Last weekend at (after) Mass, we heard the annual financial report for our church. The church, like a lot of people and organizations, is struggling to make ends meet these days. One of the charts presented during the presentation indicated that the church has something more than 500 members and during the last year, only a little over 300 contributed any money to the church. That means that at least 200 didn’t contribute anything — not even a dollar. Not only did they not contribute, I’m pretty sure they never attended, certainly not regularly.
I don’t know that that makes our church unique in any way — it very well may be typical. People become members of a church for various reasons. Many people consider the church just one more place where they can go to have certain social, political and even physical needs met.
In nineteenth-century China (and other parts of Asia) there was a name that was used for people who attended church because they were hungry for physical sustenance. It was known that Christian missionaries could provide food — primarily rice. So, people converted, were baptized and attended churches that had been started by the missionaries. They remained active members as long as their physical needs were met. But once their prospects improved through employment or help from family members, they drifted away from the church. Christian missionaries began calling them “rice Christians.”
Of course these “rice Christians” had missed the whole point of going to church, but maybe we actually have rice Christians as “members” of our church. These people chose to join the church and become members for some reason — maybe their “reason” is no longer valid, maybe the church no longer can fill their “needs.” People tend to look for a church that has the “right” kind of worship, the “right” pastor or the “right” kind of people, that provides the “right” activities for their kids, does the “right” thing with financial contributions, etc. A lot of people seem to be looking something that will satisfy a particular need or sustain them physically. The church offers something that will sustain them spiritually — kind of like “soul food.”
I’m not sure why I thought about this right now, except maybe to prove that I do pay attention in church, at least most of the time. But looking around at the attendance at our church this past weekend as compared to say, Easter and Christmas…. maybe the “rice Christians” didn’t fade away in the nineteenth century.
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