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Podcast: Why Have So Many People Stopped Going to Church? (Paul Tripp)

October 02, 2023 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Does Going to Church Matter?

In this episode, Paul Tripp reflects on the importance of not just the universal church but the local gathered church, and he responds to many of the reasons that people stop going to church.

Sunday Matters

Sunday Matters

Paul David Tripp

Paul David Tripp shares 52 weekly devotionals about the beauty and significance of church, helping readers fully prepare their hearts for vibrant corporate worship.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:23 - The Decline of In-Person Church Attendance

Matt Tully
Paul, thank you for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Paul Tripp
Well, I love our conversations, so I’m looking forward to this.

Matt Tully
Me too. I recently read the results of a study that was done—a survey that was done—I think in June of this past year. The people running the survey found that even after a significant post-COVID rebound, in-person church attendance continues to decline in the US, and that’s in line with a pretty significant decline over the last decade or so that we’ve been observing. And the decline applies even to those who would claim to be evangelical Christians. So just to kick us off as we talk about this idea of corporate worship and the value of gathering together with other Christians on Sundays, what do you make of those big trends that even go back before COVID and all the disruption that caused?

Paul Tripp
I want to first say that those statistics are one of the sadnesses of my life. They really do leave me in grief. There are few things other than my marriage and my children on earth that are more important to me than the church. Everything I write is for the church. My heart is in the church. I don’t know where I’d be without the church. Recently I read a statistic that said over the last few years over 40 million Americans no longer have church as a regular habit in their lives. And we’re talking about a large percentage of those we would identify as Bible-believing evangelical Christians. Now, what that tells me is we have not been successful in instilling in the hearts of people the importance of the church in their lives and the glorious, beautiful, wonderful, undeserved gift that the church is to us. It means to me that there’s been a whole lot of consumerism out there. If I go to the Macy’s close to me and I buy shirts and underwear there, but then I decide not to shop there anymore, it doesn’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t grieve me. I don’t think I’ve lost anything important. That’s what consumerism does. And if you don’t have the shirt I like, I have no problem going to someplace else to look for a shirt because I don’t have any actual heart and life commitment to Macy’s. I don’t feel part of what Macy’s is. And I think what’s been exposed is rather than that the church is me and I’m the church and this is woven into the fabric of my life, we have people who are church consumers. They’re religious consumers. The church is, if I could say this, it’s an ecclesiastical Macy’s that I attend, but I don’t feel grief when I don’t.

Matt Tully
What’s the root cause of that consumeristic mindset that we often do have of the church? Is it a lack of teaching about the nature of the church and the importance of the church? Or is it a lack of actually living out what we say we believe about the church? Do you get what I’m asking? Is it more of an issue of we just haven’t taught on these things, or is it that the reality of the church, the actual lived experience of being a part of a church, has just not lived up and we haven’t done a good job of letting that be what it’s supposed to actually be?

Paul Tripp
I think it’s all of the above. I think of my experience growing up, that you could not live in my house without thinking that the church is important. I can remember as a little boy thinking, This is important. I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand the importance of the church. I surely didn’t understand the gospel, but I understood that this was a remarkable part of my parents’ life. In fact, when we would go on vacation, one of the things my dad would do is always find a church for us to attend on Sunday morning, no matter where we were, because that was important to us. If we were involved in sports, we never did sports on Sunday morning. My dad would go to a coach and say, This is what’s important to us, and my son won’t be there. And so I grew up with this value instilled in us. I think there’s another thing—it’s a theological thing. I don’t think we have been successful in helping people understand that their walk with God is a community project. There is no such thing, in the New Testament particularly, as individualized Jesus-and-me religion. If you read Scripture, from the teaching of Jesus through the pastoral pistols, it’s all “we” language. And Paul is very specific about the importance of the body of Christ, that I’m webbed into this organic thing that I can’t be spiritually healthy without. And so if you haven’t been discipled in that theology, then you would think, Well, maybe I can stream a service. Maybe I’ll just have my personal devotions. Maybe I just occasionally read a good Christian book. You think you’re going to be spiritually healthy when that is never the way the Christian life is presented in Scripture.

