My friend Jill was talking on Facebook about an article she read in the Wall Street Journal which addressed the big concern of the moment–why people are no longer affiliating themselves with a local church. It seems as though every third article in my favourite magazine, Christianity Today, is also about this issue. But over and over again the answers miss the mark.
The pithy answer Jill found in the WSJ was that
“when you need a spiritual fix, you don’t necessarily want to sit in for two hours in a pew.”
Which I think is a glib oversimplification. Yes, there are people looking for a spiritual “fix”, a dime bag of glory. We–the American church–spent much of the 1990s building begymmed, becoffeebarred ‘Seeker Friendly’ palaces for them. Consequently the American Church is spending much of the early 2000s over their heads in debt. Which leads me to
Reason #1
In an already tight economy, the place you’d think people would go for answers would be a church. When my husband and I were first fallen on hard times–a few years before other folks–our first stop was church. Every Sunday the message included a good five minutes of prooftexting to guilt people into giving a larger offering. Still, we attended for several years and tried to become part of the community. But the pastor was quite obviously driven by meeting a bottom line. We poor Mennonite kids had never before attended one of these Ponzi denominations where the local church is responsible for not only its own expenses but also sending a chunk of money to the “head office”. Our last Sunday was when the pastor’s sermon was about how we were all going to lose our salvation (!) if the offering wasn’t large enough to buy the church a new carpet (!!) I’m guessing our experience with the Money-Hungry Church was not unique. And I’m further surmising that other people, already stretched to the breaking point with debt, don’t need another weekly bill.
Reason #2
A church is about community. That’s why you go to one instead of watching Two Rivers on TV every Sunday. And that IS why a lot of people who’ve been absent for their early twenties* come back to one. The problem is that a church is about community. Which means that you’ve got all the interpersonal challenges any community has. The older lady who won’t turn over responsibility for an event she sees as “her” thing. The overcommitted young couple whose eagerness bars others from a turn at giving their gifts of time. The suspicious nursery director who won’t let new folks work with children, even when teamed with others. And so on. Most established churches are like small towns and although initially welcoming to newcomers, they ultimately resist change. That leaves newcomers feeling like newcomers even after they’ve been there for three and four years. It robs them of the sense of community that is the essence of church-based worship.
Reason #3
So why are these people leaving in the first place? Why do they find themselves in a position of being a “newcomer” in church? Well, because of the Great Exodus Of The Twenties. As a Great Exoder myself, I’ve addressed this in other posts. The short of the long is that churches are regularly attended by people in their 30s and older who have children. The relatively new phenomenon of the unmarried professional in their 20s is foreign. While the outside world sees these post-collegiate adults as striving and growing, the church infantalises them. The Twentysomethings are met at the door by a long-haired 40 year old who says “Dude” all the time and offers pizza parties with zany movies as a social gathering. Nobody wants to be taken seriously more than a person just out of college, eager to prove themselves. Nobody takes those people less seriously than your modern church congregation. So why not leave? Why not wait until you are in the group they DO take seriously before coming back? That’s why you’ve got people leaving until they’re thirty, married and have children.
Reason #4
This is perhaps the saddest reason to me. But it also more and more common a driver for those who want a church home. As the Evangelical church becomes more political, people who might be good brethren are turned off by the stance of the church itself and/or the more vocal church members. We are letting Caeser and our affection for the hobby of politics ruin our job of discipling others. It happens on both the left and right. And all it takes is one overheard comment to turn someone off that church forever. I know people who have left THE SAME CHURCH because it was “too Republican” AND “too Democrat”. I guess they overheard different conversations. Nevertheless, politics inside the church house–where it DOESN’T belong–is part of what is killing the modern American church.
And there it is. There are the answers, as plain and unpretty as they are. Can they be fixed? Maybe, mabye not. But more importantly–will anyone admit that those are the problems?
Just Another Pretty Farce 
#4 is pretty much what did it for me. The last time I allowed myself to be dragged into going to church, I spent the service trying not to bean their pastor with one of those sharp cornered hymn books.
