Going to Church

When the early Christians met together for worship it appears they were not forced to attend their meetings. They attended because they were incredibly keen to hear about Jesus and to be charged up with the forward push in promoting the Gospel.

Centuries later, when Christianity had been accepted as national religion by many countries the faithful were required to attend church. It was a serious offence not to attend. In the United Kingdom it was farcical because when the people assembled in church they stood around talking whilst the priest and choir went through their holy office. No doubt the congregation remained on the move as services were long and tedious. Most of them had not a clue as to what worship entailed because it was conducted in Latin and they did not speak the language.

In fact, in the Roman Catholic Church, it was only following Vatican 2 that the mass was said in the vernacular and the priest faced his congregation! At the end of the fifteenth century it was still punishable by death to print and/or publish the Bible in English in this country.

Everyone had to state belief in the same aspects of the religion. There were no opinions allowed. Orthodoxy was all. To say that you believed even the slightest departure from standard belief could end in death. Heresy was punished in many different painful ways by the torturers used by ecclesiastical authority. In other words, people were told what to believe! It is quite amazing to us in the 20th century that belief was not considered a personal matter.

Although many people of the Victorian era stayed away the perceived way was to attend church. If you were a non church attender you were considered to be very low as a person. No value could attach to you and you would not be invited to families of churchgoers. Moving into the 20th century there were flurries of ups as certain events influenced people. The First World War was one that saw numbers increase as the perception was that God was “on our side”. In Wales there was an amazing uplift in church numbers, let alone congregations. The 1904 revival saw many churches being built right across the principality. It was not long before the revival stalled and things began to return to normal.

The Second World War drew a further increase, again on the basis that God could not possibly be on Hitler’s side. But from the beginning of the century the numbers had begun to slowly fall away. The Roman Catholics, as I remember them in the 1960s seemed to be doing so much better than everyone else. As I passed the main Catholic Church in Burnley on my way to preach in a country Baptist Chapel on the moors above Todmorden there were three masses every Sunday morning. There were crowds standing on the pavement, waiting for the earlier service to close.

By 1969 when I left to live in East Anglia for four years I was the very last “young person” to worship at Manchester Road Congregational Church, Nelson, Lancashire. By the time I returned four years later the numbers were even less and the decision had to be taken to close the Evening Service which had recently been attended by just a few Elders out of duty.

Work took me away once more and I lived in the Oldham and Rochdale area for the next 31 years. During that time I saw the congregations diminish at Shaw United Reformed Church. The old Sunday School building lost the entire outer leaf of its rear wall and had to be demolished. We raised enough funds to build a new church hall which was much smaller but designed for purpose in the millennium period. I left in 2004 to live in Anglesey, North Wales. Since then the church no longer is in use and plans are afoot to extend the new church hall.

Within my lifetime (67 years) I have watched the numbers fall away. Today the church attenders comprise a mere 10% of population. Indifference is the prevailing feeling of the populace towards Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection. Yet still the church people try to think of ways to get people to come to church. They forget that they were never required to achieve “bums on seats” but to enhance the lives of those who suffer.

In John 21 Jesus asked Peter three times, “Simon Peter, do you love me?” To each affirmative answer he replied “feed my sheep.” So few people today really connect to this. They still think that if the church isn’t warm on a Sunday “they won’t come.” I have news for them. They will certainly not come and they might as well forget the heating system because that is not a draw. Those who come to church do not come to get warm on a cold day. They are the faithful few who recognise their need to worship God because of what he has done for them.