Matt Tully
Someone listening might be thinking in their mind, I kind of agree with that. I see the importance of community. I see the importance of being in God’s word. But the church is actually all of us. It’s all Christians, and I am part of the church—the global church, the spiritual church. I have Christian friends, and I get together with them and we even pray together and we read the Bible together. Why do I need to be part of this stodgy, formal institution that meets at one place every week? Isn’t the church actually a bigger idea than just one meeting once a week?

Paul Tripp
The church universal is never a replacement for the church local. Think about this. If you take the auto workers union, my only relationship as an auto worker to the auto workers union is my local chapter. It doesn’t mean anything to me that’s nationwide if I’m not involved with the local, visible, relational, real hand, right here, right now experience of that. What does it mean? If I don’t have a union steward that I can talk to who will appeal on behalf of me when I’ve experienced a work injustice, what does a union mean? Well, the same is with the church. The church invisible, the church global, is never a replacement of the visible, relational gathering of the church. When Scripture says don’t abandon the assembly together with other believers, it’s not talking about the fact that somehow the church gathers every week, because I have no relationship to that. It’s talking about the visible, local thing that God has raised up, which then makes the beauty of the church universal now my personal experience.

09:06 - The Fundamental Purpose of Gathering as a Local Church

Matt Tully
If you had to summarize what is the fundamental purpose, the fundamental good, that the visible, local community that gathers together (probably on a Sunday morning) in one space, what is the fundamental purpose of that rhythm that God has given to us?

Paul Tripp
I could say it this way: to wake me up Sunday after Sunday out of my identity amnesia. I’m like everybody else. I can lose my mind during the week. Whether that’s temptation, whether that’s materialism, whether that’s numbing myself with entertainment, whether that’s the bumps and bruises of life in a fallen world, whether that’s family chaos, I forget who I am and I forget what I’ve been given. And so I need these infusions of reminders of the presence and promises of God, the glory of his universal rule, my identity as his child—that I’ve been welcomed into the family of God—that his promises are for me, that the plan of redemption is on the march, that my little individual story—the little, teeny story of Paul Tripp—has been embedded in the larger story of redemption, that my destiny is secure, that there is forgiveness for me when I blow it, which I regularly do. I need all of those reminders because in between I forget. Other things get in the way. Other things occupy my mind. Other things claim my heart. And so God raised up his church so that his people would stay rooted in what is the ultimate reality of existence. What is more important than the existence, character, and plan of God? And what could be more personally important than to be drawn into personal relationship with him? There’s nothing in life that’s more important than that. And let me say this: it’s that set of facts that helps me interpret all the other facts in my life—my family problems, my work problems, political controversy, all of those things that all of us face every day.

Matt Tully
I’m just struck by what you just said there, that not many Christians would disagree that one of our main goals in life should be to stay rooted in, as you said, the ultimate reality of the universe and who God is and who he’s revealed himself to be. But so often we can view the main ways that we do that through an individualistic lens. We think, Well, that’s me having my personal Bible study and my Bible reading every day. That’s me cultivating a deep prayer life. That’s me cultivating the spiritual disciplines in general in obedience and faith. And yet it seems like the importance of the church is sort of a big yes/and to that idea. We need to do all those things, but we really can’t try to do those things detached from other people. We actually also need other human beings to do this well.

Paul Tripp
Let me give you an example, personally, that just happened fairly recently. We had come back from California, and because of COVID we had been watching our service here in Philadelphia that starts at 11:00am but at 8:00 in the morning in California. We were watching the stream. And then I had had some physical difficulties and couldn’t go to the worship service, and Easter Sunday was my first Sunday back. I wept through that service. And part of it was, Had I been worshiping God all along? Sure, I had. Had I been having my own private worship? Sure, I had. But the thing that I said to Luella is that moment of hearing my brothers and sisters sing the gospel into my ears, having people hug me and say, We missed you. We’ve been praying for you. Hearing the word being spoken to me, not woven through the way my brain thinks, but spoken to me and challenging me. And I thought, These tears are because I’m not meant to do this by myself. And it was a picture of my hunger and this sense of, This is where I’m supposed to be. This is what I’m supposed to do. I can’t do this by myself.

13:45 - What If I Feel Unseen and Lonely at Church?

