[Kuiper]

>>while this meeting can be gotten out of, it requires some sort of excuse, and an individual's consistent absence is considered a mild crisis for the group.

>any religious group that considers your occasional absence as a crisis is a group i'd stay away from.

Indeed, which is probably why the poster you're responding to specifically made the point about consistent absence (not occasional absence) and it being a mild crisis.

Most religious communities I've observed are also quite lax about what qualifies as an excuse. For example, any sort of travel (be it vacation, visiting family, going on a business trip, or traveling with the team for little Jimmy's soccer tournament), seems to be accepted as valid excuse. So are other institutional commitments, provided that they don't become regular/recurring reasons for missing religious attendance. "I overslept" or "I was tired after staying up late Saturday night" or "I decided that there were other activities I'd prefer to spend my Sunday doing" are not.

Furthermore, having your absence declared to be a "mild crisis" for the group is not necessarily a bad thing: certain excuses like being sick (or caring for a sick family member) are likely to draw the support of the group; if you're in a small religious community where people hold each other accountable for religious attendance, there's a decent chance that if members of your church know that you missed Sunday service due to being ill or pregnant or recovering from surgery (or caring for a family member who is any of the above), some of them will stop by later in the afternoon (or later in the week) to drop off a home-cooked meal or some other sort of care package.

(I understand that some people might prefer to deal with their health situation in private without having a community of people who take it upon themselves to offer support, and I've always been one to appreciate the benefits of solitude and privacy, but in contemporary society I feel like we may have veered too far in the direction of isolation and atomization.)

>if anything, for things like scouting and sports groups, or any kind of group where you learn something together it is more important that members attend regularly.

Many religious practices involve a service that involves teaching (for example, a "sermon" that is delivered to a congregation by a preacher), so for many people, religious attendance falls into the category of "group where you learn something together." Indeed, I've observed it's common for many churches to have weekly sermons that are part of a "series," offering a sort of week-to-week continuity as they provide a deep exploration of a single topic over the course of a month, so if you miss a single service you might perhaps be inclined to ask a friend what was covered in the sermon later in the week when you meet them at something like a Wednesday Bible study or a Tuesday morning prayer group.

[em-bee]

> * "I overslept" or "I was tired after staying up late Saturday night" or "I decided that there were other activities I'd prefer to spend my Sunday doing" are not.*

that's when i'd start getting worried. anything that puts pressure on the individual is not healthy. the initiative always needs to come from the individual, not from the community.

if someone wants to attend but it is somehow difficult (transportation, time, staying up late the night before (for whatever reason)) then the community may help find a solution, but it may not pressure the individual into changing.

the responsibility of a religious community is to support its members, not the other way around. if your community is not doing that, i'd look for one that does.

i may got hung up on the term "crisis for the group". for me crisis means that the person or group has a problem within itself.

an individual may have a crisis that prevents that person from attending. then it's up to the group to help and resolve that crisis. but the group should not have a crisis all by itself just because that person is missing. (unless maybe the missing person has the keys to the meetingplace, sure that's a crisis for the group, but mere non-attendance isn't)

even prolonged absence should not lead to a crisis. at best someone tries to check on them once and see if they are fine and find out the reason for non-attendance. if it's something the group can fix, they should look into that, but if it's that persons choice, they should leave them alone.