The reason is plain.

The appeal of the institutional church is too intellectual.

It reaches only that portion of the masses who stand least in need of social opportunity.
To this accusation the church, man instituted and man controlled since the beginning of the Christian Era, replies that it does all that can be done for the uplift of humanity.

That the church seems to be losing its hold on the masses of people is attributed to a general drift of degenerate humanity towards atheism and unbelief.
The people, the great world of people,--what a field for the church to work in, if it only chose! The great obstacle is that the church (leaving out the institutional church), on Sunday a vital, living force, is content to exist all the other days in the week merely as a building.
Six days and more than half six evenings in the week the churches stand empty and deserted.

Simply from the point of view of material economy this waste in church property, reduced to dollars and cents, would appear deplorable.