A new Barna study found that the spike in church attendance most churches expect this holiday season won’t necessarily be coming from brand new visitors.

According to Barna, 27% of regular church attenders plan to attend more services this holiday season, but only 4% of those that usually do not attend plan to come. “In past decades there was an assumption that the holidays were a time when outsiders might explore church life,” adds George Barna, Christian-pollster-extraordinare. “These days, however, churches and other religious institutions are not seen as safe or value-adding places by most outsiders. They see little reason to attend seasonal events, especially since those events often highlight their outsider status.”

Just another sign that we need to get out of the church and into the neighborhood to share our faith and reach our communities. It’s another good reason to carefully coach students in sharing their faith one-on-one , because less and less people are coming to church (or youth group) to hear it from the preacher.

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