Treating Worship Like the Beach

With the arrival of summer—which despite the local school schedule actually arrives Memorial Day weekend rather than the equinox—worship attendance numbers for the suburban, Philadelphia-area-congregation I serve really plummet.  The culprit is the reality that here so many people spend summer weekends “down to shore.”  For those of us NOT at the shore, it’s immediately noticed in a significant reduction in traffic and gridlock (unless you’re going or coming from said shore on Fridays or Sundays, respectively).  But it’s really, really noticeable at Church. 

Sure, in most congregations Sunday worship attendance patterns change during the summer vacation season.  But this is like people moving away for part of the year.  Programming—outside of worship, stops.  And worship itself is so sparsely attended you think something’s gone terribly wrong. 

I’ve tried to not be overly panicked when summer attendance tanks.  I’m a strong proponent of biblical sabbath; it’s just that people here more than other places seem to save it up all year and spend it over the summer.  And I know people have to be away; they should be away—family trips, and visiting extended family, and other things are really, important, I get it—and I really do hope people aren’t so glued to their Sunday pews that they get chances to enjoy trips and family time and God’s creation. 

But I also think this isn’t just a summertime issue anymore.  The Church has lots of Sunday competition—and this isn’t the old “woe is us” argument about youth sports and grocery stores being open on Sundays.  This spring, church members I’m familiar with faced a gauntlet of events and activities from weddings of family and friends, to participating in fundraisers for organizations they cared about, to family funerals, to continuing education conferences and retreats, to 10k races in the community, family reunions, and family health crises.  “Sleeping in,” “baseball and lacrosse games,” and “grocery shopping,” didn’t keep people out of worship!  This year, the number one worship-attendance-killer for the congregation I serve was probably people getting married.  There’s lots of shouting about marriage these days, but no one’s arguing against it because it hurts Sunday worship attendance. 

So I’ve been reflecting a lot about many of the things David Lose puts forth in his recent book, Preaching at the Crossroads.  Lose reminds us that we’re not only preaching to a different culture than in years past, but that worship needs to have a different role in our lives.  Gone are the days when people wander into church looking for expert advice on biblical or even cultural topics.  Any person with an iphone can easily peruse biblical and theological scholarship on any given passage or topic.  This doesn’t diminish the role or importance of the preacher; but it does give witness to worship that’s being cultivated and used by younger generations and people who are newer to the faith differently than those who have been long-term, mainline worship attendees. 

Lose also describes a kind of “disconnect” between Church (worship) and the everyday world in which most of us live and move and have our being.  He and others he’s talked to feel as if our lives are divided like Church and State—except it’s Church and World, where we touch so much more of the world, and so little Church.  In part, Lose is able to describe how our choices and insistence about how we worship has hardened the disconnect. 

People come on Sundays, we sit in pews facing the same direction as if we all agree, we expect someone to simply tell us what’s important so we don’t have to do the work, we sing some hymns together, we say some prayers, we often share some refreshments—we’re in, out, no one gets hurt in about an hour or so and we’re left to go on with our lives. 

People still regularly tell me that “Church” is so important for the rest of their week.  But a significantly greater number of people, while they might say that—or even believe it—easily make other choices. 

I don’t have any answers that are going to “fix” this problem.  I’m in it with the congregation and we’re constantly asking how we might do things differently or gain an impact that translates into better attendance. 

Lose suggests we should start to think of worship as a kind of “practice” for what we will do in our lives in the rest of the week.  That we should practice connection with one another and with God, hoping to replicate it later in the week.  That we should ask questions, and seek answers and then use what we discover together.  So that worship and liturgy is less of a performance and more of a warm-up. 

It sounds like a question of integration—how do we integrate worship into the rest of our lives?  Or, how do we get worship to play like a soundtrack in our hearts and lives for the whole week? 

I know Church isn’t really going to compete with “down to shore.”  But I think there are ways we can build a worship experience people can appreciate with more necessity.  I don’t think it will be based on music styles or contemporary verses traditional.  I think it will be measured by church-related folks by how useful worship is to them in their lives. 

Useful. 

It’s not one of the questions I’ve thought about in relationship to worship. 

I think people want something useful.  Perhaps, more useful than it’s been for a while in worship.  That’s part of what I’m thinking about as we begin the summer worship season. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania