Why Do You Attend Church Services?
This poll is simple. I want to see what reasons people have for attending church services. There are no right or wrong answers. You can select as many answers as you wish. Eventually (after taking some research and stats courses) I’d like to do a massive survey on why people attend church in America. It could be eventually become a longitudinal study. Who knows?
Great poll, Monte! Hope it eventually gets expounded upon, also. 🙂 A couple thoughts…what does ‘Social Reasons’ entail? Is that like, to fulfill a set of cultural/social mores; or to be a part of the insider group; or to serve in a social capacity? Or something else? Also, are all of these mutually exclusive in definition? For instance, if social reasons is understood as service to others, then it could also be considered Worship (old testament paraphrase: I hate your religious worship ceremonies and rituals, go and perform justice in life; new testament: offer your lives as living sacrifices, this is your act of worship).
Good eye, Travis. I thought about this later after I posted the poll. Social reasons is a catch all term that definitely needs to be broken into more categories. It covers 1) social convention (attendance on big holidays or “that’s what people are supposed to do on Sundays”), 2) my friends go to church there, 3) the guy/girl I like goes there, 4) to cultivate deep friendships with others, typically around the common denominator of faith, 5) service to others as you pointed out. There are probably more ways it could be probed, but that’s all I can think of for now.