barna released a report recently identifying five segments of church attendance.
from the report,
“The fact that millions of people are now involved in multiple faith communities – for instance, attending a conventional church one week, a house church the next, and interacting with an online faith community in-between – has rendered the standard measures of “churched” and “unchurched” much less precise.”
so, out of the following…which segment do you identify with more? if you would rather remain unidentified, just type in anonymous for your name and don’t link back to your blog.
Unattached – people who had attended neither a conventional church nor an organic faith community (e.g., house church, simple church, intentional community) during the past year. Some of these people use religious media, but they have had no personal interaction with a regularly-convened faith community. This segment represents one out of every four adults (23%) in America. About one-third of the segment was people who have never attended a church at any time in their life.
Intermittents – these adults are essentially “under-churched” – i.e., people who have participated in either a conventional church or an organic faith community within the past year, but not during the past month. Such people constitute about one out of every seven adults (15%). About two-thirds of this group had attended at least one church event at some time within the past six months.
Homebodies – people who had not attended a conventional church during the past month, but had attended a meeting of a house church (3%).
Blenders – adults who had attended both a conventional church and a house church during the past month. Most of these people attend a conventional church as their primary church, but many are experimenting with new forms of faith community. In total, Blenders represent 3% of the adult population.
Conventionals – adults who had attended a conventional church (i.e., a congregational-style, local church) during the past month but had not attended a house church. Almost three out of every five adults (56%) fit this description. This participation includes attending any of a wide variety of conventional-church events, such as weekend services, mid-week services, special events, or church-based classes.
what does going to church look like for you? how do you think “going to church” will look over the next ten or twenty years as our world gets smaller with technology?
Comments
40 responses to “i’m curious – what does going to church look like?”
I am a conventional church attender.
I think in the “future” there will be more opportunities to reach those who are not part of the “conventional” congregation. With the use of technology we can reach out to those unreachable by the hands of the local church and step beyond the pew making the idea of “going” into all the world more accessible. It would be something to really see the church body become the church outside the walls in which they seek Christ and be Christ to those around them. What being Christ means will never change, Love has a continual face.
I’m a conventional church goer.
That’s not to say that I’d never consider any other means to “do church.” I’d also go so far as to say I’m becoming less and less married to any particular denominational affiliation.
I would hope that in 10 to 20 years the Church is stronger in terms of loving each other and the community of which it’s a part. But I do think that current movements toward organic church tends to fragmentalize our churches – and may do more harm than good in the meantime.
However this plays out, it’s going to be an interesting ride. Safer for those of us in the Bible Belt. Not so sure about everyone else. … I’m rambling now.
“going to church” for me is serving in ministry every chance i get…usually twice a week during the weekend services. it’s assisting the worship pastors in leading the music portion of the services, in whatever way they need.
in addition to that it’s leading a medium-sized group each sunday evening. it’s allowing people the opportunity to let down guards and be real with one another. it’s digging relationships deeper than the surface and hopefully allowing them to experience God’s love and God’s presence.
in the future i see this type of environment becoming more and more important. it’s too easy to isolate yourself today and try to do life alone, especially with church on the internet. we all need people to do life together with. and not just through blogs or podcasts or e-mails.
i pray that it begins to look more like the new testament church… meeting in homes… meeting each other’s needs… reaching out to those in need, both physically and spiritually.
Wow! You’re going to get some long comments on this topic! :) Recently I started a blog with some friends to capture our thoughts as we all read the book “Houses that Change the World” by Wolfgang Simson. We are currently having a “Starbucks” conversation about this book and the Organic Church.
I’m a conventional church attendee, but God has been working in me to start seeing His church more organically. Less organized structure and more focus on people & needs outside the structure. I feel like we’ve made church an event on Sunday that happens at 10:00 am, yet in my heart I want church to be every thought, action, conversation, and moment throughout my day and week.
Conventional church goer. We belong to a non denominational bible church, were very active in all church activities,now not so much, finding other avenues for ministry and definitely totally not ministered TO in our church.
If I understood the definitions correctly, then I am a blender…but I didn’t realize that it was only 3% of the population? I figured what I did was normal?
I guess the mission that I will be a part of is more about the Church (with a capital ‘C’!).. not to say that I have it all figured out, but I absolutely LOVE meeting Jesus lovers from all walks of life. I have come across people who have felt led by the spirit to simply show up there and they don’t even go to church regularly.
