To your concluding point, while I don't attend an evangelical church, I imagine there's a version of a problem I see in Episcopal churches: clergy having lost confidence in the efficacy of the Christian message. I know it is easy for clergy to rely on a handful of other factors to draw people to church and to keep them there: quality of music, availability of children's programming, charismatic personality of the leader, ability to make friends, etc. And it isn't that those things are unimportant, but, to misuse Paul a little, we really should count all these things as rubbish when compared with the actual substance of the gospel, offered in word and sacrament. Every Sunday, my family and I go to church, and without fail, I am desperately hoping to hear God speak to me, to have a meeting with God from which I will leave changed. I have rarely gotten the sense that the people in charge thought this was the job of the Christian minister. It feels to me like being invited to a banquet where they forget to serve the main course.
The idea is a bit mind blowing, but not surprising. I wonder if there is more. Was it just too hard to find another church? Did they go but no one said hello? Did they ask for community and no one listened? Did they go and the service wasn’t their old church? Or did they just not get out of bed to head to church on that first Sunday and it became a habit? And the question back to myself, how can I help them? Thanks for a great and thoughtful piece. I will be chewing on this.
I am curious how much of this dechurching is across the board socioeconomicly? Is this phenomenon as true among the lower class? Several of the people that I have served that have dechurched went from lower class to upermiddle class through marriage and immigration. They are very honest that they feel safe and happy now more so than before and don’t feel the need for church or even Jesus.
That’s really fascinating and compelling anecdotally. Could pose it back to the church: is the reason they feel safe because the preaching they experienced was mostly felt-needs style content?
Definitely. The church culture they have grown up in was definitely a felt-needs style faith. It is one of the dominate traits of the Pentecostal churches in my country and something I am trying to work on.
"The things that we are chasing are probably less valuable than true community, especially the community of believers, but how to show that to someone who has never known true community?" Jon Cutchins (in replies)
For almost all of my Christian experience treating salvation as a line in an accountant's book has been predominant. But salvation as community has often just been about what isn't permitted in your congregation, but what they do anyway. So, on one hand, it's all the sins that get wiped out in the cross, and all the sins to avoid in church membership. I don't like needing to have two separate lives, and the church I go to now doesn't seem to require it. But, for emotional safety and security, I have had to keep both a Church face and a home face. When the strain of keeping a Church face becomes too great, I seek relief in solitude and being away. But having to treat the "community" as a game that must be played, takes the soul out of it.
Yes the Church is not a "social club" but on the other hand it must be, and if its society comes only at the cost of losing the self, then it has become no different from (to, or than) the Elks or Knights of Columbus. When the Church embodies the world more than it does Christ, when its focus is on cleaning the outside of the vessel by the list of correct things we say and do, then association is more like caustic soda than table salt.
The ease with which the political has taken over many church bodies is a sign of this focus on the outward appearance. The culture war increases this disparity when certain groups are, by fiat, not welcome in church. So the church becomes a locus of alienation not family. Salvation as the children of God in community, brothers and sisters, fades into the distance.
I'm not arguing that churches as institutions must be perfect, that is asking more than any group can provide, but the Christian Welcome must keep the walls to the outside world open, even to those who don't qualify as Christians, maybe especially to those.
Certainly a dependable liturgy cuts down the cost of engaging a new community, but going to a church that has become a showcase leaves attendance up to one's approval of a style and not the intended function of adoption into family. Christianity is a participative exercise, and if the church does all the participating for you, it is as easy to leave as to stay. And it is likely you won't be missed. If the required participation is odious you will not be tempted to engage. If there is no loose space for you to settle in, you will not settle. Is it any wonder that passers by are not staying? If you have to be an insider to stay, the paradox of not being an insider will never resolve to membership or continued attendance. This might just be the uncomfortable rhetoric of a pathological outsider, but when a church decides that Jesus must be the door, and not some artificial cultural norm, then people will come in and stay.
It appears, Joe, your concern is that the USA is moving toward the European model of culture where the church plays only a peripheral role for a few aging believers within the monuments of past fervor, and that concern is statistically well grounded. But it is also fertile ground for an appreciation of the truth and grounding in facticity in a vigorously changing society, in a generation so swept up into its technological transformations that it can't see solid ground anywhere. The people who are supposed to be "saved" appear to be as lost as those who flout their evangelism. They have become so worldly in their religion, no outsider can distinguish between them and the rowdy neighbors they criticize. Reasoning and supposed evidence have lost all connection to the real world around them. Most can't tell that the opinions expressed have no ground in reality and should be rejected.
