The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? by Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan P. Burge

These authors get full credit for best intentions, sincerity, and for researching their topic. They turned to social scientists and the International Review Board (IRB) for an “academic-review-board-approved, nationwide, quantitative study” (xxi) of thousands of congregation members who have left their churches. The book reports the stated reasons given by the research subjects. It provides ideas on encouraging former church-goers to return. It offers extensive footnotes and bar graphs. It even compiles the data to form composite portraits as fictional characters talking about their faith walk.

“[I]n 2020 church membership in the United States fell below 50 percent in America.” (11) Some 40 million Americans in the past 25 years have stopped attending church. The loss in potential tithes and donations from these individuals could run to some $24.7 billion dollars per year. (13) Among evangelicals in particular, the data show four main dechurched groups: mainstream evangelicals, cultural Christians, exvangelicals, and BIPoC adults.

One reported reason for leaving church membership was polarization, as publicized and fueled in social media. As the authors sensibly conclude, “To maintain friendship in real life or online, it feels like people must agree with you on whole new lists of things that we didn’t have in the past…. [M]aybe it isn’t the best idea to end relationships over viewpoints on climate change, gun control, or a whole host of other matters.” (17)

One reason was changes within the family. The church-going influence of parents on their children is not as strong as in past generations. In fact, some respondents cited parental religion as a factor in leaving. They felt that parents were unwilling to listen to alternative ideas about a range of life issues, or that parental religion led to differences in political views.

One reason was logistics. Geographic mobility displaces churchgoers into unfamiliar communities; economic mobility comes with extra job pressures and less time; marriage and children require more time investments, with less leisure left for Sundays. The popularity of the internet and virtual services has lessened appreciation and experience of in-person shared worship.

One reason was social stress, including racism and abuse experienced both within and outside of church, discouraging members from the emotional risk of reconnecting. The authors emphasize the importance of empathy, open listening, and kindness to those who have experienced harm in their church experience.

One reason is breakdown in social cohesion. The authors point out that “If you belong to a nuclear family, graduate from college, and have children after marriage, America’s institutions tend to work better for you.” (26) “The American church… is largely built for the nuclear family or those on that track,” while “The young, single parent working multiple jobs… [is] more likely to experience depression and even shame in a church culture [aiming] to elevate the nuclear family.”

Just yesterday, my little free library furnished a second source on this same topic; I flipped through it for additional context. The book is Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them by Mr. Thom Rainer, Dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism, and Church Growth, 2001. This data-packed book includes two interesting pie charts. One shows time management skills of Comparison (=Ordinary) Church Leaders. The other chart shows time allocation by Effective Church Leaders, those with flourishing congregations. How do they compare? The book points out that ordinary leaders get 8 hours of sleep, while Effective Leaders save time by limiting themselves to 6 hours. (The pie charts included no time slice for “helping wife at home,” although all home life, including family life, was 22% for Effective leaders and 18% for Ordinary leaders.) Ordinary leaders lost time on personal ministry such as guidance and consolation with members requesting spiritual insight and comfort. The more sleep-deprived Effective Leaders handed off these tasks to church staff, and instead prioritized sermon preparation and personal evangelization — with goals such as winning one soul to Christ every week. The book urges Effective Leaders to write sermons which include expository, topical, thematic, narrative, and doctrinal elements, perhaps for visitors who check up on hermeneutic quality. As another winning factor, the book named infrastructure — including attractive grounds: “What surprised me was how many churches let their facilities and their landscaping… advertise ‘We don’t care.’ I sure didn’t go back to those places.” (227) It is fortunate that early Christianity arose in a geoclimate that did not call for “Lawn-Boy mower duty” as a pastoral concern.

