7 Outdated Church Traditions that Need to Go

It used to be that going to church meant dressing in your best clothes. When I was growing up, we didn’t just wear clothes; our clothes had categories. We had school clothes, play clothes, and even church clothes. While you might get away with playing outside in school clothes, you better not play in church clothes. May the Lord help you if you fall and put a hole in your Sunday church clothes.

Today, times have changed. Very few people dress up to go to church anymore, at least in most denominations. Some still dress to the nines in their Sunday best, but that is becoming less common. I remember being in church one Sunday and having one pastor wear a suit. I found it funny that I asked him why he was so dressed up. Where are you going today? It turns out he was officiating a wedding later that day. I would have never asked that question years ago, yet today we do.

I see people come to church in shorts, sandals, and ripped jeans, and I have even seen them on the platform participating in the service. The biggest violators of all (from the Pentecostal or holiness church point of view) are the women who come to church with no stockings on. They would have been run off the platform in years past. Things are different today, and how we dress when attending church has evolved. So women, if you forget your stockings and men, you forget your tie, fear not; the church doors are still open to you.

Verdict: Do I miss going to church in a suit and tie? Not really. I am okay with this tradition going by the wayside. However, I must admit that shorts on the platform take some adjustment.  I guess I still have some of that upbringing left in me.

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Sunday evening services used to be the norm. When I look at the churches I attended, they would have one or two morning services and then an evening service around 6:30 or 7. We used to go to church in Staten Island while we lived in Brooklyn. A typical Sunday would have us at Sunday school at 9 am, then service at 11 am. We would then drive home to Brooklyn, which took about forty-five minutes. While home, we would eat dinner, and then around 5:30, we would head back to Staten Island for the evening service. The service would end around 8 pm, and we would get home around 9 pm. One church we attended had a 7:30 service that did not finish until 9:30.

Today, Sunday evening services are a thing of the past. The last four churches I have been part of don’t have them, and when I speak to my friends, very few do today. They have become an outlier.

Verdict: I don’t miss Sunday evening services, so I am not pushing for them to return. Those services made Sundays extremely long, and come Monday morning, no wonder all the church people were so exhausted.

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Where have all the church announcements gone? There used to be a whole announcement section as part of the service. This was usually done in conjunction with welcoming the first-time guests to the service. We often would have them stand up or raise their hands to be acknowledged. Between hearing about the women’s ministry dinner, the church picnic, the pastor’s birthday celebration, all the ministries that need volunteers, the names of those who were sick or shut in, and whatever other announcements the pastor made after announcements, this usually took about 10-15 minutes to finish. Thankfully, announcements have been limited to what is most important, and some churches scroll them before the service begins. Either that or they will email you with what is going on.

Verdict: I do like church announcements, but I want them to be short, sweet, and to the point. Three minutes is fine, but 15 minutes is way too long.

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It used to be when you walked into the church, a greeter or usher would welcome you (hopefully with a smile), and they would hand you a bulletin. In that bulletin, there might be information on the church, maybe a place for sermon notes, and possibly lyrics to a hymn they would sing that day. In one church I attended, they would put the sister churches on the bulletin and the times for everything happening for that week in the church. When I think about them, these were very useful items to hand out as you entered the building.

Verdict: A part of me misses the bulletin, but I also recognize that with technological advancements, you can get the same information to people, and save some money and a few trees in the process.

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There was a time when you couldn’t eat anything in the sanctuary. You would not dare bring food into the sanctuary, not even a piece of candy, and don’t be caught chewing gum in the sanctuary. If this is foreign to you, you grew up in a different church. You couldn’t even drink water in the sanctuary. The only person who could drink water was the person speaking because they were given a glass of water with a napkin over it to keep the dust out (this was before the age of bottled water). Today, I have seen people eating bagels, drinking coffee, and walking into service with all kinds of refreshments like they are going to the movies. I even went to one church, and they had snacks outside that they gave the people as they went into the service. I guess a bag of popcorn, soda, and some candy will help you enjoy the service more. I know my great-grandmother and the old saints are rolling over in their graves.

Verdict: I am not a fan of food in the sanctuary. I will accept a bottle of water, but beyond that, it is difficult for me to see people eating in the sanctuary. Especially while the service is going on.

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There was a time when the pastors sat on the pulpit. Depending on what church you went to, the senior pastor’s chair, or the apostle, bishop, or archbishop, depending on what title they had, their chairs were a little bigger and sat a little higher than the others. This created an obvious line of delineation regarding who the head of the house was. Today, fewer pastors are seated on the platform. They will sit in the congregation and come up when they need to do something or preach.

Verdict: I like this one because it makes the pastor part of the congregation and not one who sits above everyone else.

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When was the last time you saw an offering basket being passed? How we collect an offering today is simpler than how we used to do it. One church I attended was rather large, so they received a large amount of money when they collected the offering. They had armed security to escort the ushers from the sanctuary to the church offices. Aside from security, passing the baskets takes time. I visited one church, and the offering took 45 minutes to collect. Some churches can have entire services during this period. They took three different offerings, and for each one, the people marched to the front to put their offerings in the basket. The service flowed nicely until this point; everything felt like it had bogged down. Today, as you know, we give online, by text, and even QR codes and rarely offer baskets passed anymore.

Verdict: I am a fan of this. It is safer and keeps the service’s flow moving.

These are my outdated church traditions, but let me know if you have any that you would want to share from your experience. I have one thing to add. I wonder what things we are doing now will be considered outdated in 20 or 30 years. I guess I will have my daughter write that article in twenty years.

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