Matt Bush, FISM News
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According to a recent poll taken by Lifeway Research, Protestant pastors in the U.S. identified comfort as the idol that holds the most significant influence on their congregations.
For many people, the word “idol” conjures images of golden calves or statues erected in honor of gods and men, but most idols do not conform to these ideas. An idol can be anything a person puts before God. Many idols can be found in otherwise positive desires that take too much of a hold on a person’s life.
“It’s easy to think that those in Christian churches have chosen their God and are faithful to Him. However, pastors quickly acknowledge how divided their congregations’ allegiances can be,” Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, said. “These gods don’t have a physical shrine, but they compete for the hearts of Christians.”
Lifeway Research’s article states that anything that is a “rival object to worship” is an idol. That means that anything that a person worships or pursues at the expense of their relationship with God would be considered an idol for the purposes of the survey.
The top eight idols identified by pastors as holding the most influence on their congregations could all be considered “positive” things when pursued rightly and within reason.
Pastors are more likely to say comfort, control or security, and money are the modern-day idols with the most influence over their congregation. https://t.co/UeTUDepAtb pic.twitter.com/1cReUipYwr
— Lifeway Research (@LifewayResearch) August 9, 2022
McConnell pinpointed a commonality found in the top three idols.
“Americans’ obsession with pursuing more stuff is clearly seen within the church as well. The largest number of congregations battle the influence of first-world comforts, and churches’ second most common modern-day idol is the commitment to keeping secure the comforts they already have,” McConnell noted.
Three of the factors that were most influential in pastors’ responses were the age of the pastor, the denomination of the church, and the size of the church.
Younger pastors were far more likely to say that political power and money were major idols in their churches, while older pastors were more likely to say that “none of these” were idols in their church.
Pentecostal pastors were more likely to say that success was the most influential idol while Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian pastors did not see their congregations in the same way. More than 20 percent of non-denominational and Pentecostal pastors said that “none of these” were idols in their church, while mainline Protestant churches were far less likely to agree.
Larger churches identified social influence as one of the major influences on their congregations while smaller congregations were less likely to agree.
The Lifeway Research poll was a phone survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors of churches of different sizes across America. According to Lifeway Research, “The sample provides 95 percent confidence that the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.2 percent.”