But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:14-15, ESV)
Chapter Three - The Lure
Every church has its ‘attractions’ and of course, its ‘distractions’, those things that some find unpalatable. Of late, most church goers are persuaded by worship style rather than doctrine. There is an interesting phenomenon that seems to be unique to Christianity, I call it “Early Church Indoctrination.” When a child is raised around a church, they become intimately familiar with the protocols and procedures of that church’s Sunday morning service. This is not to say they understand the meanings or reasons behind the church’s traditions or why things are done in a specific way, they just know through observation how everything is done. This perceived set of protocols become, in their minds, the standard on how a church service should be run. Whenever something is done that is ‘outside’ their ‘standard’, they either complain or refuse participation. When they get older, they look for churches whose Sunday morning service can get as close as possible to their ’standard’. They enjoy the comfort of routine. This is one of the reasons why many choose mainline denominations, as they offer stability and rarely change the Sunday morning service. As a result, the primary ‘attraction’ to these churches is family. Once born in a denomination, they and any future family stay affiliated. The growth of most of these churches is not from outreach or evangelism, it is through marriage and expansion of existing families. Most of these denominations had significant growth between 1950 and 1970, and many churches were built and congregations formed, making them more accessible.
The concept of ‘comfort’ in a church typically has three components. The first being as discussed above, familiarity, being well indoctrinated in the church’s procedure, no thinking is required as everything has been committed to memory, there will be no surprises. The second is environment, big church-small church, loud music-not loud music, temperature good-temperature not good, music acceptable-music completely unacceptable, sermons reasonable (length, content, presentation)-sermons unreasonable, etc. The third is alignment of theology, does the church profess what they believe to be true (essentially those things they were taught when they were a child). This also includes minor issues such as using their preferred Bible version and how communion (also known as the Eucharist) is served. Since these three components are largely based on past preferences and upbringing, everyone has a unique perspective.
The older, well-established denominations and churches typically have longer theological history or are affiliated with a long-dead theologian and have embraced some version of their theology. Having a deep theological history adds to the comfort of church attendees as this history gives them a vote of confidence. They may be thinking that this older theology has weathered the storm of scrutiny and criticism, that some form of higher reasoning has been applied and the theology has survived. While the concept is somewhat sound, there remains a gap between the theology and any criticism. In other words, a person needs to be motivated and diligent to do the appropriate study of the Bible and review any research published offering any opposition of the theology.