Hilton Head Island, SC – September 10, 2023
The Chapel Without Walls
Scriptures – I Timothy 3:10-17; I Timothy 4:1-5
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate teachers for themselves to suit their own likings. – I Timothy 4:3 (RSV
Since the 1960s, membership in most of the American Protestant denominations has been slowly declining, even as the population has more than doubled. Were it not for a large influx of people from Latin America, the Roman Catholic Church would also have declined, but Latinos have kept its membership numbers about the same for the past fifty years. Short of that, Roman Catholicism would look as sick as the rest of the Church (with a capital “C”) looks.
Covid is a recent phenomenon that has hastened the decrease in worship attendance. Because the pandemic lasted so long, many church members got out of the habit of attending services. Now that Covid has considerably subsided (even though it is currently making a bit of a pesky comeback), many people have decided they like leisurely Sunday mornings, and they have not returned to their churches at all. The longer they are absent, the more likely it is that they shall remain absent. Most of them are what I am calling “drop-outs.” Before Covid, every week 75 to 100 American churches closed their doors forever. Now, because of Covid, the number is higher.
Probably there has always been a higher preponderance of older than younger people in worship, and also a higher number of women than men. In the past few decades, that tendency has become even more noticeable. Now young people are more absent than ever. Perhaps that is true of older men too, because physically they are weaker than women, and they die sooner. The Chapel Without Walls is an outlier in this. We were an older-than-average congregation when we held our first service nearly twenty years ago, and we are older than that now, because some of us, especially men, died, others are too infirm to attend now, and others moved away. In any case, the percentage of members under fifty years of age is smaller in most congregations than in previous decades. An increase in other Sunday morning social activities of various sorts is higher than they used to be, so that partially explains that sobering reality.
However, many churchgoers also became disillusioned with their congregations or denominations for other reasons. The clergy pedophile scandals in the Roman Catholic Church resulted in millions of people, especially younger people, leaving the Catholic Church. Among Protestants, whenever a congregation divides into two factions because of their minister or over any other issue, often some of those in one or the other group will either look for another church or stop going to church altogether. Internal squabbles are particularly upsetting to the young or to younger adults. The idealism of the young may not survive such a test, and they drop out.
There are sociological organizations that make periodic studies of the percentages of Americans who are active in churches. For the first time since such statistics have been kept, less than half of the American population are connected to any church. And of those who are connected, less than half attend church on a regular basis, meaning at least once or twice a month. So, as I calculate it, that means only a about a tenth of Americans are in church, synagogue, or mosque every weekend, and that percentage may even be too high.
When pollsters run their surveys, one of the questions they ask is this: “Do you have a religious affiliation?” Up until the past two decades, most people would answer in the affirmative, and they would tell which denomination it was. They may not have attended their church in years, but they were born into a particular denomination, they were married in it, and when they die, they intend for their funerals to be held in it. Drop-outs still feel connected to a denomination, but Nones are those who have no affiliation to any religion and are happy in that status. They are disaffected with religion altogether. Now, with increasing frequency when asked what is their religious affiliation, they say, “None.”
“Nones” are the fastest-growing sociological stratum in religious research. When a None marries a None, their children will almost certainly become lifelong Nones themselves. They may or may not be spiritual, but they are self-avowed non-participants in any religion. Just as there is a Christian culture, or a Catholic or Protestant culture, now there is also a None and drop-out culture.
Perry Bacon, Jr. is a Black gay Washington Post columnist. A while back he wrote a column about Nones, called “I left the church, and I lost my community.” His opening sentence said, “I’m currently a ‘none,’ or more precisely, a ‘nothing in particular.’” He wrote that Nones grew from 5% of the American population in the early 1990s to 30% today. He said, “Most nones are not atheists, but are what researchers call ‘nothing in particular.’” Mr. Bacon said that 40% of people age 18-29 are Nones, 20% of those over 65, and 15% among “Bible-belt Southerners.” He had felt a close kinship with the members of his congregation, but since 2016 it became quite conservative. He wrote, “I couldn’t ignore how the word Christian was becoming a synonym for rabidly pro-Trump White people.” Because he left that church, he now feels that he lost a community he highly valued, and it has left a void in his life.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in this country. For decades, its total membership grew every year, For the last few years, as with many other denominations, it has begun to lose members. This past June, in its annual two-day denominational meeting of twelve thousand delegates, it had a lengthy discussion about its longtime policy of not allowing women to become ordained pastors. Rick Warren is the founding pastor of the Saddleback Church in California and is one of the best-known ministers in America. Saddleback is the second-largest congregation in the SBC, and it has had female ministers on its staff for years.
Last February the executive committee of the SBC voted to oust five churches with women ministers. Rick Warren and the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham of the Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky appealed the dismissal of the churches they served at the annual convention. Despite their fervent requests to be reinstated, both congregations lost by a margin of over 90%.