People stop going to church because the emotional cost of attendance becomes too high.
“But it is also fertile ground for an appreciation of the truth and grounding in facticity in a vigorously changing society, in a generation so swept up into its technological transformations that it can't see solid ground anywhere.” 🎯🎯🎯 so 💯 with you 👏👏👏
The significance of 'I moved' as the reason for declining church attendance is that they didn't find a new church when they moved. They felt that what had been motivating them to go to the old church wasn't present, or wasn't worth hunting for, in their new home.
First, I would say that finding a new church, bonding with new people, exploring the people and place, is hard no matter what you are like or the church is like. Two big cultural factors that make this harder, that I don't think that we can do anything about, are increasing cultural diversity and an increasingly mobile, I might say rootless, population. We are told that we are bad people if diversity makes us anxious, but I would point out that anything that increases uncertainty increases anxiety. Because of the level of diversity you simply do not know who or what you will find when you go into a new church. There is no truth in advertising. I don't know of any denomination that makes much of a guarantee of what you will find, though in this case a shared liturgy seems like it can go some way against anxiety.
But we shouldn't miss the elephant in the room, the sheer pace of moving. Forming bonds takes time and it takes effort. Someone who only expects to be in the community a short time might rationally conclude that the costs outweigh the benefits. The things that we are chasing are probably less valuable than true community, especially the community of believers, but how to show that to someone who has never known true community?
The insight that people leave churches because they move casts a new light on the shallow spectacle that our churches present. A church looking to feed generations of a family would make much different choices and as bad as the choice of spectacle is, it has some basis in the facts of our society. Whatever of Christ we will give to people constantly on the move must be given quickly and loudly. But is there anything of true Christianity that can be given in this way? I'm skeptical.
To your concluding point, while I don't attend an evangelical church, I imagine there's a version of a problem I see in Episcopal churches: clergy having lost confidence in the efficacy of the Christian message. I know it is easy for clergy to rely on a handful of other factors to draw people to church and to keep them there: quality of music, availability of children's programming, charismatic personality of the leader, ability to make friends, etc. And it isn't that those things are unimportant, but, to misuse Paul a little, we really should count all these things as rubbish when compared with the actual substance of the gospel, offered in word and sacrament. Every Sunday, my family and I go to church, and without fail, I am desperately hoping to hear God speak to me, to have a meeting with God from which I will leave changed. I have rarely gotten the sense that the people in charge thought this was the job of the Christian minister. It feels to me like being invited to a banquet where they forget to serve the main course.
Banquet seems a particularly fitting way of putting it.
The idea is a bit mind blowing, but not surprising. I wonder if there is more. Was it just too hard to find another church? Did they go but no one said hello? Did they ask for community and no one listened? Did they go and the service wasn’t their old church? Or did they just not get out of bed to head to church on that first Sunday and it became a habit? And the question back to myself, how can I help them? Thanks for a great and thoughtful piece. I will be chewing on this.
Yes, it’s helpful that you’ve pointed out that it engenders so many other questions. And that part of why I find it so unsettling 😔
It does show one thing--we need to do the work as a church to welcome those who are new and help them find home in our communities.
Just got Lauren’s marriage announcement in the mail ☺️☺️☺️ congratulations to you 🙏🙏🙏
Thanks! It was a wonderful day. God has great things ahead for those two.
I am curious how much of this dechurching is across the board socioeconomicly? Is this phenomenon as true among the lower class? Several of the people that I have served that have dechurched went from lower class to upermiddle class through marriage and immigration. They are very honest that they feel safe and happy now more so than before and don’t feel the need for church or even Jesus.
That’s really fascinating and compelling anecdotally. Could pose it back to the church: is the reason they feel safe because the preaching they experienced was mostly felt-needs style content?
Definitely. The church culture they have grown up in was definitely a felt-needs style faith. It is one of the dominate traits of the Pentecostal churches in my country and something I am trying to work on.
It’s a real problem 🙏🙏🙏
I've left several churches, and on all but two times, I'd have said it was because I was moving - that's modern life, I think.
The two churches I left without moving didn't have any spiritual meat on the bones of the services.
Yes, sometimes we must move mustn’t we. And there are church deserts everywhere.
