Have you ever invited someone to church and they responded by saying, “I can’t go to church, the walls would fall down around me” or “the building would catch fire” or something to that regard? Chances are someone you know someone who has responded that way, or you may have possibly even responded that way yourself when invited to church.

There are a few different types of people who don’t attend church, and in each group there are several main reasons they don’t attend, and I will do my best to address the main groups and the main reasons for not attending. However, I will only be discussing people who believe in God and not atheist or agnostics, so lack of belief will not be one of the reasons discussed, but lack of faith while still believing in the existence of God is fair game.

The people who believe in God but don’t attend church can be broken down in to two main groups, those who are living lives that are in obvious contradiction of Biblical principles and their sins are committed openly and on full display, and those who mostly look like church people and hide their sins just as well as any regular church goer does but doesn’t see any benefits to attending church, and in both groups the level of individual faith varies wildly. Despite outward appearances, the underlying reasons for not wanting to go to church are basically the same for both groups.

I have, upon inviting people from the first group to church, often been told that if they were to attend church that the walls would fall down around them, that the church would catch fire, or that lighting would strike them dead, etc. In every single instance, the person I had invited to church knew as well as I did, that none of those scenarios were even remotely likely to happen, but that is a common go to excuse, and an excuse is all it is, designed to make it clear that they are not living like “church people” and that they have absolutely no interest in attending church. With people in the second group the excuse is usually either that they are too busy for church or that they don’t want to go to church because the people there are too judgmental and too self-righteous, and sadly the last criticism is all to often true with far too many churches.

When I was younger, if I was given any of these excuses, it was mostly the end of the conversation, but now I use it as an opening to discuss the true purpose of church, which is not a place for perfect people who have every detail of their lives to gather to pat each other on the back at their obvious success, but a place for broken and imperfect people to reach out for help, like a spiritual hospital. Lets face the truth, even the people who outwardly look as if they have it all together are just as broken and plagued with sin as the rest of us, they just hide it better, and they need Jesus just as bad as the most vile of sinners does. Without Jesus the smallest sin is just as terminal as the largest of sins because apart from Christ we are all dead in our sins and dead is dead; there are no degrees of deadness, either you are dead or you are not.

It makes precisely as much sense for people to go to church just to pretend they are perfect as it would for them to go to a hospital with an illness or injury and then pretending they are not ill or injured and for the doctors and hospital staff to go right along with it, telling them how well they are doing and how much healthier they are than the people outside of the hospital. Churches, like hospitals, are a place to go for help and not a social club. If a social group is all you are getting out of church than either you, the church, or both, are doing something terribly wrong. People who are not sick don’t need a hospital or a doctor, and those who are perfect don’t need Jesus, or the church. However, since the only perfect person to ever walk the earth was God in the flesh, despite what some people think about themselves, or at least claim to think about themselves, none of are anywhere near perfection and we all need Jesus, and all of us would benefit from attending a church that teaches the Bible, without adding or subtracting from it. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and not just some, so we all need Jesus and we all need the support structure of a church.

In both groups of people who don’t attend church, those who are obviously not living the stereotypical church life and those who could pass as “church people,” there are four main reasons they are not willing to attend church:

1. They are completely unwilling to make any changes in their lives and are not interested in socializing with people who don’t like the same sins and vices that they themselves do.

2. They like their sins and they are afraid that they will be convicted and faced with the choice of either continuing in sin but feeling bad about it or giving up their favorite sins.

3. They are afraid they have gone much too far to be forgiven.

4. They are afraid of how the church people will look at them, and/or treat them, if they start going to church.

These reasons are not mutually exclusive, and a lot of people choose not to go to church for several of these reasons. A sad fact that I feel compelled to point out as well is that those who are not church goers are not afraid of how they will be treated by the church goers for no reason and their fear of being shunned or treated poorly if they attend church is a direct result of how a great multitude of church people treat those who are not like them. If anyone has ever come to your church and you have shunned them or treated them poorly, because of how they smelled, how they looked, or for any other reason, you should be ashamed of yourself and should ask God for forgiveness and a change of heart, and if possible, you should ask for forgiveness from those you treated poorly.

When people are completely unwilling to make any type of positive change in their lives and are not interested in socializing with people who don’t live like they do there is not a lot we can do for them except to pray continually for them as only God can change their hearts, and until they have a change of heart they will never pursue God. When a person revels in sin and is completely unwilling to change and completely uninterested in God they are not capable of coming to God and he has to pursue them and change their nature before they can even consider coming to him (John 6:44). Don’t give up on people who are in this situation though, we may very well be the instruments God chooses to use to bring them to salvation.