As for the world getting smaller with technology in regards to church, I guess I never really thought about it. I do know that I love being able to connect with people all over the world and that I love the face-to-face interaction with individuals or groups. The fact that I can experience the best of both ‘worlds’ in a sense helps me see a bigger picture of God…especially with my western thinking.
A man from India found my blog the other day, and I couldn’t help but be inspired by his heart…especially with the way they pray. I believe there is a bigger sense of unity when the whole world comes together like this. What a challenge!
Convetional attender, 4th generation pastor, organic church leader. I find conversations like this very interesting because most of what is shared comes out of individual defenitions. And most conversations about “the church” come out of defenitions handed down from early church history not the New Testament.
How do you “do church”? Where do you attend “church”? What is your “church” doing?
My question is what is “church”? because that defenition radically changes for me the answer to the questions.
I don’t go to church. Since I am the church it goes with me.
Kind of a blender and conventional. Go to a weekly worship service on Sunday and attend a house church during the week.(both are under the same church umbrella) I think there is going to be an out pouring of community based church, whether it be in someone’s home or on a larger scale in a traditional church setting. Especially as we fight to be counter-cultural, and more dependent on one another, church will become community. I hope church becomes less about “where you go” and more about “who you are” and “where you are”. my 2 cents.
I am a conventional church goer, and I hope I will always be a church goer whether a traditional congregation or a house church. It is so critical for me to be with other believers…to come to together to be iron that sharpens iron. To be challenged and pushed further in my walk with the Lord and to coorporately fellowship. I love worshiping my Lord in a room filled with people who are also worshipping God. I don’t believe you can be part that without some type of church home where real people in real bodies are there.
As for the church in the future…I pray we get a better picture of the mighty work the Lord is doing around the world and we all become more globally minded with more and more opportunities to encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ to walk in the boldness of the spirit, wherever they are living.
i’ve been a mix of homebody & blender over the last year… but as i’ve been healing i’m becoming more and more conventional again.
Anne – our spiritual journey is blended. We attend a contemporary, unique church (Bob’s our pastor), go to a Sunday evening LifeGroup in individual homes, and I go to a very conventional Bible study once a week. My kids participate in a Christian kid’s group not related to our Church.
As homeschoolers, the world is our “school” and our “church”. God is everywhere and it would be hard for us to mark the X’s on a survey.
I guess based on those definitions I would be a “blender.” However, that is how my church does church–we combine them. We go to “big church” (my term) for some teaching a large group worship through music. House church is where we truly connect, have real Titus 2 discipleship, and outreach into our neighborhoods. Our house churches our regional not demographic based. We try to reach out into our own neighborhoods. I feel like we truly are attempting to be the Church in this way rather than a church.
I often wonder what church will look like–esp with all the technology out there. There are so many ways people are implementing it. I love all the creativity it brings out in people.
I’m a church planter, so I guess I would be conventional and a blender. Going to church is a lot of different things for me~anything from being in a traditional service to teaching Sunday School to toddlers to meeting with a group of women to talk about our lives over coffee. I like Tony’s answer (above)~I feel like that’s how it is with our family.
hmmmm….well going to church for me, depending on how you look at it is non existent. kind of…i work at a church, so depending on my perspective i am either working or attending church.
I would say conventional….but we do small groups, so in a way they are home churches…
i am talking myself into a circle…so i would say conventional for me.
dang… i think i’m conventionally blended right now. but, looking at sunday morning proper, i’m just your boring average conventionalist.
i live on an international seminary campus, host a bible study in my apartment where we definitely HAVE CHURCH, help lead an all women’s worship service on campus, and also play a little in the seminary chapel services where umpteen nations are represented…. um… then spend my sundays conventionally.
Conventional for now.
I am very happily a Blender.
I enjoy my regular attendance to my local church. I also really enjoy online other speaker of faith. I think it is great to go and be with people and worship and be part of a community. There are a lot of reasons that I love to blend. With all the great pastors out there I am blessed to have access to them online. I can listen to Lifechurch, Marble Collegiate and then switch it up with some Day 7 at Harvest. It is amazing!
