The Slow Death of Mainstream Church
And why I can still be found in the choir on Sunday mornings.
“Good Morning!”
As always, the minister greets us with a cheerful demeanour. It doesn’t matter whether there are six, or sixty, or six hundred, it’s always the same start to the service. It’s become part of the sacred rhythms of our time together.
It’s been a long time since there were six hundred, or even two hundred in this sanctuary. We can still hit one hundred, though usually only on Christmas, Easter, or another special service.
As I scan the sixty or so people scattered through the lower pews from my perch in the choir loft, I can see that I may not be the youngest person in the room, but I’m definitely below the average age. This is concerning because I’m almost 40, and people my age should make up half of this group — at least according to demographics.
There are few people around my age, or younger, in the sanctuary. Most of them are seated near me in the choir loft. There’s a couple of teenagers, one college-age student, my daughter and a couple other younger kids, and really that’s about it. Certainly there aren’t enough of us to maintain this ministry as everyone ages.
“What will be left for my daughter in twenty years?” I wonder to myself.
I grew up in houses of worship…literally. My father was a minister with a mainstream protestant denomination in Canada. Many days of my youth were spent playing in church gyms, exploring nooks and crannies of century-old buildings, and trying to be “helpful” to my dad and the church secretary.
In my teens, my mother went back to school in order to make the jump from teaching to ministry as well. This meant two churches, two congregations, two places in which I was surrounded by people with certain expectations of the minister’s kid. Sometimes the expectations of others are worse than the expectations of your own family.
Through my teens, I experimented…a lot. Oh, there were no drugs, sex, or anything like that. Can you imagine the scandal in…