Over such issues and such overwhelming votes do many committed church people become Nones or drop-outs. I’m sure that will not happen with those two pastors, but countless other church members will lose heart and renounce their membership in the Southern Baptist Church because of their decision to sever those two congregations from their denominational membership.
Like any other institution, the Church makes mistakes, It takes actions which are applauded by many, and condemned by many others. Its leaders perform wonders and they also create chaos. People drop out for a whole host of grievances, real and imagined. I confess that I am greatly saddened by the growing number of Nones and drop-outs. Many of them have the best minds and leadership qualities in Christendom, but they judge the Church to be guilty of too many misjudgments and missed opportunities. Perhaps some of the Nones and drop-outs are people who never had a firm devotion to The Church or to any church, but others were once stalwarts, and now they are lost to us. I have known clergy who were unusually gifted exponents of the Christian Gospel, but somewhere along the line they became disenchanted or were badly hurt by the Church or they lost patience with it, and they left the ministry.
Now I want to ask you some very important questions. If the Church died, would that mean Christianity was dead? Can there be a Christianity without the Church? There could not be a Church without Christianity, but could there be a Christianity without the Church? If so, would that Christianity inevitably mutate into something like the Church, but be somehow different than it is now?
And now I want to make some statements, rather than ask questions. I don’t think the Church, broadly understood, will ever die. It isn’t because God won’t let it die, although He might not. It is because the Church is like kudzu or dandelions; nobody can kill it. In some form, whether good or bad, the Church will always exist, because there always will be dedicated people who will keep it alive, even if what they are nurturing is the wrong product with the wrong theology and the wrong Christology.
In Latin, the motto of the Protestant Reformation was Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda: “The Reformed Church Is Always Reforming.” Nones and drop-outs would be some of the finest reformers, but they leave before their wisdom can be heard, or when it has been offered but not listened to, and they leave. That has been one of the greatest weaknesses of the Church since many people who became Christian from 33 CE on got fed up with the Church. Just so you know, I have been an ordained parson for nearly sixty years, and I will never leave. You might throw me out of here, but I will never leave THE Church of Jesus Christ However, I’m not sure Jesus would be a member if he were alive today. For all I know, I might just be more “pro-Church stubborn” than he would be.
We are living in a time of severe disillusionment with all types of institutions: business enterprises, schools and colleges, government, politics, religion, Masons, American Legion - - - you name it.. Many young people especially have become anti-institutional. They perceive too little authenticity in the organizations that their parents and grandparents supported, and they conclude that they must look out for themselves, lest the world swallow them up in what they think is the failure of long-admired institutions that they find to be deficient. It is like the 1960s, when many twenty-and-thirty-somethings tuned in and then dropped out, concluding that the world as they perceived it was not the place where they wanted to be.
It may be harder for oldsters to be old in such a time as this. We know where we found our reasons for living, and we can’t understand why the younger generations don’t find it as well. Some of our own offspring may have become ecclesiastical Nones or drop-outs, and it grieves our hearts.
The apostle Paul was probably not an old man when he wrote his letters to his young colleague Timothy. However, he apparently thought his life was in its last chapter, so he wanted to give Timothy whatever pearls of elderly wisdom he might present to him. “You have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my patience” (II Tim. 3:10) etc., etc., etc.: in self-confidence Paul could never be accused of having too little. He knew Timothy had great promise, and he wanted him to exhibit it to the fullest when he was no longer there to encourage him.
Paul also was concerned, as many of us are concerned, that some people will become backsliders. “The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (II Tim. 4:3-4). However, Paul always kept in mind the beloved companion to whom he was writing, so he said, “As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (3:5).
The trouble with older people is that, as the German proverb declares, “Ve grow too soon old, und too late schmart.” We come to a place where we realize we didn’t do what we should have done, and now we may think we’re too old to do much of anything. But we want to assure younger folks that they can do what we failed to do. And we don’t want anybody to be a None or a drop-out.
There is One who sees the whole picture much more clearly than any of us can ever see it. God knows what lies ahead, as He also sees how and why everything behind us happened. The road may be hard, but we do not walk it alone. It may be especially hard for the Nones who have dropped out of the Church, and although they think they may have abandoned God, God will not abandon them - - - or us.
To suppose that the serious decline in membership in the churches of the developed Western world is a mere aberration is a mistake we must not make. It is not simply disenchantment or disinterest or obstinacy which drives people away from the Church. We need to clarify our message, and purify our actions, and challenge a renewed commitment for a new epoch in Church history.
Don’t ignore or chastise the Nones and drop-outs. Speak to them. Invite them to return. Show them that they too are sons and daughters of God. Even if they never return, they must be reminded that the door is always open. Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda: The Reformed Church Is Always Reforming. Now we may be doing it too slowly. So let’s get to it, beloved friends.