I can’t say this is the way it is with most people in general, but most of the people I know personally who believe in God but are not interested in going to church fall into the second category, which is generally being happy with their sins and not wanting to go to church because they know they will be confronted with their sins and will be convicted and will be forced to either feel guilty for how they are living or else give up their sins and change their lives. Anyone who was raised in church or spent a lot of time around church people knows what the term “convicted” means, but since some of my audience is not from a Christian background I will explain. To be convicted, in church speak, means that the Holy Spirit touches your heart and makes you aware of your sins and your need for a savior. Until you are aware of you need for a savior you will never look for one and will never accept one.

A lot of people who are in the second category have the misguided notion that they will turn their lives around later in life, sometime before they die, but the problem is none of us are guaranteed tomorrow and we never know when we will die. One of the major problems with being in this group for too long is that it can lead to the searing of your conscience to the point where you no longer feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and eventually loose faith in God. In fact, a lot of the people I know personally who are in this group were regular church goers and stopped attending upon falling into sin of some sort and not wanting to be confronted with it, and now they are justifying all sorts of sinful behaviors they used to be disgusted by and now even doubts the very existence of God. However, I am not sure if they actually doubt the existence of God or if they are trying to convince themselves there is no God because that would mean there are no moral absolutes and they can be their own judge of what is right and what is wrong.

One person I know who is in this group continually prayed for me when I lost my faith in God after leaving the Mormon cult but then stopped attending church and stopped believing in God after being unfaithful to their spouse. A while back I convinced this person to go to a church event with me and, though they tried to hide it from me, I noticed that they were touched and were crying during the event. Despite the fact that this person has now all but come out as an atheist, I still pray continually for them.

The third group is those who firmly believe in God but don’t see any point in changing their lives because they are afraid that the poor choices they have made in their lives were just too bad, that they have gone much too far and that there is no way they could ever be forgiven for all the wrong they have done. One thing to keep in mind is that the very universe was created with just the voice of God and that it is no more difficult for God to forgive your myriad of sins than it is for him to make a blade of grass grow. If Paul, who actually killed Christians, could be forgiven of his sins that your sins are no problem for God.

When Jesus was performing his earthly ministry he wanted to make sure that people knew he had the power to forgive sins and that he could do it at will, without requiring the person to do anything first. It is all about God and not about us, just like when the spirit of death came through Egypt it looked for the blood of the lamb above the door with no consideration of who was inside the house. It is the blood of the lamb that saves us, not our deeds, and Jesus is the perfect lamb.

And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

-John 2:1-12

If you think you have gone too far to be forgiven or if you know someone who is afraid they have gone too far to be forgiven, I would highly recommend an earlier post I wrote about that subject titled “Have I gone too far to be forgiven?” It was also a podcast episode, and if you would rather listen to it instead of reading it you can find it with the same link.

The fourth reason people don’t go to church is they are, often justifiably, afraid of how they will be treated by the people who regularly attend church, and we have all heard stories of how someone was treated despicably at church by those who should have welcomed them with open arms, and a lot of us have our own stories. I highly doubt it is true, but I heard a story once that perfectly illustrates this point. There was a lady who had not been to church for years and one Sunday she decided to attend a church in her area, and after the sermon the pastor approached her and suggested that she pray and as what the proper attire for church is. The following Sunday the woman came back to the same church wearing the same dress she had worn the previous week, and the pastor approached her and asked if she had prayed to see what the proper attire for church was. In response the woman told the pastor that she asked and God said he didn’t know what the proper attire was for that church because he had never been there.

It is completely unrealistic to expect a person who walks in to a church off of the street to look and act like those who have been attending their entire lives, and if they are treated poorly for not fitting in well enough than they will feel shamed and not want to return, and even worse is when a person who has lived a sinful life goes to church they are shunned and treated like they have the plague, when instead they should be praised for making an effort to turn their lives around, and every practical effort should be made to assist them on their journey without making them wish they had not decided to come to church in the first place.

In a conversation with one of my cousins, she told me that the reason she doesn’t attend church was that it was a struggle getting the children ready to go, and once they were there the people treated them like outsiders and they didn’t get anything out of it. My cousin said that it wasn’t worth fighting the children to get them to go to church just to feel like they were trying to force themselves into a place they don’t belong, like a hobo at a fine restaurant. The best I could tell my cousin was that not all churches are that way and that if she gives it a little effort she while find one where her and her family belong, but for her that bridge has already been burned and she is not willing to even make an effort.

Another reason people are often leery of going to church is they don’t want every aspect of their lives controlled by a church, and a lot of churches exercise a great deal of unrighteousness dominion over the members of their congregations, from what to wear to their finances and ever other aspect of their lives, and they go out of their way to make sure that anyone who does not follow the rules is “going to hell in a hand basket.”

If you have had bad experiences with church I implore you to try again, just make sure it is a church that teaches the Bible and not the opinions of the leaders, and if you are a church person and notice you rarely have new people attend, and when they do they don’t come back, I would I implore you to examine your behavior and pray about what changes you can make to better reach those in need.