Do Intelligent People Attend Church?

What a question to ask!  100 years ago in the UK, there was the idea that intelligent people did not believe the Christian faith.   Twentieth century people were much too well read and educated, too clever and intelligent, to be interested in an old religion.  They had no concern about what could not be seen or proven in a laboratory.  So, the argument went, intelligent people were just not religious.  The fact that this does not concur with the evidence, does not seem to bother those who are blinded by their own prejudice.

But today, despite the fact that many ministers possess several university degrees, there is an inability on their part to give their people anything that even smells of something adequate.  A friend of mine, in a conversation we had many years ago, said that even though many of our colleagues had two or more university degrees (including degrees in theology), he could not have the theological discussion that he and I could have. 

The feeling seems to be that secular education is depriving ministers of the wherewithal to produce sermons of excellence upon which to feed their people.  It used to be said that men who started off as good preachers were killed by degrees.  There just might be more than a grain of truth in this viewpoint.  A good education is essential to a serious ministry, but so often this is made a substitute for devotion to Christ and His Gospel. 

Just as consumers will not go back to an eating establishment that does not deliver good meals of appropriate standard, so Christian, or non-Christian, people are under no obligation to insult their intelligence by attending churches that cannot feed them.  Would you return for another meal in a poor restaurant?  Then don’t expect any intelligent person to attend a church where the ministry is woeful, to put it mildly.  And church officers must desist from their blind loyalty to a church that is starving them of ‘food convenient’ for their souls.  Too many are prepared to ‘hang in there’ for the sake of tradition, or worse, pride and the fear of losing face.