When Church Becomes Optional

I pastor a modest sized local church in San Jose, California. Some Sundays our attendance is strong. Other weeks it drops to around sixty percent of our average. It does not happen every week, but it happens often enough to raise questions. People simply do not come.

Recently, friends who are deeply committed to their own local church shared a conversation that stuck with me. In the course of talking with other professing Christians, they mentioned that they attend church every week. The response was genuine surprise. “You go every week?” It was not said with hostility, just disbelief, as though weekly worship were an unusual level of devotion.

When I started in ministry over twenty years ago, weekly attendance was already declining. At that time, it was common to see individuals or families two or three times a month rather than every Sunday. Today, the pattern has shifted further. For many believers, church attendance is no longer a fixed commitment but a conditional one. It is something they do if nothing else competes for their time. Some families attend once a month or less.

We often point to youth sports, travel, packed schedules, and exhaustion as the reasons. Those factors are real. But beneath them lies a simpler truth. People tend to arrange their lives around what they believe matters most. For many Christians, regular participation in corporate worship has quietly slipped behind weather, sports, leisure, and convenience. If church were widely understood as essential rather than optional, attendance patterns would look very different.

This is not about perfection or guilt. It is about priorities and formation.

Reverse Catechesis

Timothy Keller used the phrase “reverse catechesis” to describe a cultural reality that has only intensified since he first named it. Catechesis traditionally refers to intentional formation in the beliefs and practices of the Christian faith. Reverse catechesis describes the opposite process, where believers are increasingly shaped by the surrounding culture rather than by the church.

Consider the math. The average committed churchgoer may spend two to three hours a week in worship and Christian community. Meanwhile, studies consistently show that Americans spend seven to eight hours a day consuming digital media. That content carries assumptions about identity, sexuality, authority, happiness, and meaning that often stand in direct tension with historic Christian faith.

Keller put it bluntly. “If you are not intentionally being formed by Christian community, you are being unintentionally formed by something else.”

The result is not usually outright rejection of Christianity. It is something subtler. Believers who still profess faith but increasingly think, decide, and prioritize in ways indistinguishable from the broader culture. The church does not lose people all at once. It loses them gradually, through diminished presence and weakened habits.

Why Our Example Matters

Our example, sometimes called our witness, may be one of the most important offerings we give to Christ in response to his grace. Scripture consistently assumes that faith is lived publicly and relationally. Our patience, generosity, faithfulness, and commitment to Christian community shape not only our own lives but also the lives of others.

Every leader knows that culture matters more than slogans. Culture is formed by what people actually do. Simply showing up for corporate worship, participating in a small group, serving at a food pantry, or helping with church cleanup quietly communicates what we believe is worth our time.

These actions matter especially for new believers and for those whose faith is fragile. They also matter across generations. When one generation treats embodied commitment as optional, the next generation rarely recovers it.

Sociologist Christian Smith has shown that parental religious behavior is the single strongest predictor of whether children will practice faith as adults. Not parental beliefs, but parental practices. What is modeled consistently is what is remembered.

What We Teach Our Children Without Saying a Word

Much has been written about the impact of Sunday youth sports on church attendance. Parents often make understandable arguments. Sports build confidence, discipline, friendships, and physical health. Some even hold out hope for scholarships.

Here is the tension. Ask Christian parents whether they want their children to follow Jesus into adulthood, and nearly all say yes. Ask whether they expect their children to continue competitive sports long term, and most say no. Yet week after week, many parents model that church is negotiable while sports are not.

The old saying holds true. The most important things are caught, not taught.

It should not surprise us that younger generations show declining attachment to church. According to Pew Research, only about one in four professing Christians in the United States attends church weekly. Among young adults, that number is significantly lower. These patterns did not emerge overnight. They are the fruit of years of subtle de prioritization.

If parents hope their children will one day marry believing spouses, raise their own children in the faith, and remain connected to Christian community, the odds diminish sharply when faith is modeled as occasional rather than central.

Sabbath and the Lord’s Day

The fourth commandment calls God’s people to keep the Sabbath holy. Many modern Christians reduce Sabbath to rest alone. If rest is the primary goal, then skipping worship to sleep in or catch up on chores can seem reasonable.

But biblically, Sabbath is not merely rest. It is rest oriented toward worship, remembrance, and re alignment. Jewish communities have long understood that Sabbath observance requires preparation. Meals are made ahead of time. Work is completed in advance. Sabbath rest is intentional, not accidental.

Christians are not bound to the Mosaic law in the same way Israel was, but from the earliest days of the church, believers gathered weekly on the Lord’s Day to celebrate the resurrection, receive teaching, and share life together. This was not treated as optional. It was assumed.

To suggest that Sabbath faithfulness or Lord’s Day worship can be detached from gathering with the church misunderstands both Scripture and history. Rest without devotion easily becomes disengagement.

Why This Matters for the Church and the World

Only about twenty five percent of professing Christians attend church with any regularity. That reality raises serious questions. How did we come to believe that Christian faith can be sustained apart from Christian community? How will the next generation learn the importance of Scripture, corporate worship, mutual encouragement, and shared mission if they rarely see it practiced?

The church has always depended on the faithful presence of ordinary believers. Presence creates culture. Culture sustains mission. Without it, the church becomes fragile, and its witness to the world grows thin.

This is not about institutional survival for its own sake. It is about formation. A society increasingly detached from shared moral and spiritual formation will not become more free or more humane by accident.

The Church Is Better With You There

The church is better when you are present. One more person to welcome a newcomer. One more voice in worship. One more set of hands to serve. One more example of faithfulness that might steady someone else.

Hebrews puts it plainly. “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

So plan for it. Protect it. Prepare for it. Let gathering with God’s people shape the rhythm of your week rather than compete with it. Not because attendance earns God’s favor, but because God uses ordinary faithfulness to do extraordinary work in ordinary people.

The church does not need perfect people. It needs present ones.

Presence says that God is worth our time. Presence says that community matters. Presence says that formation does not happen accidentally. It happens through repeated, embodied practices over time.

Get up. Get ready. Come and join the gathering.

The church is better with you there.