People want the Benefits of Church without the Responsibility

I found this post about people not wanting to Join Church, but no where in the article does it state the pressure on the church to provide these services. This is the time to dig deep and be part of the body not just a visitor!!!
The Post

Joining a church doesn’t make sense for Jonathan Busarow right now. He’s a graduate student at Ohio State University who doesn’t know where he’ll live in a couple of years. He doesn’t have extra money to donate or a lot of time.
But he still wants to worship, so he regularly attends Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in German Village.

“Zion does a wonderful job of making you feel welcome and part of the church community without pressuring you to become a member,” said Busarow, 23, of Bexley.

Busarow isn’t the only one there to worship but not to join. Pastors say it’s a sign of the times: Official church membership is becoming less attractive to churchgoers.

For some, such as Busarow, it’s because they’re in a transitory period. Others don’t want to be bothered to participate more than they’d like. Many just never get around to it.

Clergy members prefer people to become church members who are accountable for contributing their time and money. Churches need predictable income, and that usually comes in the form of annual pledges and weekly donations.

Still, pastors are happy for bodies in the pews and won’t pressure people much.

People tend not to worship in the same congregation as loyally as they did in past generations, said David Roozen of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. The baby-boomer generation balked at joining institutions of any sort, and the tendency has become more pronounced among their children, he said.

Fifty years ago, adults felt a duty to their neighborhood churches.

“Now it’s, ‘I’m going to go if it fits my needs, but this is not necessarily a long-term commitment,’ ” Roozen said.

Nonmembers can participate in almost every aspect of many churches, said the Rev. Paul Ulring, pastor of the nearly 6,000-member Upper Arlington Lutheran Church. At his church, nonmembers can worship, get married, send their children to Sunday school and participate in ministries. Some donate money regularly.

They can’t vote in congregational matters, but a lot of them don’t want to anyway, he said.

“The officialdom of membership is a harder and harder thing to sell,” he said. “It’s hard to convince a younger generation that it has any value.”

At St. Brigid of Kildare Cath-olic Church in Dublin, a lot of nonmembers end up joining when they want to marry or have a baby baptized, said Monsignor Joseph Hendricks, the pastor.

Generally, in the Catholic Church, a person must belong to a parish to receive the sacraments of baptism and marriage, said Deacon Tom Berg Jr., vice chancellor of the Columbus Diocese. Catholics who are not members of a parish can receive those sacraments with the permission of the parish priest.

St. Brigid allows funerals for nonmembers, Hendricks said. He estimates that about 200 people worship regularly without joining. The church is home to 3,100 families.

“For those who don’t get around to it, you certainly don’t deny them,” he said. “You try and work with them.”

At Busarow’s church, the church directory includes a listing of “Friends of Zion.” The list is at about 50.

The Rev. Larry Kudart encourages nonmembers to join Zion, but he doesn’t push.

“I don’t press them too hard. I say, ‘We love you whether you join or not.’ ”

Source: The Columbus Dispatch