I have to say there is more to me than your 4 reasons capture (though I have hear the same reasons given over, and over, and over). I think that people are craving that true deep spiritual connection with God and community when they seek out church. Unfortunately, that deep spiritual connection is costly (not monitarily costly) and sometimes painful. When there is a true and deep, intimate relationship with God there is a carving away of sinful nature. If someone is truly only seeking a fix it will not be long before they run headlong into the painful change part – that is part and partial to a enduring relationship with God – being made perfect (not there yet). Don’t get me wrong when I say there is pain, because there is also great peace and reward (this is not a fear based relationship, but a love relationship, I am being wooed by an amazing God, calling me to him).
This is what gets me… as Christians do we settle for weird if we can’t truly find transformed. And if we as Christians are different from the world only by our weirdness rather than our Christ-like-ness, is it any wonder that those wanting their fix run away from the pain. They cannot see in the Christian population at large the peace and transformation that a relationship with Jesus offers. Meaning if they just wanted weird… they can find that in the mentally ill patient that rides the bus everyday and then take a hike in some beautiful mountains for a transcending experience.
Those who know me, know that while still weird… I am in a constant struggle for grace and love and change and Christ-like-ness. But the convicting question is whether or not the church represents that struggle to learn or just says, “yeah, we got it, pay your $ and we will attempt to show you how to mimic it.” It is not a spiritual fix, but rather a process of being fixed (sanctification). And yeah… I’m still a ways off. And it does sadden me when I see articles about 100 year old churches being sold to CVS for demolition (the beginning of the Wall Street Journal Article) and some professor so and so of religious studies postulated about why church membership has declined.
#3 was a pretty dominant part of my leaving. Don’t get me wrong, I’d have been up for free pizza, but the first time I came back home from college and sat in the “Young Adult” sunday school class and discussed theology on such an elementary level as be looking around for toys thinking I surely walked into the kindergarten class by mistake, I was pretty much so put off by it that I never returned. I don’t recall with 100% certainty, but I actually believe that that specific trip was the last time I set foot in a church (other than for weddings and a stint I did as a PAID choir member).
I guess I’m more impatient than others, because if the church isn’t gonna provide me with proper spiritual nourishment, I’m not gonna just wait around til I’m a 30-something and try again; instead I’m gonna go find it elsewhere and that’s exactly what I did.
What did you find and where did you find it?
I should start this by saying that my relationship with my church began in a time of great need, and my gratitude to this church is so deep that it has kept me there when others would have walked away.
I’d never appreciated how much #1 is NOT a part of my church until this post. They pass the plate, but the only things accompanying it are prayers of thankfulness and beautiful music.
I’ve been on the business end of blows from #2. (I know people are tired of hearing about it). However, being a grownup about it and sticking it out has, years later, made me a better person, happier, and some of my best friends at church are now people I swore I’d never forgive.
I think #3 is true, but there is more to it. I’m pretty sure that if there were a church created for and, ahem, marketed to single young adults, they would still have a hard time filling the pews (chairs, hot tubs, whatever).
There is a sense amongst the people in my church that it is inevitable that every young person will go through some degree of repudiating the father, and on some level that means The Father, too.
A Christian church, no matter how socially liberal, cramps one’s style. It just does. And young people are really about not having their style cramped.
Besides, I’m pretty sure that anyone who goes to church to ‘have their needs met’, instead of finding and ultimately worshipping God is sure to be disappointed.
#4 is interesting to me. I go to a sort-of politically conservative church which is part of a quite liberal denomination. Our Sunday school class prides itself on its diversity of thought, and although our discussions are many times spirited, they are also fun. It doesn’t hurt that most of us were young together, and our kids have grown up together. When politics comes up, we go at it, but always with a smile and a gleam in our eyes, in only the way it can amongst lifelong friends.
