There are two ways of stopping a clock: you can smash it or you
can let it run down; and there are two ways of doing away with churches: you can destroy
them or you can ignore them.
In communist countries churches are being destroyed, but in our country, with all our
liberties, churches are being ignored. The facts are plain, America is very largely an
unchurched nation with less than half of our people ever darkening the doors of our
churches. Not only are we facing an economic recession in our country, I believe we are
also facing a spiritual recession. Americans are not attending church.
The reasons are numerous. No doubt a major contributing factor to this dilemma would be
our lifestyle. We no longer live leisurely in this country. We live at a pace that demands
the surrender of everything that stands in the way of immediacy. We live only for the
moment and strive to live that with lots of "gusto." The advertisers have told
us that "we only go around once," therefore, the implication is to get what you
can while you can in any way you can.
I can sum up the results of this in one word-BARBARIANISM. The dictionary defines a
barbarian as, "an insensitive or coarse person; a savage, cruel person." We are
fast becoming a nation of barbarians. We are not immune because we might live out in the
country instead of the city. This evidence of barbarianism is showing up every-where. The
evidence, as far as I'm concerned, is crime and human depreciation.
There is a remedy to all this, but one that few will ever take seriously. That remedy is
to get back to basics. Those things that helped make our country great. The real backbone
of this is genuine spirituality. The outward evidence of this return to basics will
include a return to church.
Church attendance is not the casual thing that many suppose it to be. It is important as
one of the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life.
The Bible is plain in this regard, "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves
together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye
see the day approaching." (Hebrews 10:25)
Rev. James L. Snyder Ministries