We are conventional – local church. When we got married in a mega church forty years ago, instead of making fifty-two decisions to go to church, we have made one decision – WE GO. Why? Church looks marvelous to me as we advance the Kingdom of God by assisting believers in conforming to the image of Christ, giving forth a servitude and loving spirit and to reach out to others as a Beacon
in a lost world. Of course, my husband is the Sr. Pastor, but I could not even imagine life without going to church. Ten or twenty years from now, honestly I see families viewing church on any night via technology. I hope you get a lot of comments; this is great to know what others are thinking. Super!
We are conventional church attenders. However both Sarah and I have significant health problems and so sometimes we are unable to attend conventional church. So we also listen to podcast sermons, and are members of several online “communities”.
I think though how we define church is different from how we define The Church, which are of course two different things.
Mike and Sarah
I know at the church i work for we seem to reach more of the unattached group. We are trying to get them better connected to us but it is very difficult. I do believe that technology is and will continue to have a major impact on the future of “church”. If i wasn’t a pastor i might be doing more internet on-line church stuff, but i’m also more of an introvert too! That probably would play into that decision.
I guess I’m a blender. I hit up our big brick and mortar church every sunday – so that covers my conventional side of things. But this week for instance I will be at a Chik-Fil-A on friday morning talking Jesus with some guys – we do that every friday – loosely organized, loosely defined but still there talking ’bout Jesus and trying to learn more and make sense of the world.
Then sunday – AFTER the ole conventional service – we’ll be attending a small group at the house of a friend. Studying more bible. Is this conventional or homebody?
This afternoon I plan on going on a run – about 5.6 miles – and I will be talking to God the whole time. Is this church? Me and God? Running in the woods? I mean – no iPod, just me, God, his awesome nature and my scary mind. It’s dope to me and it’s church to me but I don’t know which box it gets put in to.
Then tonight – I will be in a recording studio with some friends. Working on music – but I can guarantee God and Jesus and the bible will come up. Church? Casual church?
Honestly – I get thrown off with these discussions on what church is. If I had to narrow it down to where I feel the closest to God and where I have felt and heard God whispering to me – answers to big prayers – small prayers – life things – it would be on my runs.
Maybe I need to pass an offering dish when I get back to the parking lot.
Conventional in the context of your question but our entire church body, here at HPC, is about bringing the church into the world so we have church with homeless people on Thursday morning, strippers on Friday nights, prostitues and crack addicts on Fridays at lunch, all over town in all kinds of settings, we are about being the church not just attending it. THAT is where you meet Jesus, outside the walls of the conventional church.
From the conversations I’ve had with another burned out friend of mine, I think that people are going to casually attend their “conventional” church and look for authentic ways to “be” the church to those they know and live near. They will not get too involved in the “ministries” of their conventional church, because they’re disillusioned with the “system” and “institution,” and choose to reach out to others as they are led. They might also choose to “tithe” to other organizations or people or groups as they are led. I also think they will look to opening their homes to friends and acquaintances for “fellowship fulfillment,” rather than looking for that within the institution of the church, because it doesn’t seem authentic enough anymore. They would rather it happened naturally, because doing the whole “small group” thing feels fabricated and forced.
Basically, I think people who have been beat up and burned out, will stop “checking the boxes” that we’re told to check by our conventional church, because it hasn’t been working. Burned out people want real body life, not contrived. And, they don’t want the church telling them what they should or shouldn’t do. They don’t want church to be their god anymore. They want God to be their God in meaningful and authentic ways…..
Amen…
Rock on Jodi. I agree wholeheartedly…
Great point Jodi.
As someone who has been recently disillusioned by a church – my faith/religion/church-goingness has taken a new direction. It’s been a tough change for myself and family. To go from regularly attending a church – and being deeply woven in to the churches structure (I was the head deacon) – to where I am now was/is a huge leap. We attend church more casually now – I supplement with podcasts. My tithing is being spread out more now to multiple places.