But, back to The Great Dechurching. “There is strong scientific evidence that supports the correlation between church attendance and improved physical and mental health.” (29) (Does correlation always mean that A causes B? Could it be that B causes A, and that physical and mental wellbeing and an appropriate wardrobe allow for structured Sunday activity?) The authors add that the path of members who depart can be marked by “addiction, destructive behaviors, gender and sexual confusion, and even suicide.” (9) Can they also be marked by productive charitable connected lives? The dechurched people among my acquaintances would not be counted in these results because it wouldn’t occur to them to fill out a church survey. But not one person I know left their religion and then fell apart. Every one of them have lives marked by solid intimate relationships, mental health, philanthropy, and Sundays running at the park with their dog or building cold frames in the garden or fostering kids.

One wee downside with the book is the imaginative storytelling. The authors aimed to go beyond their own anecdotal evidence of actual people. But the narrative and dialogue style didn’t quite resonate as deep human truth. In this paragraph, a character thinks back to faith-based college days with his Christian roommate, and his subsequent dark night of the soul:

Things had gone well for [fictional dechurched] Tom in those first couple of years at USC. It was the best time of his life. His sophomore season, they were conference champs, with [fictional still-churched] Rex as their starting pitcher and team captain. Miraculously, they won both the regional and super regional tournaments. Going to the College World Series in Omaha was a literal dream come true, even though they ended up losing…. The week after that College World Series loss was when his life had started going downhill…. Senior year was basically a blur of alcohol, baseball, and differential equations.

(Did everybody follow all that?)

Another scenario mentions the Boston Globe coverage by the Spotlight team, about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Says [fictional dechurched] Conor,

I got a phone call from my ma that just… let’s just say it changed the rest of my life…. Ma started talking about how she was worried because some of the stories coming out were really bad…. She went on and on… and finally blurted out, ‘One of those priests touched Tommy.’

(Sad to say, this actually made me laugh. Who talks like that? No Catholic parent in my childhood ever fathomed or verbalized the concept that their children were being abused inside or outside the home.) Ma phones in Tommy’s story instead of allowing her adult son some confidentiality and space to tell the story in his own time. Conor not only leaves the church; he also stops speaking to Tommy.

The authors caution against making the Christian walk all alone or through virtual church services, and they praise the unique value of group worship. “…[W]e can taste the home we long for. Our Sunday gathering has a centering effect on us, and to the degree we make the gathering a priority in our lives, we will taste our true home and flourish as citizens of heaven on earth….. [W]e are part of a spiritual family that will never be broken.” That sounds like a wonderful feeling. Maybe church leaders can look around and see whether some members are missing out on this experience of belonging.

Despite the described advantages of group worship, “Tens of millions of regular Christian worshipers have decided to stop attending church, leaving little explanation as to why” (back cover). Little explanation? Maybe some of us just wore ourselves out crying in the wilderness, trying to tell leaders what church is like for us and how some of us feel just plain left out.

One group left out of the discussion in both books is single people, even though we’re half of America. The survey and stories don’t include any sign of “Sitting surrounded by families makes it hard to not have a family.” In traditional Christian churches, the core topic of coffee hour conversation (and often sermons) is marriage and children and household concerns. The whole social structure is built not from atoms, but from tight molecules of nuclear families matching up with nuclear families — couples with kids matching up with other couples with kids. (One kindly Catholic leader actually urged us single people to sit exclusively in the first pew, and face forward. That way we wouldn’t see the Catholic couples and families with their remarkable knack for constant mutual grooming and stroking, prolonged private whispers, and exchanges of crinkly snacks.)

The authors freely acknowledge that congregational life, like any human institution, can fail us. They offer kind words for people who have been hurt. Then, they hasten onward to assure us that the Gospel is such overwhelmingly good news that it bountifully compensates for any past hurt. They eagerly counsel leaders on attractive assertive strategies: the four-chapter vs. two-chapter presentation of the Gospel, balance of mission and confession, and much more.

If I could fill in one of those surveys, my advice would be to stop finding bigger more assertive ways of broadcasting the Gospel. Instead, when people fade into the woodwork and stop attending, try reaching out just to ask “Are you okay?” and “If you’re coming back, how can we be there for you? If you’re not, how could we do a better job?” Then, listen to the answer. Does any church do that?

Can’t be harder than operating that Lawn-Boy.