I suppose I should consider myself fortunate. You have really made me appreciate my church. 🙂
Besides, I’m pretty sure that anyone who goes to church to ‘have their needs met’, instead of finding and ultimately worshipping God is sure to be disappointed.
I think this really hits on why churches lose the 20-somethings. Too many churches separate these two things, which are really one in the same, and only offer some cheap knock-off of the latter. The need that people go to church to try and meet IS the need to find and worship God, but I think most churches don’t know how to facilitate a real connection with the divine. And I think 20-something is the age that alot of people start really looking for that real connection and all the church gives them is praise songs and bible stories. Not that there’s anything wrong with praise songs and bible stories but without anything more it’s just kinda spiritual junk food. It’ll get your emotions going and make you feel good for awhile but when it’s all over you’re not really any better off than when you started.
When I read Slarti’s comment, what I see is ‘Anybody who wants a real spiritual connection to God instead of just singing happy songs talking about how we should be nice to eachother is going to be disappointed.” And that disappointment is what I think gives you alot of 20-something Christians who don’t attend church, because they find that the church just doesn’t deliver what it’s promised in terms of spiritual development and if the church can’t help them grow spiritually, there’s not really much point in spending time there.
Church is a place that can either bring the spiritual best in you or, it can bring out the spriritual insecurities in you. However, at the end of the day, what truly matters is your relationship with Christ! If we are not cultivating our own individual relationship with Christ, then after the spiritual highes we get from church will only leave
us disappointed at best! I’ve always believed that true growth and worship happened outside of church. My relationship with Christ, true growth in relationships with those in church and true missions work all happens outside the 4 walls of church. Church is a place to gather as a body of believers who share a common purpose. The body is made up of many imperfect people, with a common goal of becoming more like Christ! Though, many will leave the church because they don’t fit in, clicks, boredom, lack of follow-up, the pretty-prefect people fasaud and lack of connection with kids! The ladder in the church have forgotten their purpose of being a mentor and pulling the 20-something group under their wing. To wrap this up, a friend of mine I grew up with in church all through high school left after graduation to attend the university. His first quarter really challenged everything he knew about the God he served at church. He called and said the God I served in church isn’t here with me at the university! What he was really saying: “his” relationship with his God had been nothing more than church experiences – everyone else’s stories and beliefs! The church serves its purpose, but our relationship with God will always serve a greater purpose! Take time to cultivate your own personal relationship with the one who made you and then He will plant you where He wants you to be!
Jill, I honestly think you’re absolutely right, of course. I think that deep relationship–indescribably weird and wonderful and painful–is the essence of mature Christianity. I think it’s what most people are after when the murmur in their soul draws them to a church to “become closer to God.”
I don’t think they’ll find it there. Because from where I sit, growing in Christianity to the place of maturity is much like John Bunyan described it in “Pilgrim’s Progress”. It’s a journey that goes through different places and road has different challenges on the way.
I think the key ingredient of mature Christianity is a shaping of the Wilderness. A time when every Christian is alone in a desert, parched and longing. This is modelled in the life of every major prophet–Moses, Elijah, John the Baptiser–and in the life of Jesus himself. It’s what the Psalmist saw as the Valley of the Shadow.
A good church body equips you for this part of the journey. The cameraderie of the fellowship of believers is a sort of packing-your-bags and outfitting-you-with-foodstuffs. But you always have to go to that place and deal with darkness and doubt.
So many church bodies don’t WANT to scare people off from the gospel. So the entire church experience becomes about waiting around in the night before the journey. There’s a lot of packing, but not much going. Because the going is rough.
In addition you mention that people don’t see the Christlikeness of Christians in general. I think that the four reasons I mentioned are a big part of that. People in many modern churches are humans going to a social organisation that meets at traditional times and his focused around The Jesus Experience. Churches are human places with human faults and foibles. That’s why we should have NEVER turned over our evangelism to the local church body. The move to Seeker churches in the late 80s meant that instead of people seeing other people they saw buildings and powerpoints instead. Now no one has gotten what they wanted.
