and powerfully as they could. Neural pathways are not guaranteed: We “use them or lose them.” It is similar to the ability to speak a difficult language: much easier if we have learned it and consistently used it from a very young age. If we do not develop those nerve endings, those religious instincts for connecting with God and neighbor and all creation, our capacity to do so will become a shadow of what it otherwise could be. Of course God’s grace is always there, and miracles of transformation do happen. But it is in the little steps of regular practice of the presence of God, each week, each day, that we truly enter into new possibilities as human beings. It’s simply how we are made. People would not scoff at violinists, ballplayers, lawyers, or doctors who practice their discipline, carefully, regularly, over years, repeated. They need to practice. Just as we need to go to church. © 2010, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

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Card-punchers

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Are there any “card-punchers” who attend your church? These folks are the ones who fill the pews regularly, week after week, yet at the same time have a kind of “quick-in, quick-out” approach. They might have been raised in a time when preachers emphasized the mortal dangers to the soul of not attending, teachings forgotten or even rejected, perhaps, but still deeply embedded in their psyches. They may have simply been part of a generation taught to value loyalty and a sense of duty, and so there they are, with a sense their weekend would not be complete, would not feel right, without church. They are going to attend, but they want things a certain way, above all not to interfere with the rest of their weekend. In Catholic churches, card-punchers are often seen in especially high proportions, perhaps at a Saturday evening Mass: well-timed before a nice Saturday evening dinner, not likely to interfere with golf or gardening or any other Sunday activity. What offends these steady, loyal attenders? Not surprisingly it is often a sense of breaking a deal. If things take too long, or otherwise go outside expectations, this group’s antennae go up. With regard to worship, predictability is desired and mediocrity is acceptable, but higher demands can be a problem. Stewardship that challenges people to a higher financial commitment than the same, unchanging less-than-the-price-of-a-movie-ticket contribution can be a problem with this crowd. Preaching that sets off a certain timer in people’s heads, or that somehow trespasses into people’s comfort zones, can be a problem. Singing past a second verse does not impress. And so on. All that is not to attack those who might fit this description: They comprise some of the most loyal, deeply committed members of the community. But that does not mean that questions might not be asked of card-punchers. First, why should we be surprised if their adult children do not attend regularly? Their children, after all, saw years of attendance about being nothing other than making sure that it did not interfere with the rest of the weekend, was relatively brief, and did not challenge. Second, to what degree do card-punchers become the default arbiters of what is acceptable in church life? Maybe because of a certain fear of offending this stalwart group of faithful attenders, but more likely because the celebrant, the priest-presider, the musicians have all over the years grown to enact and develop a second sense of expectations based on the concerns of card-punchers. Yet the vast majority of Catholics don’t attend Sunday worship regularly at all, perhaps precisely because card-punching does not attract them. But often things seem boxed into a dynamic of mutual expectations each time we come together for worship. How can we get out of that box? How do we build a transformative community that does not simply give to those who are there but also reaches out effectively to those who are not? Maybe that is really the question. It is not about card-punchers, whoever they may be. It is about us. © 2010, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

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All is not well

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

We should be dissatisfied with ourselves as church. Not despondent, but certainly not smug. We all know the numbers: Something like one in three Catholics who come in the front door through the sacraments of initiation go out through the back door. Or that something like one in ten Catholic young people attend Mass regularly. Or that older adults who once attended frequently now attend less. These things are not terribly exceptional in themselves. We live in a time of cultural change, and religious change is part of it. Older structures, including ritual practices and symbols, no longer have the same automatic attraction. That is not a cause for despair. What is odd is that we don’t seem to be doing much of anything in response. How often do parish leaders and parish organizations ask themselves what they could be doing differently? We might know how to ask people to join church groups or take on leadership roles of one kind or another—we have to, really, if the groups are to continue and the roles performed. But do we seek out people who have disengaged and ask them why? Do we even care? Maybe that is the more basic question: Why don’t we do these things? © 2012, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

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