22 September 2015 A.D. 9 Rapid Changes in Church Worship
22 September 2015 A.D. 9 Rapid Changes in Church Worship
Rainer, Thom S. “Nine
Rapid Changes in Church Worship Services.” Thom
S. Rainer. 7 May 2014. http://thomrainer.com/2014/05/nine-rapid-changes-church-worship-services/.
Accessed 23 Sept 2015.
If you were attending a church worship service in
1955 and then returned to the same church in 1975, the changes would be
noticeable but not dramatic. Churches were slow to change over that 20-year
period. If you, however, attended a church worship service in 2000 and then
returned to that same church in 2010, there is a high likelihood you would see
dramatic changes in just ten years.
What, then, are some of the most significant
changes? Please allow me to offer some trends from anecdotal information,
church consultations, and objective research. As a caveat, some of the data
based research comes from an excellent study, The National
Congregations Study by Duke University. This study, fortunately, is
longitudinal, so it is able to look at changes over many years. But the study
is also dated, with the latest data reported in 2007.
From these multiple sources, I have assembled nine
changes that have come at a rapid pace in many churches. Please note my
perspective. I am offering these from the perspective of a researcher; I am not
making qualitative assessments. Also, with every trend there will be thousands
of churches that are exceptions to the norm. But these are the changes in the
majority of churches in North America.
1. Choirs are disappearing. From 1998 to
2007, the percentage of churches with choirs decreased from 54% to 44%. If that
pace holds to this year, the percentage of churches with choirs is only 37%.
2. Dress is more casual. In many
churches, a man wearing a tie in a worship service is now among the few rather
than the majority. While the degree of casual dress is contextual, the trend is
crossing all geographic and demographic lines.
3. Screens are pervasive. Some of you
remember the days when putting a projection screen in a worship center was
considered a sacrilege. Now most churches have screens. And if they have
hymnals, the hymnals are largely ignored and the congregants follow along on
the screens.
4. Preaching is longer. I will soon be in the
process of gathering this data to make certain the objective research confirms
the anecdotal information.
5. “Multi” is normative. Most congregants
twenty years ago attended a Sunday morning worship service where no other
Sunday morning alternatives were available. Today, most congregants attend a
service that is part of numerous alternatives: multi-services; multi-campuses;
multi-sites; and multi-venues.
6. Attendees are more diverse. The Duke
study noted the trend of the decrease in the number of all-white congregations.
7. Conflict is not increasing. In a recent post, I noted
the decreasing frequency of worship wars. The Duke study noted that overall
church conflict has not increased over a 20-year period.
8. More worship attendees are attending larger churches. Churches with an attendance of 400 and up now account for 90% of all
worship attendees. Inversely, those churches with an attendance of under 400
only account for 10% of worship attendees.
9. Sunday evening services are disappearing. This issue has stirred quite a bit of discussion the past few years. I
plan to expand upon it in my post this coming Saturday. Stay tuned.
I have tried to present these changes from a
research perspective instead of injecting my opinions or preferences.
Obviously, I have my own, but I would rather hear from you. The readers at this
blog are much smarter than I am anyway.
Do you see these trends
in your local congregation? What would you add?
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