Faster Unto Thee

The Empty Churches of Norway

I had an interesting conversation with a friend who recently returned from a motorcycle tour in Norway.  He had observed during his travels in Norway that the state Lutheran churches were mostly empty of worshipers, but that many of the buildings were being restored by the government.  Considering that there are quite a few Lutheran church buildings in Norway, that is a lot of work benefiting very few worshipers.

My traveling friend asked one of his riding companions why the churches were so empty.  The local man made several points: (1) It is very important to us that our children be baptized in the Lutheran church; (2) then they must be catechized; (3) after that, now that one knows right from wrong, there is no need to go to church every week and listen to someone yell at you.

If the statistics on Wikipedia and the official Church of Norway websites are accurate, then this Norwegian man represents his country well.  Approximately 83% of Norwegians belong to the state church, but only 3% attend a religious service or other church meeting more than once a month.  About 76% of babies are baptized, but only 45% have their marriage ceremony conducted through the state church.  But while many do not get married in the church, most do have their funerals in the church: 93.4%.  Also significant is that 47% of the of the state church membership do not even consider themselves Christian!  Obviously, state church membership in Norway, for most of the members, has more to do with heritage and Norwegian identity than with professing Christ.  Christian identity has been separated from obedience to scriptural commands to gather for worship and grow spiritually through community.  In other words, most members of the Church of Norway are not interested in true, biblical Christianity.

Then our conversation turned to our own churches here in the U.S., particularly the congregations we are intimately familiar with.  We discussed attendees to services who were content to attend nearly every worship service or Bible study without hearing a word that was said - due to being hard of hearing.  Such persons could, however, hear the services well if they availed themselves of the church's excellent, wireless hearing assistance equipment, but for some reason they reject it.  Other folks, in many of our churches, come regularly but their body language during worship and their lack of spiritual fruit indicate that they do not really engage in worship during the services; they are spiritually passive.  Both of these groups seem to think that mere physical presence in a worship service constitutes acceptable worship of God.

What is worse, the AWOL Norwegian church members on Sunday morning, or those who are merely physically present for services in my part of the globe?  Absence from services prevents the first group from worshiping publicly, but physical presence does not guarantee worship in the second group.  The first group reflects non-worshipful hearts through their absence, the second group expresses non-worshipful hearts through their lack of spiritual engagement during services.  But the two group have one more thing in common: the judgment of God who rightly deserves and demands our worship.

Take Me Home

I just returned from a trip to Sutton, West Virginia on conference business where the committee I am on met with several West Virginia pastors in our denomination.

West Virginia, even when viewed from only the interstate, is a beautiful state.  The landscape is breathtaking to a Hoosier like me, because in central Indiana where I live there are no mountains and hardly any hills at all.  One resident joked that if West Virginia were flattened out that Texas would no longer be the largest state in the Union. 

I found the people of West Virginia to have great wit and easy to engage in conversation.  And the believers we met were devoted to Christ and their ministries.  Most of our pastors in West Virginia are bi-vocational, meaning they work a secular job while pastoring a church.  Their dedication to the Lord amidst a difficult life is admirable.  I could not help but reflect on how difficult it would be for me to uproot and move to serve a church in West Virginia and find sufficient secular work to support my family.  Apart from God's provision, I don't see how I could do it.  But God has raised up leaders from within West Virginia and provided them with jobs that make it possible to pastor small, rural churches that cannot pay a pastor much at all.  And what is more, the pastors of these small churches seem to harbor no resentment that they cannot do ministry full-time.

All this reminds me of the great priviledge that I have in serving my congregagation full-time and how I must not squander the time God has given me.  Thank God for how he uses the lives of others to increase appreciation of our own.