Searchers and Church

The George Barna group, a marketing research group that serves churches, reports that one in seven adults changes churches each year, and another one in six attends a handful of churches on a rotating basis. Church shopping isn't a matter of merely changing congregations: A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life last year indicated that 44 percent of American adults have left their first religious affiliation for another.

Part of the discomfort with church shopping has to do with the way today’s growing churches attempt to attract spiritual shoppers. That simple marquee in front of a church with the sign that says ("Prevent truth decay: Brush up on your Bible") doesn't really suffice to recruit searchers. These people are looking for something that message doesn’t always provide.

Furthermore, since there is no state church in America, preachers have had to learn to get along without support from the state. It has made the ability to recruit and keep a flock—and encourage them to give generously—crucial to a church's survival. This has produced a ministry often modeled on capitalism, with pastors and church leadership acting as the church's sales force.

Salesmanship sometimes degenerates into telling people what they want to hear and, in the case of religion, into a faith that never comes down too hard on the faithful. That doesn’t sound like the teachings of Jesus, who told everyone what they needed to hear.

In 1776, Stark and Finke write, fewer than one in five Americans belonged to a local church. Today, the figure is more like 67 percent. That definitely is good news.

And, let’s face it; the free market in faith has been good for America's religious life. All that changing churches across denominational lines has likely helped produce a less rigid, better informed, more ecumenical religious culture.

Knowing that churchgoers have so many options should keep pastors and preachers on their toes. But what churchgoers are looking for may not be doctrine and dogma. It is believed they are looking for acceptance and a sense of community lost in today’s society. If we and our congregations can provide that, our churches will succeed in meeting the needs of these modern day searchers.