Matt Tully
I wonder if you could speak to the person listening who would say, I get that that’s what you felt, and I’m glad that that’s how you felt, but I don’t feel that way when I go to church. Maybe for that person they would say, I feel unseen and I feel unknown when I’m at church. And it actually causes me distress. I feel like I’m just out of place and that no one actually cares about me. What would you say to the person who kind of struggles with church in that way?

Paul Tripp
Well, there’s a couple ways I would go as I answer. First of all, it’s very important that never in my life do I allow myself to be convinced that I’m smarter than God. That will never take you anywhere good. And so if God says, This is important to your spiritual health; you should never forsake this, and an intimate relationship of mutual ministry with brothers and sisters is important for you, then it’s important. Let me give you an example. I go to the physician—I’ve lost a lot of my kidney function, so I’ve got a kidney appointment coming up. And let’s say my doctor says, I’m going to a give you a new medication. I don’t understand anything about that medication. I don’t understand how it’s going to help me. But that’s why I have a physician in my life. And I take it for the first week, and let’s just say I say, Well, I haven’t felt any different and I throw the medication away. You would say to me—any adult would say to me—What are you, nuts? But that’s exactly what we’re doing. God doesn’t promise that I’m going to get a buzz every time. He doesn’t promise that I’m going to look and say, Well, that made a big difference. Now, it may, but what he tells me is that this infusion of gospel truth into my heart and mind is a very significant contributor to my spiritual sanity and health. So I do it because the ultimate expert of experts—the one who created me, created the world, created his word, and created his church—tells me this is healthy for me. Now, if I’m going to a church and no one responds to me, well, there’s two things I would say. One, then step out and introduce yourself to somebody. Tell somebody you’ve been going here for a while and you haven’t met anybody. Step out of the consumer, waiting for the salesperson to come to you, and become a participant. Now, if you do that for a period of months and no one ever responds to you, maybe it’s the wrong church. But I surely wouldn’t be passive.

Matt Tully
And that’s probably just the hard question we have to ask ourselves, Have I just been passive? Have I be coming to this with a consumeristic mentality? Or maybe there are problems with the church and I need to look elsewhere.

Paul Tripp
Because you want in your church a combination of sound gospel preaching, God-glorifying public worship, and an active mutual ministry body of Christ. Those are all essential to the church. And so that personal communion is really important. And if I’m at a place where it looks like it is a consumer church, and where the leadership seems to be content with putting on—this is crass language, but I’ll use it—a good Sunday show, then maybe that’s not a healthy church.

17:48 - What If My Church Is Boring?

Matt Tully
Kind of related to this consumeristic mentality that I think maybe applies to many different situations, but I wonder if you could speak to the person who, if they were being honest, would say, My problem with church is I just find it boring. My church feels so boring to me. The music is boring, the sermons are boring, the people there are even boring to me. Even if that person understands the theory of what you’re saying here, what advice would you give to someone who says that and feels that way about Sunday morning?