I am not anywhere near a completed work. I can’t claim that. But I do have a good deal of Wilderness under my belt and a testimony that the most powerful love anyone will ever know is the transformative love of a relationship with God made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Slarti,
Don’t look know, but you are a living example of #3. You are writing off a lot of people by assuming that since you’ve reached a certain age you have a certain insight and there’s no getting around a fundamental truth.
Meanwhile I know personally a dozen Christians in their 20s who would make genuinely wonderful additions to a church body if people didn’t keep assuming that they were just about rebellion and acting out and playing foosball.
I would love to find a sensible Christian community that was about fellowship and good works. Some way I could be with people I love and give back to my community at large.
I know that I drifted away from Churches because there was no community spirit in any of the local ones and they were all very judgmental toward my mother when she was trying to wrangle my and my sister’s spiritual education on her own. She didn’t go to church with my father because he was raised Catholic (nuns with rulers and everything) and he hated everything to do with it. Since he wasn’t a participant, the Churches didn’t want anything to do with her, and my mother is a President-of-the-PTA, take-charge, dominant-personality sort of woman. All the church communities we have had experience with gave her the ‘hit-the-road’ vibe.
So I got my ideals of faith and community from intense summer-camp situations, where everyone knows they’re part of a community and they do service to help the community because it’s personal. It’s THEIR community and they own it. We own it.
So I guess my biggest frustration with church is that they’ve pulled away from being a part of the greater community. It’s fine and dandy to have a church community, but when you start putting The Church Community on one side and The Other People Community on the other, you kind of break everything.
I don’t want to seek out a clique and beg them to accept me so I can pretend like I belong. That was High School and I didn’t buy it then, either. I went my own way. I want family, happy and mildly dysfunctional, but we love each other anyway because we are all children of the same God.
So I guess my biggest frustration with church is that they’ve pulled away from being a part of the greater community. It’s fine and dandy to have a church community, but when you start putting The Church Community on one side and The Other People Community on the other, you kind of break everything.
This statement is so correct that I don’t know what else to say.
Some of us get it. I’m involved in evangelism in a mainline Protestant denomination that is not known at all for evangelism. What frustrates me is that most churches seem to want to create a culture that is separate from the culture at large, in ways that drive people away. Certainly the church should have its own culture (or else it becomes nothing more than a social club), but creating a culture that puts hurdles between the greater community and the Gospel is exactly what Jesus denounced in His earthly ministry. Collectively we have become Pharisees. But some of us get it, and are trying to change it.
So how do we fix it? Is it supposed to be fixed? Are we only going to end up at a church that doesn’t feed us, where we’ve always been, or at a church directed towards people in their 20s wherein no one else participates? There’s a lot of isolation in the community the way it is…Getting to the meat is so hard though. Since I’ve grown up in church I always end up in a class where I feel like I’m not learning any more than I could find out on my own, and usually already have found out. I have found myself in the old peoples class and even there I get the feeling that there is so much that we just didn’t cover about God’s character that we should have caught because we were studying for those details. And then because they were old people I expected them to be a bit more …knowledgeable? Is that really that much to ask? Do I need to volunteer to be a teacher? I suck at public speech and explaining things, and I’m blunt to the point of rudeness, even if it’s on accident, but if we aren’t gonna teach meat, then what else am I supposed to do? Also I’m a woman so I need to get over that hang up or figure out how to make it so that it is just women that I teach. If there are any men that feel me please step up!
[…] Why People Don’t Go To Church A few of the top reasons I’ve gleaned from discussion on the topic with former, now […]
i am sitting here and writing one of them boring sermons that does not reach the 20’s, but like everything in life you have to be on the inside to fix a problem. if all of these things bother you don’t turn your back on it fix it. as a seminarian i can tell you i do not have the answers but am always ready to listen. if the pastor or minister was truely called by God to be in that position then he will do anything to help you with your walk with the Lord, but he cannot help if you are no there. no wars was won by running away; turn and face your demons and the Lord will protect and guide you…..God bless….rev tony