Like most pastors, I have been reflecting on the pattern of declining church attendance over the last few decades. Within my own quarter of a century of ministry at my local church, we have witnessed the loss of the Sunday evening service (attendance had dropped so low that we did not “bring it back” following Covid) and the decreasing number of folks attending our mid-week prayer meeting. I’m not really interested in deep-diving that topic, but it led me to consider the difference between a Roman Catholic service and a protestant/evangelical service.
It could be argued (falsely, but argued nonetheless) that evangelicals can replace the benefits of physical gathering with a digital experience. I don’t mean only that they can livestream their own church’s worship service, I mean that they can aggregate the parts and pieces of a typical worship service digitally throughout the week. For example, thousands of high quality sermons by well known Bible expositors exist online. Millions of high quality songs exist online. And while digital friendships aren’t quite the same, there are sufficient number of believers in the West that isolation isn’t a typical danger.
Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, demands physical presence because of the emphasis on the Mass. In RC theology, grace is communicated via the act of eating and drinking, but only when the physical elements are prayed over and mystically become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. So no door-dashing communion for the RC, unless the driver happens to be a priest. This emphasis on the physical presence of Christ in the mass requires a physical presence of the worshipper. At the same time, Roman Catholics have taken advantage of the digital era by staking out space on TV, radio, and most recently the internet. There are Roman Catholic channels and podcasts and debaters, and this entrance into the public space has had a pretty significant impact.
Since the reformation, Protestants (and thus Evangelicals) have de-emphasized the sacramental nature of the table of the Lord, although I think all of the Reformers would be a bit aghast at the general absence of the Lord’s Table in many churches today. Essentially, the preaching of the Word took center stage during the Reformation as people were hungry for truth after centuries of being subjected to a depraved class of religious gatekeepers. “What the preach said” was a big part of the social life of Western culture for the last several hundred years. But a modern evangelical can hear a much better sermon (arguably) online that what his local pastor is able to deliver, and so the need to physically attend church is lessened.
This also has some explanatory power for the style of modern evangelical services, which are more akin to a political rally or concert than a religious service. The lights, the sounds, the celebrity of the pastor are all “draws” in an age in which a draw is (or seems) necessary, now that the hunger for the Word has been satiated by worldly pursuits and the presence of a local pastor has been replaced by media pastors.
Is this just something we have to live with, or is there something we can do? I will offer two potential ways to mitigate this. First, we could start observing the table of the Lord more frequently. If nothing else, this serves as a reminder of our bonds of love in the fellowship of the local church.
Secondly, we can offer something in the preaching of our local congregation that is missing from online sermons: application. Only the local shepherd truly knows the condition of the sheep and is therefore properly equipped to speak to their growth in sanctification. There can be good, helpful expository preaching that instructs in doctrine but never in practice. There can be a solid orthodoxy that never touches on orthopraxy. This could also help explain why men, who are interested in the way things work, are missing from a church that focuses on feelings or relationships, which are of more interest to women. Application is where people get offended. Application is where feathers are ruffled. And application is what shows the difference between an internet personality and a pastor.
Nathan Writes 