Church Attendance Reasons

While catching up with all my RSS feeds, I read a quite interesting post from ChurchRelevance.com. While all surveys can NOT be completely accurate, they can be very effective and eye-catching. Here’s their results:

Top 13 Reasons that Unchurched People Choose a Church
(research conducted by Ranier)

1. 90% – Pastor/Preaching
2. 88% – Doctrines
3. 49% – Friendliness of Members
4. 42% – Other Issues
5. 41% – Someone Church Witnessed to Me
6. 38% – Family Member
7. 37% – Sensed God’s Presence/Atmosphere of Church
8. 25% – Relationship Other than Family Member
9. 25% – Sunday School Class
10. 25% – Children’s/Youth Ministry
11. 12% – Other Groups/Ministries
12. 11% – Worship Style/Music
13. 7% – Location

Top 9 Reasons that Church-Attenders Choose a Church
(research conducted by the Barna Group in 1999)

1. 58% – Doctrine/Theology
2. 53% – People Caring for Each Other
3. 52% – Preaching
4. 45% – Friendliness
5. 45% – Children’s Programs
6. 43% – Helping the Poor
7. 36% – Denomination
8. 35% – Like the Pastor
9. 26% – Sunday School

Top 6 Things that Keep the Formerly Unchurched Active in the Church
(research conducted by Ranier)

1. 62% – Ministry Involvement
2. 55% – Sunday School
3. 54% – Obedience to God
4. 49% – Fellowship of Members
5. 38% – Pastor/Preaching
6. 14% – Worship Services

The statistics speak for themselves. Overall, doctrine, the pastor and his preaching, and the friendliness and fellowship of the congregation are the most influential qualities.

I found it very interesting, to say the least, that doctrine, pastoral and preaching to be the top reasons. In talking to people about this topic, many relate doctrine/pastoral/preaching to “what type agrees with me” and what “I believe”. What “I’m confortable” with hearing. I would have say that along side of this survey would be the question what is your “doctrine/theology” and “pastoral/preaching” preferences. Are we talking a walk in the park gospel presentation, suburbia Christianity, or Biblical expository teaching? With a skewed view of doctrine/theology, pastoral/preaching responsibilities, these results are very much skewed themselves.

The other caveat of this poll is, would people really choose music over the much “better choice”, the more “holier than thou” choice of doctrine/theology and pastor/preaching choices as to why they attend a church? Most ho-hum church goers would, of course, NOT choose music or media production over doctrine, would they?!?

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