Measuring Sundays

This post is from the defunct blog "Dying Church"

From Liquid Church:

The local church may support many good and important activities, including mission trips, evangelism, youth ministry, social projects, and so on, but they are all assessed in terms of their effect or otherwise on regular Sunday attendance. People may turn to Christ through the youth mission or Alpha course, and this is good, but they are not banked, they really don't count, until they start to attend Sunday services. I have sometimes felt that the real purpose of the church services is to enable clergy to count the congregation. This is probably a little cynical, but solid church finds its main sense of success in the number of people who attend on a Sunday. Regular church attendance is seen as being a significant test of spiritual health, and church growth is measured in size of congregations. The importance of Sunday attendance and congregational size can never be underestimated for solid church. Believers are one with each other because they are joined to Christ. The temptation is to reverse these priorities, so that by being joined to the church one is joined to Christ.

Comments

[robbymac]

Man, I'd love to disagree with you vigorously, but alas, I can't. This is a mental stronghold from the Pit that is deeply entrenched in many a church's (unbiblical) worldview. Here's another twist on this, though: During the late 1980's, there were so many teenagers becoming Christians through our church's youth ministry that the elders told our youth pastor to STOP announcing the conversions on Sunday mornings, until the youth had been in church for at least a year and they (the elders) could be sure that they were "really" Christians. The youth ministry was seeing great numbers of conversions. The mothership was not. Much as I try to avoid cynicism, the math is not difficult to do. "Saving face" was a higer value than "saving souls". Alas...

[larry]

"The importance of Sunday attendance and congregational size can never be underestimated for solid church." That seems to be such an empty and vacant statement; it lacks veracity and integrity. When I go to worship service, it's to commune with God and not to count heads. Having attended some very large churches and some very small assemblies, my experience tells me that size (neither big or small) has much to do with anything. It is JESUS who forms His body, in the manner in which He wishes. Reformed or pentacostal, the proper observation and question to ask is, "Did Jesus show up today, or was it just us?"

[Toni]

"The importance of Sunday attendance and congregational size can never be underestimated for solid church." This is being ironic, and needs to be seen in the light of: "This is probably a little cynical, but solid church finds its main sense of success in the number of people who attend on a Sunday." I'd suggest that this is talking about the churches where, if God DID show up, they'd want to know what on earth he was doing there?