When Christians Quit Church
Lynn loves God, praises His name, studies His Word, serves His people and helps build His kingdom. She just can't be bothered to go to His house anymore.
The Spirit-filled believer who spends many of her working days at Christian conferences is more likely to be found slumbering on Sunday mornings--or washing her clothes.
"I'm sick of hearing pastors talking for themselves," she admits candidly. "I don't want to go and hear the same thing I did last week, sing the three fast, the three slow. ... I just don't want to spend 3-1/2 hours at church. I prefer to sleep in, do my laundry or prepare for the next week."
Lynn is in good company. Thousands like her who by all litmus tests would be gauged as devout, even zealous, Christians are voting with their feet and becoming "stayaway saints."
"It's not like I'm backsliding," she cautions, describing her daily commute prayer-and-praise sessions in her car. "Only people with a religious spirit who think you have to be 'in church' say that. I just have a hard time with the routine of it. ... It's not fresh."
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Observers trace several factors behind the trend. They point to the way the increasing fragility and mobility of the family has weakened the "brand loyalty" that historically meant children grew up with a strong sense of connection to the church of their parents.
They also see the church-dropout wave as a barometer of the influence of the wider culture's me-centered nature as well as the unfortunate excesses of the "seeker-sensitive" movement that has aimed to make church less intimidating to people with no religious heritage.
Says Larry Lewis, national facilitator of denominations for Mission America: "There's a consumer mentality that says I go to church not to give anything or to be challenged or instructed, but to be helped, and there's a tendency to turn the prophetic message and its challenge into the ear-tickling messages of self-help lectures with very little biblical content.
"You can't reduce ministry to that," he adds. "We have a prophetic role that we must fulfill if we are to be true to our calling. ... I can't imagine Nehemiah or Job or Amos going down the street with a clipboard in hand and asking, 'What do you want us to preach about?'"
"It's a biblical fallacy to say we don't need church," Rainer comments. "The New Testament pattern is very clear--that there was some type of formal gathering of believers on a regular basis who had accountability to one another. I quite frankly don't buy that church can be anywhere."
But even those with serious concerns about the results of so many Christians bailing on church commitment see a potential silver lining in it--if, rather than just deciding that they don't like what church is, those leaving get serious about what they think it should be.
"I'm happy that people are asking the questions," Hunter says. "I'm sad that it is keeping them away from church."
Steve and Ellen, who say they felt led to leave their Spirit-filled church after more than 20 years, believe there is a growing "new counterculture of the disaffected and unsatisfied ... looking for something authentic, a real expression of the kingdom of God."
They are still in touch with friends from their former church but now take Sundays as they come--recently hosting guests, going on a retreat, hunting and praying for the U.S. national elections on consecutive weekends. "We are just out here trying to be obedient to God," they said. "[He] is breaking us of reliance on anything other than Him. We are the broken, the needy, the helpless."
From his studies of the phenomenon, Strom sees not just a bunch of belligerent, AWOL worshipers but "a grass-roots hunger for change in the church, for reality ... more than the latest church-growth stuff or conference."
"They want to see revival, not some latest fad that sweeps through the church," he says.
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They're not backsliders, but they're not typical disciples, either, so what do you call committed Christians who don't turn out for the usual Sunday morning services anymore? Post-congregationals, says Alan Jamieson, who has done some of the most serious research on the movement to date.
A sociologist and pastor at charismatic Wellington Central Baptist Church in the New Zealand capital, he began to study the phenomenon 10 years ago after seeing youth-group members drift away and recognizing his own growing dissatisfaction with church life as it was. He discovered that, far from being people on the fringes of the church, most of those opting out had been heavily involved. More than 90 percent of those he tracked had been in some sort of leadership role, and almost 33 percent were former pastors.
Jamieson also identified four main reasons why people leave a church--cultural preferences, personal factors such as broken relationships, disagreements over doctrine and changing stages in their faith development.
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