"The things that we are chasing are probably less valuable than true community, especially the community of believers, but how to show that to someone who has never known true community?" Jon Cutchins (in replies)
For almost all of my Christian experience treating salvation as a line in an accountant's book has been predominant. But salvation as community has often just been about what isn't permitted in your congregation, but what they do anyway. So, on one hand, it's all the sins that get wiped out in the cross, and all the sins to avoid in church membership. I don't like needing to have two separate lives, and the church I go to now doesn't seem to require it. But, for emotional safety and security, I have had to keep both a Church face and a home face. When the strain of keeping a Church face becomes too great, I seek relief in solitude and being away. But having to treat the "community" as a game that must be played, takes the soul out of it.
Yes the Church is not a "social club" but on the other hand it must be, and if its society comes only at the cost of losing the self, then it has become no different from (to, or than) the Elks or Knights of Columbus. When the Church embodies the world more than it does Christ, when its focus is on cleaning the outside of the vessel by the list of correct things we say and do, then association is more like caustic soda than table salt.
The ease with which the political has taken over many church bodies is a sign of this focus on the outward appearance. The culture war increases this disparity when certain groups are, by fiat, not welcome in church. So the church becomes a locus of alienation not family. Salvation as the children of God in community, brothers and sisters, fades into the distance.
I'm not arguing that churches as institutions must be perfect, that is asking more than any group can provide, but the Christian Welcome must keep the walls to the outside world open, even to those who don't qualify as Christians, maybe especially to those.
Certainly a dependable liturgy cuts down the cost of engaging a new community, but going to a church that has become a showcase leaves attendance up to one's approval of a style and not the intended function of adoption into family. Christianity is a participative exercise, and if the church does all the participating for you, it is as easy to leave as to stay. And it is likely you won't be missed. If the required participation is odious you will not be tempted to engage. If there is no loose space for you to settle in, you will not settle. Is it any wonder that passers by are not staying? If you have to be an insider to stay, the paradox of not being an insider will never resolve to membership or continued attendance. This might just be the uncomfortable rhetoric of a pathological outsider, but when a church decides that Jesus must be the door, and not some artificial cultural norm, then people will come in and stay.
It appears, Joe, your concern is that the USA is moving toward the European model of culture where the church plays only a peripheral role for a few aging believers within the monuments of past fervor, and that concern is statistically well grounded. But it is also fertile ground for an appreciation of the truth and grounding in facticity in a vigorously changing society, in a generation so swept up into its technological transformations that it can't see solid ground anywhere. The people who are supposed to be "saved" appear to be as lost as those who flout their evangelism. They have become so worldly in their religion, no outsider can distinguish between them and the rowdy neighbors they criticize. Reasoning and supposed evidence have lost all connection to the real world around them. Most can't tell that the opinions expressed have no ground in reality and should be rejected.
People stop going to church because the emotional cost of attendance becomes too high.
“But it is also fertile ground for an appreciation of the truth and grounding in facticity in a vigorously changing society, in a generation so swept up into its technological transformations that it can't see solid ground anywhere.” 🎯🎯🎯 so 💯 with you 👏👏👏
Thanks Joe.
The significance of 'I moved' as the reason for declining church attendance is that they didn't find a new church when they moved. They felt that what had been motivating them to go to the old church wasn't present, or wasn't worth hunting for, in their new home.
First, I would say that finding a new church, bonding with new people, exploring the people and place, is hard no matter what you are like or the church is like. Two big cultural factors that make this harder, that I don't think that we can do anything about, are increasing cultural diversity and an increasingly mobile, I might say rootless, population. We are told that we are bad people if diversity makes us anxious, but I would point out that anything that increases uncertainty increases anxiety. Because of the level of diversity you simply do not know who or what you will find when you go into a new church. There is no truth in advertising. I don't know of any denomination that makes much of a guarantee of what you will find, though in this case a shared liturgy seems like it can go some way against anxiety.
But we shouldn't miss the elephant in the room, the sheer pace of moving. Forming bonds takes time and it takes effort. Someone who only expects to be in the community a short time might rationally conclude that the costs outweigh the benefits. The things that we are chasing are probably less valuable than true community, especially the community of believers, but how to show that to someone who has never known true community?
The insight that people leave churches because they move casts a new light on the shallow spectacle that our churches present. A church looking to feed generations of a family would make much different choices and as bad as the choice of spectacle is, it has some basis in the facts of our society. Whatever of Christ we will give to people constantly on the move must be given quickly and loudly. But is there anything of true Christianity that can be given in this way? I'm skeptical.
Healing the sick and casting out demons; two answers, I believe, for the question of what can be given quickly and loudly.
Demons are generally loud. Haha. And I’m open to that different brand of quickness and loudness 🙏