While many places of worship will be congratulating themselves on the success of their summer schemes and holiday bible club activities, those same churches will face the same challenges come September - how do we compete with the secular world’s activities?
Put bluntly, how do we make the Christian faith and its organisations relevant in an increasingly pluralist society? For many communities, especially in the Sixties and Seventies, life was built around two buildings - the school and the place of worship. But this is 2026, not 1966 or 1976.
Even as a Presbyterian minister’s son growing up in the heartland of the north east Ulster Bible Belt in that late 20th century era, I will openly admit I lived a very sheltered upbringing.
My life revolved around two buildings - my school, Ballymena Academy and its cross country and athletics clubs, and Clough Presbyterian Church, in the north Antrim hills, with the Saturday youth club, Friday night company section of the Boys’ Brigade, Sunday Bible class, Sabbath services and Sunday evening youth fellowship.
But that era of church dominance has sadly passed into history. The competition which Christian places of worship now face in this third decade of the third millennium are much more challenging.
In the Sixties and Seventies, community organisations would generally organise their activities to suit the local church’s calendar of events. But in 2026, the churches are having to compete for attention with many other organisations - as well as the internet and satellite television.
Sunday sport has gone well beyond Gaelic games. Gone are the days in many homes when Sunday television was banned. In soccer terms, Super Sundays are now the order of the day. The number of places of worship which run a Sunday evening service seems to be diminishing, even among the mainstream Christian denominations.
Even those few churches which have Sunday evening worship, the service can begin just as the final whistles are sounding in many English and Scottish Premiership soccer games with some younger folk checking the scores on their mobile phones, much to the annoyance of the dwindling older generation!
The debates will still rage as to how to attract more folk into the pews, especially on Sundays, let alone the mid-week Bible studies and prayer meetings. The Covid pandemic of 2020 saw churches closed and many going online.
That online provision still exists in many places of worship. Why go to the bother of getting dressed for church when you can roll out of bed on a Sunday morning, press a few buttons, and share worship online with your fellow Christians. Your tithe can also be paid via online banking.
Folk naturally don’t need to put on their ‘Sunday best’ to watch the service online. When face to face services resumed after lockdown, there seemed to be a more noticeably relaxed dress code among worshippers in some denominations.
Even among the clergy, the clerical collar and robes were replaced in many cases with either a shirt and tie, or even an open-neck shirt. Of course, many in the pensioner brigade would continue to wear the ‘Sunday best’, but the concept of the casual Christian was most notable among the younger generation where even sporting tops became acceptable, much to the annoyance of the so-called older ‘tut-tut’ brigade!
More modern translations of the Bible, compared to the traditional King James Version have become common place in many churches. Many places of worship now have a praise band rather than just the piano or church organ for singing.
The churches which seem to be thriving are those who invest in their young people and make attendance at worship attractive. Traditionalists may argue that making church more appealing to young folk is diluting the Christian message.
Whilst these traditionalists are entitled to their opinions, the fact remains that young folk are the lifeblood of a future generation of a place of worship. If a place of worship constantly focuses on the needs of the pensioner brigade, what happens to that church when that generation eventually literally dies off and the cash flow stops?
Could we see more denominations having to close buildings, merge congregations or curtail their activities because it is becoming financially impossible to maintain the premises?
Perhaps the bitter medicine many places of worship will have to face is that if they wish to survive as an integral part of the community, they will have to abandon the ‘holy huddle’ mindset and go out into the communities they supposedly seek to serve.
Abandoning a strict dress code for Sunday worship may well be the solution to attracting more poverty line families or single parent families into places of worship. Allowing women to attend Sunday worship without having to wear a hat or giving women a greater role in church life would be two positive solutions. Could churches invest in esports and computer games to attract more young people and adults?
Churches may also have to evaluate their Special Educational Needs (SEN) provision and make their buildings more disability friendly. More importantly, places of worship need to carry out detailed surveys as to what folk in their communities are interested in in terms of activities.
This leads to the simple question - are there activities and functions which the churches could provide which would attract more folk into the pews without diluting the Christian message?
In an increasingly secular society, the evangelical message of becoming ‘born again’ may not be as popular as the great traditional missions in churches and tents of the Sixties and Seventies.
Is it sadly a case that for some places of worship, all they want is their church to become the bowling club at prayer on the Sabbath, and if the cleric continues to preach a staunch evangelical Gospel message, just drive them out?
For some churches this September when considering their activities, it could be a case of mapping out the long-term survival or existence of that place of worship.
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| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter Dr Coulter has been a journalist since 1978 and is currently a political commentator with GB News. |
