Is your liturgy remarkable?

A few years ago, the Pew Research Center reported that 28% of U.S. adults don’t attend church on Sunday because they don’t believe. So let’s imagine there are 1,000 Catholics in your parish boundaries who are not coming to Mass. Of those, 720 (72%) are believers who are staying away for other reasons.

What might those be? The Pew folks list three.

Your liturgy is not remarkable

The top reason given for not attending religious services was “I practice my faith in other ways.” What that means is your Sunday liturgy is not remarkable enough to draw believers away from other forms of spiritual practice. Now we all know that sometimes an answer like that can seem shallow. I heard someone say once that her spiritual practice was to read the Sunday New York Times in bed while eating a bagel. We may want to scoff at that. But the reality is that whatever is happening at her parish is not remarkable enough to make her want to get out of bed.

Your liturgy is not likeable

The second reason given for lack of attendance had to do with things folks don’t like about liturgy at their parish. Sometimes it’s just a general feeling of not liking what happens. Other respondents were more specific, saying they didn’t like the preaching or they didn’t feel welcome. While it’s true that we can’t please everyone, we can work at constantly improving everything we do in the liturgy. Catholics have a reputation for bad preaching and for being a little chilly toward strangers. You may think that’s not true in your parish, and you may be right. But if you have space in your pews on Sunday, maybe it’s time to take another look at what might be causing people to stay away.

Your liturgy isn’t convenient

People also said they didn’t have time to go to church. Or they have difficulty getting there because of health issues. Or there is no church close by. These issues are harder to solve, but they’re not impossible. If the parish leadership made it a goal to help people get to church who have trouble getting there, they would probably be able to come up with some solutions.

It is easy for us to write these responses off as lame excuses and continue on as we have been. But there is a definite shift happening in the United States. We who do go to church tend to think the shift has to do with a lack of belief. But according to this study, that is true for only a minority of non-attenders. And if most of the people who don’t come to church do have some level of belief, don’t we have a responsibility to be like the shepherd who left the 99 and went out find the lost sheep?

See also these related articles:

1. Train your lectors in this one most effective skill
2. Writing invocations for the Penitential Act, Form C
3. The Penitential Act
4. How the liturgy teaches us what is most needed today
5. What the new Directory for Catechesis says about our ministry as liturgical ministers
6. Liturgical adaptations during the pandemic
7. The four dangers of weak liturgy
8. Why does good liturgy matter?
9. We will need courage for parishes of the future
10. How to critically read blog posts and magazine articles about liturgy

Image credit: Alessandro Erbetta, Unsplash