Church Attendance for Families: Are They Bored With Church?
Another big question to ask is this. Are kids and families growing tired of church? Barna’s data shows that 57% of churched adults and 45% of practicing Christians say they know people who are tied of the same old church services. Many feel that church is becoming irrelevant to their personal lives.
While a large percentage of families say their church experience is positive, 40% of churched adults say they leave disappointed at least half the time.
How else do families view the church?
- 66% of practicing Christian families say the church has a positive impact in the community.
- 27% of non-Christian families say the church has no significant impact in the community or even say the church has a negative impact in the community.
- 10% of all families, no matter their age, race or denomination, believe church is irrelevant.
- The percentage of practicing Christian Millennials who agree the church is irrelevant today is the same as non-Christians who hold this view at 25%.
We can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong. Yes, many Christian families still enjoy gathering with other believers. But for Gen Z’ers and Millennials, many of them say they are “tired” of church as they have known it growing up.
Church Attendance and Families: How to Minister to Today’s Families
As we ponder these findings, let’s talk about how we can still make a difference in the lives of today’s families.
It starts by getting it on our radar. How can we impact the young parents in our ministry? We must make impacting young parents a top priority. There are lots of different ways you can do this. One of the most effective times I have seen to impact young parents is at Parent & Child Dedication.
Parents’ hearts are tender as they prepare to have their child dedicated. Attach a class that parents go through before they dedicate their children. (I have an entire class resource at this link that hundreds of churches are using and are seeing significant impact on families.) You can see more at this link. Make the class 20% about what the meaning of the dedication is and then use the other 80% of the time encouraging parents about raising their kids to love Jesus. You can cover key areas and topics like…
- How to pray with and for your child.
- Reading the Bible and devotion books with your child at bedtime.
- Making Jesus the center of your family.
- Make church a top priority. We are raising a generation of children who will be Biblically illiterate if they continue to only attend church once a month or even less. They will grow up not knowing how to defend their faith or even articulate key doctrines found in the Bible. Think about this – what if a child only attended school 1 week a month? They would miss so much important teaching, wouldn’t they? They would have a hard time making good grades. The comparison can be made with how often kids attend church as well. If they are missing 50-75% of the teaching, they will have a shallow faith that may not stand when tested.
