This article continues the discussion of a groundbreaking new book about the phenomenon of people leaving the church: The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge. In the last issue, we discussed five groups the study identified: cultural Christians, dechurched mainstream evangelicals, exvangelicals, BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color), and dechurched mainline Protestants and Catholics.
In part two, I’ll share suggestions from the authors for dealing with the problem of the dechurched. Then I’ll offer 22 strategies any church can employ to keep people from leaving the church and to reengage the dechurched. Let me be clear from the outset. The thrust of this book is not about attracting the dechurched with things that appeal to consumer desires. The problem is much more profound than that.
As a Religion News Service article recently noted regarding the dechurched:
The Great Dechurching suggests that contemporary American life is actually antithetical to religious values. Contemporary American life does not promote mutuality, care, the common life, or the common good.
Rather, what is the focus of American life? Radical individualism. Consumerism. Buying and owning what it is that makes you feel good. The promotion of individual accomplishment—professional and financial success. If it doesn’t contribute to your professional life; if it doesn’t contribute to your financial success; if it doesn’t contribute to your personal happiness or fulfillment; if it doesn’t contribute to your children’s academic or professional prospects—the sad truth is that we have precious little time or energy for it. Many Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people.
Engaging the dechurched is about methods reaching the heart of spiritual things, not the typical attractional model of getting people interested in church because it meets consumer needs better met elsewhere.
Engaging the Dechurched
Section three of the book suggests how churches should go about reengaging the dechurched. The authors suggest “reasons to hope,” that things are not as bad as sometimes thought in terms of dechurched opposition to basic Christianity. The authors were surprised the dechurched remain as orthodox as they are but also expressed alarm at how little emphasis most churches place on doctrine, theology, and other confessional concerns historically at the core of being Christian.
Evangelicals are trending toward a radical de-emphasis on doctrine, teaching, and training, including de-emphasis on confessional beliefs attached to a given denomination or tradition. This trend runs counter to the reasons dechurched people said they left churches. In fact, the authors’ research revealed this doctrinal shallowness and lack of substance was one of the biggest contributors to people leaving the church. The less grounded people are in the beliefs and practices of Christianity, the more apt they are to leave (121–23).
But side-by-side with questions of “belief”— Christian doctrine, practice, teaching, and discipleship — is the issue of “belonging.” Evangelical churches have lost the ability to make people feel they belong. Recent evangelicalism has been driven by a consumer mentality. The church too often functions as a purveyor of religious goods and services to religious customers in a low-expectation environment. The result: these “consumers” easily get lost in the crowd and simply move on when they stop liking the quality of the “goods and services” the congregation offers. This is precisely the problem (123–27).
One thing this study reveals most clearly: in our uprooted culture of isolation and loneliness, where embodied relationships are on the decline and depression and anxiety are on the rise, where people feel displaced as if they don’t belong anywhere, what people need is for the church to be the church. Free Will Baptists can learn from this. It’s where we can shine. “Church is not an event; it is a family. It’s not a perfect family, but it is a real spiritual family….We can find great community in our golf groups, social clubs, or children’s schools, but that community is different from the belonging we find in a healthy church.” Consequently, the study found the dechurched have much higher levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness “than those who immerse themselves in their faith community” (125).
However, when placing more emphasis on community and authentic relationships, it is important churches remain balanced with the priority of Christian belief and behavior. The authors argue the lack of emphasis on clear teaching in all aspects of Christian doctrine and ethics is an important reason behind the great dechurching. These former church attenders indicated the church provided “no real answers to their questions” (126).
But these answers — this doctrine, these ethics — must be communicated in a spirit of love, patience, and humility. “We learned that simply listening better and more consistently embodying the fruit of the Spirit in interactions with children can change everything” (128).
Lessons for the Church
Part 4, “Lessons for the Church,” serves as a poignant reminder of the biblical priorities that may come as a surprise to many accustomed to church growth seminars and cultural-stylistic silver bullets. Those methods are what my friend the late Harry Reeder used to call “cultural steroids” that bring quick growth and strength but leave the church anemic and lifeless in the end.
This aspect of the book is the most refreshing. A Free Will Baptist pastor of 50 people, while feeling convicted after reading this book, will come away with things his congregation can do without the “extreme makeover” church growth gurus too often recommend, and which most churches couldn’t pull off if they wanted to.
This section makes this book so unusual and helpful. The data is fresh social-science data vetted by a respected social scientist, but it has the touch of the pastor-theologian. The authors contrast the “confessional” church with the “missional” church. (Obviously, these are stereotypes into which a single church is unlikely to fit.)
The confessional church gets all the doctrine and practice right but is dead, lifeless, and not outwardly focused; it makes the Christian religion inaccessible. It’s like an insider’s club (the “frozen chosen” or “us four, no more”), and the only people who come to faith are children of the members. This is unsustainable.