It was a rough process. Would I voluntarily do it? I doubt it. That’s prob why it happened. I needed change.
hey i am totally borrowing your comment contest idea to generate more comments at our church’s host team blog :)
personal blog ~ maggiemaeupdates.blogspot.com
great stuff.
i enjoy your posts.
intermittent for me. maybe it’s the size & population of the area that i live in, but it’s very hard to find somewhere to belong when you’re 28, single, not a parent, and not a college student. i find it easier to just avoid the whole thing. and it’s not necessarily that i don’t want to be in church, but i just haven’t found one where i belong around here in quite a while. being lonely in a crowd is the worst, so i stay home. but even though i’ve been to church only twice in the past five or six months, i feel like my personal relationship with God is stronger than it’s been in a long time – maybe ever, even. hopefully i’ll get back in church before too long.
i agree with the person who said that people are getting more creative with their tithing & branching out. i was always under the impression that your tithe goes into the offering plate & anything else you gave was just additional giving. but now, a good part of my tithe money goes towards compassion international or towards funds for friends (whose faith i admire) who are going on mission trips, etc. i’ve personally come to the conclusion that i’d rather give my money towards compassion kids rather than the preacher getting a nice truck. (i really don’t mean that as cynically as it comes across.)
Wow. I never knew I was a blender. I am apparently a cheap blender that has only two settings – on and off. I am either going balls to the wall or nothing. Being in a leadership position it is usually balls to the wall versus nothing. That’s okay, I have a great support network that helps keep me balanced and I am learning to delegate so that maybe I can upgrade to a newer blender with more than two speeds. And as a side bar on one of your twitter comments about riding an air horse – when I got married, I rode down the aisle on a stick horse to the Lone Ranger theme. It was awesome!
Okay, so holy crap – I just read Jodi’s comment above and was totally blown away. That was freakin’ incredible. I totally understand because as a pastor and leader, sometimes I really just want to quit and read my Bible and pray for the right reasons.
I guess i havent been to your actual site for a while…i LOVE your new design! :)
Church is the people..and we worship and experience great teachings in the buildings… Love the picture…who took it? Just curious as a photographer and all!
The “under-churched”. I can almost see the gleam in Bart’s eye after hearing Reverend LoveJoy use that term in a sermon…(grin)
i have been a part of Quest Community Church in lexington, ky for almost eight years; it is the place where i became a Christ follower (august 13, 2000)
i also regularly watch one of LC’s internet campus experiences
I find more and more people whose most important criteria for faith is community. Not an organized community activity per se, but more of just going thru life with others. The problem with most churches is that somewhere around the 300 attendee mark, community is lost and it becomes a crowd. Community is still possible, but it is more difficult and usually programmed.
I think the future of triving churches will look like small congregations of 20-200 that will be easily replicated. (Try replicating most megachurches… good luck.) They will be heavily invested in their own neighborhoods (especially in urban settings). They will meet in houses, coffee shops, tattoo shops, or wherever there is cheap space available.
Money raised will more likely go to help people than pay for mortgages and salaries. Sorry, this may not bode well for full time church staff members. (See apostle Paul as a tentmaker.)
I am a conventional mega-church goer. I have only been going to church for the last 7 years, though. I also attend a weekly small group, but that is just an extension of our church and yes, it is programmed to make the church feel “smaller” and create community.
While I understand the concept of the home churches (and have been to a few), I find I need a larger church community. It does not define my faith or my relationship with God, but I am motivated and inspired by the staff that lead my church, the dramas, the music. They make me think. Maybe it is the extrovert in me, but I enjoy a larger church as long as it is real, relevant, inspiring and concerned with something other than “good programs” within it’s own walls.
My church is always asking the question of it’s effectiveness in the community outside. “If we were to shut the doors tomorrow, would this community miss us?” “Are we taking care of the people outside the walls as much, if not more, than the ones inside?”
I hope to always be a part of a church like that. I guess it would not matter if it were 10 people or 10,000 people.
I can see churches going internet. Being able to sit in the comfort of your own living room or even still be in bed and watch a service from a church anywhere in the world. Of course we can do that already with tv but people think it’s cooler to have a choice and people to get on a website and dial up a service.
With the way this country is going I see Christians being persecuted some day soon and churches possibly going underground. Home churches will serve us well then.
I think people will more and more see the pure futility of the whole market driven movement and search for God in other ways. They may go back to the basics such as Bible teaching, doctrine, and sharing with others similar, to the church in Acts.
Another poster was right when they said a lot of churches today resemble the church in Revelation that God is going to spew out of His mouth. And according to John McCarthur in his book, “Hard to Believe,” it’s not just a simple spitting out, it’s a violent upheavel such as when you vomit.
I guess I’m in the 3% Hmm?? I came out of O.R. and initially considered myself a “home churcher”. It hasn’t really grown but I have. I don’t refer to it that way anymore. I am the church…we are the body..(I’m speaking of the Body of Christ anyway).