Contrarian View From the Pew: That was then, this is now.

I was fortunate enough to be a member of a Church ten years ago where I had the privilege of knowing a man who grew up in Iowa in the 1920’s. My wife and I were both part of the single group at this Church then. The Church usually had around 1000 people attend two Sunday morning services at this time. It also had a Sunday evening service that attracted less than 100 people. Almost all of the Sunday evening attendees were retired or single.

The vibrancy of this man who grew up in Iowa masked his older age. He passed away several years ago, but looking back now, it is clear that he spent his final years on earth preparing for heaven by witnessing to almost anyone who would listen, and he did have lots of listeners. During one of our conversations, he expressed sadness about how few people attended the Sunday evening service. He told me that when he was growing up, he would spend all week working on his family’s farm, and then on Sunday, he would spend all day, not just an hour or two, at Church.

He said the Sunday morning service would include at least a dozen hymns and two hours of preaching. After the morning service, the entire Church would eat lunch together and then the children would play, the women would fellowship, and most of the men would take a nap. The afternoon activities were followed by an early evening service with more singing, and more preaching, and more fellowship, and then everyone would return to their farms where they would rarely see each other again until the following Sunday. His Sunday at Church was the most important part of his week as he got to worship God and fellowship with other believers.

Everyone didn’t live on a farm in 1920, but most people did live a life that included much less interaction with others than we do today. Factory workers and farmers worked in labor intensive occupations, merchants had many less customers than now, and most of the wives raised children and performed manual housework without modern appliances. Therefore, Sunday mornings weren’t just a time for God; Sunday’s were also a time for socializing. The Church was where most of the actual relating took place for everyone in a typical American community.

Nowadays, most working people are relating from the time they get up until the time they go to bed at night. Many, if not most, of us work on projects with dozens of other people in office complexes of hundreds of other people. There are as many women as men in the workforce now. Even in software development, a good part of every week is spent in meetings and discussions with our co-workers. Outside of work, we have contact with the parents of the children who are in activities with our children, from soccer, to softball, to swimming, to gymnastics, to dancing, to singing, to talent shows, to scouting, to who knows what’s next! We shop in Super Markets with lines longer than all of the customers of a store in 1920.

By the time Sunday roles around, some of us, mostly men, have had about as much relating as we can stand for the week. It’s no wonder the Sunday evening service is a sliver of what it once was. It won’t surprise me to see the Sunday morning service also experience more decline as well since Pastors continue to over-emphasize relationships in the typical Church ministry plan.