Paul Tripp
Well, I think first of all, you have to examine yourself. Let’s start there. Do I have too much of a comfort and pleasure value in life where I don’t do anything in my life that I don’t find pleasurable? I do few things that I don’t find comfortable. I think you could argue that pleasure is the drug of Western culture, and we are pleasuring ourselves to death. So I’ve got to examine myself. Maybe I’ve bought into that, that everything has to be exciting and everything has to be a buzz. That’s the person who somebody recommends to them a great Netflix series, and they can’t watch the first twenty minutes if it doesn’t excite them. They turn it off. It may be wonderful, but you have to hang in there for a moment. So is that what’s going on for me? The other thing is to say that God hasn’t promised us that his church will be the most exciting place in our lives. I’m going to surprise people when I say this, but I’ve had more boring personal devotions than I’ve had exciting ones. Now, I love the word of God, but I don’t regularly walk away in tears and say, Oh my goodness! That passage was just amazing! Sometimes I walk away and I’m thankful, I know God’s word is good, but that’s it. There’s almost been no excitement at an emotional level. Now, I know this book gives me life. It’s the most important thing I could ever read. It doesn’t mean that it’s always exciting. Look, if you’re reading through genealogies, you’re probably not going to be weeping because you’ve been so touched by who begat who. So much disappointment is related to expectation. And you’ve got to bring the right set of expectations to the worship of God. And your expectation is, I am going to feed on healthy food this morning that’s going to give me spiritual strength and spiritual courage and spiritual hope. And even if I don’t walk away saying that was the best sermon I ever heard, we don’t want to discount what the spirit of God is able to do with frail human efforts. I have to tell you this story. I was the evening preacher at Tenth Presbyterian Church. I loved doing that. The church was vibrant. The average age of that service was 28-years-old. When I would get done preaching, I would do the benediction, the congregation would sit down, and I’d walk off the big platform and halfway down the aisle and just be a pastor to my people. I would help them to apply the service and tell them this is not just a gathering of worship, but a gathering of a community of love, and to express that love to the people around them. And then I’d stay in the aisle, and people would come up to me. They would get in line and they would want prayer or want to talk to me about something. Now, that Sunday evening I had preached what, as I was preaching, I thought was the worst sermon I ever preached. It’s one of those moments where you’re having this conversation in your head as you’re speaking words like, Oh, this is horrible. Oh, this is not working. This is not what I meant it to be. So I’m in the aisle a bit disappointed, and this lady comes up to me and says, Paul, I think maybe that’s the best sermon I ever heard in my life. Now, I don’t think that was the best sermon she ever heard, but I know what happened. That lady needed what I was talking about that night, and the Spirit of God picked up my broken words and took those to that woman’s heart in a way that was encouraging and transforming. That’s why I go to church. Because it’s not just humans leading worship and humans preaching the word of God and humans giving you a hug. But all of that is a tool of the Spirit of God to grow, to convict, to protect, to teach his people. And it’s hard on a human level to assess the fruit of that as you’re walking out of the building.

23:16 - What If I’m in a Season of Grief and Being around People is Too Difficult?

Matt Tully
What a great reminder that when we go to church, God is at church, too, with us and he’s at work. But maybe another kind of person who might be listening right now who struggles with the idea of going to church would be someone who’s maybe feeling overwhelmed with grief and sadness of some kind. I know I’ve heard from those who are undergoing some kind of deep trial, whether that’s a loss of somebody dear to them or something else that’s just causing them sadness, that being surrounded by people, maybe even well-meaning people who ask questions can just be a very difficult thing to do. What would you say to the person who feels like that today?

Paul Tripp
One of the things I love about the word of God and I love about good preaching is that biblical faith never requires you to deny reality. The Bible has the blood and grief of the fallen world almost on every page. In fact, there are stories that are so weird and tawdry in Scripture, if they were in a Netflix series, you probably wouldn’t watch it. Now, this is God communicating to us that he understands the things that we face. But here’s the twist: if grief dominates your view of reality, you’re probably going down emotionally. What I need is this grand, glorious picture of God to help me as I walk through my grief. Psalm 27. David is either running from Saul and his jealous anger, although David had been a loyal servant to Saul, or he’s running from his son Absalom, who was conspiring to take his throne. It’s either a situation of personal injustice or family betrayal. And he says, This one thing I desire, that I can run to the temple and gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. Now, why does David say that? Because he understands there is one sitting on the throne of the universe who’s more gloriously beautiful than any ugly thing you will face. And you will only properly understand and experience those ugly things when you look at them through the lens of the stunning beauty of your Redeemer. That’s why David says that. And so where does the grieving person need to be? In church, connected to the body of Christ. Because as much as it’s totally natural and appropriate to experience, grief can tempt you to bad things. Grief can actually tell lies to you—God doesn’t care. He’s not there. He doesn’t hear your prayers. People don’t love you. Those are all lies. Those lies will hurt you. And so I need to be in a place where I remember, Oh yeah, God does love me. Oh no, he hasn’t promised me a trouble-free life;h e’s promised me something better—he’s promised me himself. Those things alter the way you go through your time of grief.

26:51 - What If I’ve Been Betrayed by the Church?

Matt Tully
That makes me think of a conversation we had in the past a couple of years ago about suffering, and just some of the lies that you mentioned there that I think we hit on. We can include a link to that interview in the show notes. Maybe another last kind of category of person who might be listening—this is the person who feels hurt or even betrayed by their church. What would you say to them?

