Throughout the past several decades...
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Throughout the past several decades the Gallup Poll has been getting amazingly consistent responses to one particular question: "In the last week, did you attend a worship service?" And year after year, right around 40% of the people say that they had been in worship. But recently some have begun to question that statistic. For when people look around on Sunday morning, many congregations do not have even 40% of their own members in worship. And not all people in a community even belong to a church. So in 1993 a group of researchers selected a particular county in Ohio, which they believed to be fairly typical. And on a Sunday morning those researchers spread out across the county and went to church and counted the actual number of people inside. And when they tabulated the results, the found that only about 20% of the people were in church. What that suggests is that over the years, many people have been lying to the Gallup Poll. Since many people still think that going to church is something that they ought to do, they say that they have been in church, even when that is not the case. There is often a difference between what we say and what we do. But the passage warns that Jesus is coming in judgment. And at that time we will be revealed for what we truly are. -- Bowen
