Who is not in the pews?

Analysis of Who is Receptive to More Involvement in the Church (June 1, 2023)

As a pastor looks out over the smiling faces of her congregation and feels the warmth of the church family and a shared pursuit of biblical truths, she can have a very positive feeling about her pastoral charge.  The more disconcerting thing that the pastor sees from that same pulpit is the empty pews or chairs.  So much of what she and her church stands for is aimed at filling those seats.  So the question that should be asked is: who is inclined to join a church and is worth pursuing, and who are so against religion that it would just not be an efficient use of time and energy to try to engage them.  

In my mind, there are two main groups to target: the non-attending religious and the religiously-ambiguous.  As Bibby polls1 have indicated, 44% of those claiming to embrace religion do not attend very often (the C & E crowd perhaps).  The religiously-ambiguous, representing the greatest segment at 44%, show some signs of openness to more engagement.

First, let’s look at the people claiming to be religious to see if they are ripe for greater involvement in the church.  It appears they are because 54% of them indicated that they feel guilty about not being more involved, and 49% said they would be open to more involvement “. . . if I found it worthwhile.”2  Such openness does encourage a substantial church effort aimed at attracting them to, or back to, the church.  However, on the surface it is unclear as to what would be “worthwhile” and thus attractive.

We could be cynical and suggest that the religious but non-attending people are just not all that religious, despite their claims.  However, that would just be an assumption, with all of the baggage that goes with those.  The infrequently attending religious folks, when asked in a 2005 Canadian poll by Bibby3, split their reason for low attendance relatively evenly into three categories: ministry factors (e.g., meeting of spiritual needs), organizational factors (e.g., style and outlook), and personal factors (eg., lack of time, infirmity).  

Now let’s look at the religiously-ambiguous group.  81% of these folks say they believe in God or a higher power.  63% say Jesus was the divine son of God.  42% generally pray monthly or more often4.  And, encouragingly, 73% identify with a specific religion5.  This all bodes well for trying to engage them in the church.  But there is a long way to go as only 11% say they attend church monthly or more often4.

The people who claim to reject religion, 26% of Canadians5, have little in their outlooks that would entice them to church.  Only a third believe in God or a higher power and only 15% believe Jesus was the divine son of God4.  I’m sure there are a lot of anecdotal stories about such people coming to faith, which is great.  But if a church has limited resources to dedicate to outreach, the two other groups described above would likely be the more successful ministry fields.  

Of course, it is very difficult to determine which religious cohort a person is in without first knowing them.  So targeting ministry work in a manner that increases success rates is not easy to do.  As usual, statistics can only take you so far. 

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1. Bibby, Reginald W, Resilient Gods: being pro-religious, low religious or no religious in Canada,

     UBC Press, 2017, page 67

2. Bibby, page 68

3. Bibby, page 29

4. Bibby, page 74

5. Bibby, page 72