I don't know why it struck me today, but with my mind freer to wander than usual for a Sunday morning, I found myself thinking about summer and worship attendance. I assume that most anyone who attends worship regularly has noticed that attendance drops off in the summer. There are some obvious reasons, of course. More people take vacations in the summer. Some folks take extended vacations, and so the pool of members and others who attend any congregation is diminished. I don't have any hard data to back me up on this, but I am of the opinion that vacations, summer camps, and the like do not account for the total decline of those in worship. There is another factor, folks who "take summer off" from worship. In a pattern that somewhat mirrors schools, they take a summer vacation from church.
Now I'm not wanting to impugn these folks in any way. My interest in noting such vacations from church is not to chastise or cajole anyone. Rather I am wondering what it is about the way we do church, the way we conduct worship or education, or the way we envision ourselves that creates a church from which some folks need a break.
I written before that I don't think it's possible to have church without institutions. Practicing faith with no sort of structures usually ends up being terribly vacuous. But at the same time, religious institutions can become impersonal, and worse, they can lose focus on relationship with God and be more about the institution itself. And if doing church becomes mostly about institutional loyalty, maybe it should be no surprise that folks need a break now and then.
"My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God." Psalm 84 seems to speak of something other than institutional loyalty. And I wonder what practices of faith and worship might enliven our congregations so that when folks get back in town from a vacation or trip, they couldn't wait to get back to worship.
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