Paul Tripp
Well, I want to say that breaks my heart because the church should be one of the safe places on earth. It should be a physical representation of the promise that God says, I’ll be your refuge. You can hide under the shelter of my wing. The church should be a visible representation of God as a refuge. It should be a visible representation of being under his wing. And so when it’s not, that’s a terrible thing. That should break all of our hearts. We should never, ever be defensive for the church in a way that will silence people who have been used or hurt. But I want to say something else. You want to be careful that you don’t generalize an experience that may not be general. Because a church hurt you or a leader hurt you doesn’t mean the church itself is a dangerous place. And so I think you need to find a place where there is gospel, God-oriented, tender-hearted, loving-safety. Maybe in your search you say to a pastor of a church you’re checking out or one of the elders or leaders there, tell them of your experience of being hurt. Tell them you’re afraid. Tell them it’s hard to open your heart. If they don’t respond well to that, that’s probably not the church you want to be at. But if they have a tender hearted response to that, then that may be a place where you can be. You don’t want to run away from what God says is essential because you’ve experienced someone who has misused what God says is essential.

Matt Tully
And it sounds like right now you’re talking primarily to the church attender, encouraging them to be brave and be honest and not give up on this. Again, another book you’ve written with us called Lead is where you’re really writing more to the pastor and the church leader, and you are addressing, among other things, this exact issue, the tendency of leaders and churches to, at times, abuse people, abuse their authority, misuse their authority. And so, again, I think it’s such a important balance to maintain, that both of those things needs to be true. And again, we have a whole other conversation about your book Lead and the principles for leaders and how they should lead their churches well.

Paul Tripp
Let me say one thing about that, Matt. I can’t think of a more holy and high call calling than to be named as one of God’s ambassadors. That’s what church leaders are named as. What is an ambassador? An ambassador is a visible representation of the king that sent him. That means I must represent his message. I must represent his methods. I must represent his character. I’m the tone of his voice. I’m the look on his face. I’m the touch of his hand. And every leader of every church must be weak-kneed as he realizes the holiness of his calling and horrible it would be if something I did to somebody would make them harden their heart against the love of the Lord. That’s a big deal. And so I just want to say, as we talk about the church, leaders, be overwhelmed with your responsibility. Humbly confess that you’re not able to represent God on your own. Cry out for his grace, that you would represent him well. This is an important thing because you have a big influence on whether people are excited about the church and feel safe in the church of Jesus Christ.

Matt Tully
That’s such a good word for pastors and leaders in very different positions in the church. Paul, as something we’ve done before in previous interviews, I wonder if you could just close us today by praying for the person listening right now who is struggling for one of the reasons we mentioned or maybe a different reason altogether. They’re struggling with the idea of going to church. It just isn’t as easy as maybe they wish it was. Would you close us by saying a prayer for that person?

Paul Tripp
Lord, how thankful we are in this moment that you, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the creator and ruler of this world. Because of what Jesus has done, you are now hearing our words. You listen to our prayers. Your eyes are on us. Lord, we confess that the church hasn’t always been what you meant it to be. We pray that you would cleanse and purify your church, that you would make it what it’s meant to be, that you would impress on the hearts of leaders the holiness of representing you. You said that a bruised reed you wouldn’t break, a smoking flax you wouldn’t quench, that you would never trample over the broken hearted, and you would never mock people who are weak in faith. We pray that that's how your church would be. And we pray for people who have been hurt, who do doubt, who are carrying the heavy cares of life, that you would meet them by your grace and that you would give them hope and courage to participate in what is one of your most beautiful gifts, the church. That there they would remember their identity, that there they would grow in faith and hope and courage. That there they would be surrounded by love, and that there they would love others. That there they would be able to deal with the hard things of life in light of your presence and your promises. And I thank you that you’ll hear us. And we thank you for the gift of Jesus. And we thank you for the gift of your church. In Jesus’s name, amen.

Matt Tully
Amen. Thank you, Paul, for taking the time today.

Paul Tripp
You’re welcome. Thanks, Matt. It’s been good to be with you.

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