Bigger Churches. Fewer Christians. Who's to Blame?

Every time conservatives lose an election, somebody reaches for the same explanation: "The church didn't show up."

But is that really what happened?

Before we blame another election on empty voting booths, maybe we should ask what's happening in our occupied pews.

Are we making disciples, or simply building attendance?

Are we teaching people to live out their faith, think critically, and take responsibility for their communities? Or have we taught them that Christianity means showing up, giving money, and letting the pastor do the ministry?

Let me make a distinction here. Questioning whether Christians stayed home on election day is one thing. Questioning whether we are doing our job making disciples is another. We shouldn't use one as an excuse to avoid looking at the other.

Before we start blaming the church for losing elections, let's look at history. Every one of the last ten presidents saw their party lose House seats in at least one midterm election. Reagan lost 26 in 1982. Clinton lost 54 in 1994. Obama lost 63 in 2010. Trump lost 41 in 2018. And as of November 5, if every remaining House race finishes with the current leader winning, Republicans would lose approximately 46 seats in Trump's second midterm. That number could still change as ballots are counted.

Republicans and Democrats have both taken a beating while their guy occupied the White House. So when conservatives lose, why is "the church didn't vote" the go-to explanation? If we're going to point fingers, we should have more than an assumption about who stayed home.

Whenever a candidate loses, there is always some type of blame game that gets played. Whether it's the top of the ticket, the church, or the current president, we are never short of excuses and people to blame. But is that really the problem?

At the time of this writing, on November 5, Republican candidate Pricella Tiegen is trailing Democrat Jeff Livingston in Colorado Springs' House District 15 race by 442 votes. Livingston has 18,688 votes, while Tiegen has 18,246. Two days after the election, counting continues, and those numbers could still change.

The interesting part about this race is that both candidates currently have fewer votes than their respective parties received in 2024. But the size of that difference is very different for each party.

In 2024, Scott Bottoms received 26,519 votes, while Livingston received 19,215. That puts Tiegen's current total 8,273 votes below Bottoms' 2024 total, while Livingston is just 527 votes below his own previous total. Both are lower, but the Republican drop is considerably larger—and the counting isn't finished yet.

So why do I point this out?

Many conservative talking heads and Christian leaders want to point to the church as the main culprit when conservatives lose the midterms. But is that really the case?

These totals show a much larger Republican decline so far. But they don't tell us how many churchgoing voters participated, or why others may have stayed home.

Now, a presidential election and a midterm are different elections. Lower totals alone don't tell us who stayed home, what they believe, or why they didn't vote. That includes Christians. If we are going to claim that the church cost somebody an election, where is the evidence that shows it?

Where was the church?

That's what we keep hearing from conservative commentators and Christian leaders who blame the loss on turnout. They want us to believe that Christians simply didn't show up.

I'm not buying that explanation without evidence. And before we assume the same number of Christians are out there waiting to be mobilized, shouldn't we ask whether those numbers have changed?

In the year 2000, approximately 81% to 82% of America called themselves Christians. Today, just over 60% of America claims to be Christian. Those figures include people across denominations, including those that openly endorse gay marriage, transgender rights, and abortion. Hardly traditional conservative values in my eyes.

So how many people are actually living out the faith they claim? A survey alone can't answer that. But with that kind of decline in Christian identification over the past quarter of a century, we need to start asking a serious question. What is really going on?

And let's be honest about what we are measuring. Checking "Christian" on a survey doesn't tell us whether somebody follows the teachings of Jesus. Neither does checking "Republican" on a voter registration.

Is the church really not showing up to vote, or is the church just not really what we think it is?

On Sundays all over the nation, the chairs and the pews of churches are filled with people attending services. Offering plates are filled with dollars, and some churches are expanding their buildings and budgets while we are seeing a decline in the number of people who claim to be Christian.

One congregation getting bigger doesn't necessarily mean more people are becoming Christians. Some of that growth may be people moving from one church to another. That may fill a building, but we still need to ask whether we are reaching anybody who wasn't already a believer.

On a personal note, I watched a worship leader leave one church here in Colorado Springs to become the worship leader at another. Both were larger churches by church standards. Now, I'm not saying there was anything wrong with that move. But it made me think about how we measure growth.

One church gained a worship leader. Another church lost one. But did that move mean another person had become a Christian? Did the body of Christ grow, or did somebody simply change where they served?

That move alone doesn't tell me whether either church was reaching new believers. But it illustrates why gaining somebody who already follows Christ is different from reaching somebody who doesn't.

The same question applies when people move between congregations. One pastor may announce that attendance is growing, while another pastor across town is looking at empty chairs. If we only count the people coming through our own doors, we can miss what is happening to the church as a whole.

There may be good reasons for people to change churches. But moving Christians from one building to another doesn't, by itself, mean we are making more disciples. We need to be honest enough to ask how much of our growth comes from reaching people, and how much comes from receiving people another church already reached.

The last time I attended a church service, there were about 1,000 people in the room. When the pastor gave the altar call, maybe three people raised their hands to receive Christ. That's roughly three-tenths of one percent of the people sitting there.

Now, I'm not complaining. Seeing even one person accept Christ is amazing. And I understand that many of the people in that room were already believers. One altar call doesn't tell us everything about a church's ministry.

But it made me wonder. What could happen if those 1,000 people saw making disciples as their responsibility too? What if each of us spent time with somebody who didn't know Christ, answered their questions, shared our faith, and helped them learn to follow Him?

What could happen if we stopped relying on one preacher to reach everybody and started taking seriously what Jesus told all of us to do?

At what point do we do a real assessment of what is really happening in our nation?

At what point do we take a step back and say, "What we are doing isn't working?"

Is sitting in the church service and listening to the preacher really propelling us in the right direction? Or are some pastors in the West just padding their pockets and growing their number of followers?

Have the preachers of today traded their message for the money? Or is their message just falling on people who have become so desensitized that they have forgotten the command Jesus gave us: Go make disciples?

I know there are pastors who serve faithfully, give sacrificially, and spend their lives helping people follow Christ. This isn't an accusation against every pastor. But faithful pastors shouldn't have to be afraid of asking whether the way we measure success needs to change.

For a quarter of a century, American Christianity has declined substantially as a share of the population, and I can't help but ask the hard question. Is what we are doing really working?

Did the church really not show up for the midterms, or is the church as we know it just not there anymore?

Did Christians decide that they didn't want to vote this go-round, or are there fewer Christians than we have allowed ourselves to acknowledge?

And that question starts with me. Who am I discipling? Who am I helping grow in their faith? Am I living out what I believe, or have I handed that responsibility to the man behind the pulpit?

I can't ask pastors to take responsibility for making disciples while refusing to take any responsibility myself.

Before we blame the church for what happened at the ballot box, we need to examine what we are doing beyond Sunday morning.

Our churches may be getting bigger. But are we making disciples?