On the opposite extreme is the missional church, which prioritizes outreach at the expense of clear teaching of the whole counsel of God. Ultimately this approach is unsustainable. You end up losing more people because they attend for cultural reasons rather than the biblical-
gospel things the Spirit says the church is about. When the missional church appeals to tastes and preferences, it invites a consumer experience, not a religious experience. This is also unsustainable.
The authors prescribe a faithful, biblical combination of both the confessional and the missional. This prescription is not either/or but both/and. Without confessional priority (the gospel, doctrine, and practice of Christian faith, with the depth and transcendence humans long for) wed to missional priority (outward focus on evangelism, discipleship, and people, providing a loving community for lonely, hurting people), we will never stop the hemorrhaging of the church.
The strategies offered can all be carried out by the average Free Will Baptist church. Yes, we must make changes in our attitudes and methods to reach the unchurched and dechurched! But this does not mean an extreme makeover culturally and stylistically. We can do this! It will be hard but well within the reach of everyday Free Will Baptist churches, even smaller ones. The data supports what most other studies have consistently shown over the years about why people leave churches and join churches.
It’s consistent, for example, with Fuller Youth Institute’s recent Growing Young study. Like that study, focused on reaching young people, The Great Dechurching reveals cultural-stylistic concerns are not really what this whole phenomenon is about. People in all four of the book’s dechurched categories are leaving small and large, rural and urban, contemporary and traditional, denominational and non-denominational churches at the same rate. And not a single reason for leaving (or possibly returning) has anything to do with the consumer-oriented things we spend most of our time worried about in outreach.
The study found nothing about music, worship style, lighting — nothing about our fascination with “cultural relevance.” The dechurched described biblical things, human things, not consumer desires. They described the deepest human needs only Christ, His gospel, and His truth can fill. God can work through both large and small churches to meet these needs.
Workable Strategies for Any Church
I returned to each reason the book gave for why the dechurched left the church and what they said might bring them back. The strategies below consolidate each reason into a strategy any church, regardless of demographic, size, or style, can employ. All strategies are first-century, New Testament strategies that can be used in any setting, culture, or subculture.
Preach and teach sound doctrine and ethics in ways accessible to outsiders and in ways that address the total personality (intellect, emotions, and behavior) of people today. Train lay leaders to do the same.
Intentionally and tangibly demonstrate love and openness to people from different ethnicities, age groups, and socio-economic and educational backgrounds.
Emphasize helping the poor and hurting in tangible, observable ways.
Be intentionally intergenerational, so individuals from all generations and ages can worship and serve together without feeling excluded.
Make sure everything in your church brings people together rather than dividing them.
Find out who moves into your community and strategize how to invite them to your church or a men’s/women’s/youth group or Bible study.
Work a detailed, strategic plan to show love to people and give them a sense of belonging.
Work a detailed strategic plan to guide people
into men’s/women’s/youth groups and Bible
study groups.
Work a detailed strategic plan to foster more hospitality among members.
Preach and teach about Christian friendship and community, demonstrating that Christian doctrine and ethics combat loneliness and isolation.
Show compassion to divorcees without compromising convictions or biblical teaching on divorce.
Make sure the senior pastor majors on preaching and teaching sound doctrinal and ethical truth that deals with the total personality (intellect, emotions, behavior) of people today.
Make sure the senior pastor is a humble, caring, shepherding, empathetic person.
Take a stand for truth without anger, avoiding a scolding, hard-nosed persona when doing so.
Be positive about how the Christian life and ethics foster human flourishing rather than being scolding and legalistic.
Preach and teach about being patient and truly listen to those who disagree with biblical truth.
Preach and teach about redeeming the time, streamlining their lives, practicing spiritual disciplines, and coping with the busyness of modern life.
Be committed to Christian public ethics, but avoid being seen as the Republican or Democratic Party at prayer; de-emphasize party politics from the pulpit.
Emphasize Christianity as the religion for those with intellectual questions; readily offer articles, books, audiobooks, and podcasts to help people who doubt or disparage Christianity’s intellectual credibility.
Lead by example, reinforcing the mentality that ordained church leaders are the most humble, ethical, trustworthy, reliable people — people on whom you can count, who won’t let you down.
Teach that God and Christian doctrine and ethics meet the deepest human needs and longings.
Don’t let people “slip through the cracks.”
These strategies will not be easy, and we’ll have to change a great deal. But the change is the sort of change written in the New Testament: teaching people the faith in the context of rich human relationships; helping the poor; teaching Christ’s doctrine, practice, and ethics — “all things whatsoever I have commanded you”— in the context of humility, love, patience, and all the fruit of the Spirit.
These are the “ordinary means of grace” the Spirit has used across every time, place, and culture, and He promises to bless these ordinary means today. To Him be all the glory!
About the Writer: J. Matthew Pinson is president of Welch College.
