A growing number of families would rather spend their increasingly limited free time together than at church, a study by Leadership magazine found.
“The increased emphasis on ‘family time,’ even at the expense of meaningful involvement in church life, is a sign of the times,” reporter Eric Reed wrote for Leadership. “It’s one way Generations X and Y are making up for the hands-off, latchkey child-rearing styles that characterized their Boomer parents: heavy investment in the kids, and everything else takes a back seat – including church.”
Leadership surveyed 490 pastors about what is keeping people away from church, and the Christianity Today-owned magazine found that people routinely choose family events over church commitments because they say they’re not finding church to be a relevant-enough resource in their time-crunched lifestyles.
More churches are seeing decreased attendance at church events, especially on weeknights, because when families feel obligated to participate in sports, music lessons and other activities, the only night of the week they have to be together might be Wednesday, Leadership found. Another problem families seem to be voicing is that when they arrive at church, they’re split into different age groups. Sometimes husbands and wives are split into gender-segregated classes. Families often are quicker than churches at realizing no family bonding is going to occur, the magazine reported.
“Shouldn’t we as a church try to bring families together?” Carol Welker, children’s ministry pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Fla., told Leadership. “Instead what we do is bring them to church and then put Mom and Dad in this room, the high school kids in that room, and the elementary kids down the hall. It’s no wonder families are spending more time doing family things than they are spending at church.”
Welker suggested churches plan events around school calendars and events in the community that could force families to choose between church and other obligations, and she said family-focused dinners at church help provide a time for both family and church fellowship.
“When family members hardly see each other at church activities, the congregation needs to take a quick inventory of its concept of ministry,” R. Albert Mohler Jr. wrote on his blog at albertmohler.com March 14.
“At the same time, when Christian parents take their kids to Little League games rather than worship on the Lord’s Day, these parents teach their children that team sports are more important than the worship of God,” Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary, said. “Every kid has a ‘thing’ going on virtually all the time. That is the condition of life today, it seems. But when that ‘thing’ keeps the child – or the whole family – away from church, we need to name that thing what it is … at best a snare, at worst an idol.”
Evangelist Jerry Drace told Baptist Press, “What I have found in surveying thousands of teenagers across this country in our Hope for the Home conferences is that even when church families are not in church they are not necessarily together in other activities either. Teens and their parents are going in different directions at the same time.
“The one common denominator for families is sports,” Drace, of Humboldt, Tenn., said. “We have many fathers and mothers skipping church on Sunday to watch their child participate in his or her favorite team sport. When this happens, the god of sports replaces the God of scripture. When the church seeks relevancy over relationship, you lose both faith and family. Worship should be a family event. This requires creative planning by the leaders.”