Like all pastors, I have observed an increasing secularization of American culture over the past generation. This process picked up pace during the past six years and then seemed to go into overdrive during COVID. This has created challenges (and opportunities) for us as churches.
More than simply speed up over time, I offer that the contours of secularization have changed in the past six years. Earlier we were going through (what we might call) secularization phase 1: "People got busy." Now people are going through (what we might call) secularization phase 2: "People got disgusted." I will describe them as a waves, because they kind of roll and crash into each other. Furthermore, each presents churches with a different set of opportunities - ways to ride the wave - and challenges - crashing and undertow. My sense is that both have been at work for some time, but I sense that for most churches, they will discover that the second wave is much harder to navigate than the first.
Secularization Wave #1: People got Busy
In the first phase of secularization, people began to find meaning in other places besides church. Andrew Root has masterfully examined this through the lens of youth ministry (and his series on the church in the secular age). People filled their schedule and found ultimately their identity in all sorts of activities: travel soccer, marching band, social media, politics, etc. While some of these had a more 'Christian' flavor to them, they generally meant that people spent far less time in religious activities than a generation ago.
- What did this mean for churches? Attendance declined. The biggest victim was the pastoral size church. A church that consistently had 125 in worship found itself struggling to worship 100 only a decade or two later. While this was enough to pay the bills (barely), its attendance of young families was so lean that it could no longer offer a meaningful 'Youth group' and 'Sunday school'. This meant that the remaining families wanting programming for their children, youth and family did two things: one, they complained about the lack of programming (even as they chose to have their kids attend other events) and two, many of them migrated in the direction of larger churches. This left many congregations with a fair amount of nostalgia that impeded new ideas; in addition there was a lot of residual anger in the system that burned out their clergy.
- More positively, it often forced smaller (pastoral and family size) churches to be creative, explore inter-generational learning opportunities and consider partnerships with other congregations. The happiest among these have accepted a smaller size and are finding their particular niche within their community.
- Within larger churches (program to mega), this first wave of secularization put a huge premium on excellence and programming. As young families with time on their hands for churchy activities became a scarcer commodity, larger churches had the opportunity and need to attract them (as well as the older folks (with money!) who wanted churches that still had kids). While someone with more experience could point out how I am truly wrong about this, my sense is that the net effect of the first wave of secularization was to encourage big churches to work "faster, bigger and harder", doing what they had been doing in the 1980s and 1990s, albeit with far thinner results. I also offer that this influx of people curbed the incentive of large churches to do real evangelism; they spent more of their resources on welcoming existing Christians into their midst (if not their sub-culture). In short, their energy vector began pointing in and perhaps out, but was not going out in the same way.
Secularization Wave #2: People got Disgusted
The second wave of secularization, the one that I think is picking up speed, is different. In this wave of secularization, people go further than saying that church is less important. They move toward skepticism, if not fear and rejection of the church. This is not entirely new; Gen-X is famous for rejecting institutions; also, the priesthood scandal in the Catholic church added a great deal of kindling to this fire!
However, there is an acute wholesale rejection of the church by increasing numbers of people. There is a sense that the church has wed itself, not simply to conservative policy aims, but to partisan political warfare and even flirts (if not cheats with) Christian nationalism.
An interesting article from Christianity Today offers that the rise of Christian nationalism is itself a manifestation of secularization. The thesis is that as people become less engaged in actual church, they tend to gravitate toward pseudo-church. I find the argument compelling. Many of our churches have also been hit by this form of secularism, as we have seen people in our church ghost us over COVID-mask requirements, not to attend elsewhere, but simply to walk away from church.
But even if I cool down my rhetoric, the point is simple: You have a significant number of people who are one or two generations removed from active participation in the life of a congregation. (Consider this -- the last family on Television that went to church is the Simpsons!!) When such people have religious or spiritual questions, the Christianity they observe, especially through the lens of typical media or social media presentations, is likely going to be a very socially conservative, if not even schismatic and heretical presentation of the Gospel. Such people are incredibly unlikely to show up at worship because they heard we have good music or good preaching. There are far too many barriers.
Trying to Ride Wave #2
My sense is that trying to ride Secularization Wave #2 is going to be really hard for most people. It will require a different set of tools than Wave #1. For many mainline pastor size churches, this officially ends their ability to continue business as usual. The loss of an additional 10% of people post-COVID is going to mean they can no longer afford their staff, forcing cut backs. It will be difficult for these congregations to find a way to celebrate who they are and discover where God is calling them without succumbing to bitterness. Ironically, the family size churches may do better because they have accepted a smaller size; whereas the former pastoral size churches likely are reeling from loss.
For the bigger and healthier churches, I sense that they will need to rediscover evangelism. By and large, 'evangelism' in such contexts meant attractional ministry, welcoming church people into our congregation. The dynamics of wave #1 and the early phases of COVID-musical-church-chairs seduced many congregations into a comfortable sense that "bigger, faster, harder and ONLINE" will work. But I sense moving forward, we will need to think beyond 'welcoming visitors' or even 'inviting people to worship.'
My candid sense is that dealing with a society after two waves of secularization will force us to become missionary churches...Churches that meet people where they are. Churches that find a variety of ways for people to form relationships, share stories and serve others. As Bonhoeffer wrote:
The Church is the Church only when it exists for others . . . not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others
