Where Are People Leaving the Church Going? - FELICITY DALE CHARISMA NEWS

Sociologist Josh Packard says that 65 million people have left the church. These are former leaders who love God. Where are they going? (Charisma archives)

Where Are People Leaving the Church Going?

11/29/2015 FELICITY DALE  charisma news

John White has been a friend for many years. We first met in 2001 when he came to our home to hear Wolfgang Simson speak, near the beginning of the simple/organic/house church movement in this country. John now runs a community for followers of Jesus around the world who explore rhythms of life that result in vibrant churches meeting outside the walls of the building (Lk10.com). John is not normally an emotional guy, but he broke down in tears at "The Future of the Church Summit." In this blogpost from the Lk10 site, he explains why:

Future of the Church Summit

I just returned from Loveland, CO where I attended a Conference sponsored by Group Publishing with about 130 church leaders on "The Future of the Church". On the last day, I was part of a panel and was asked to share a bit about LK10. Click on my picture below to hear what happened when I started to talk...

(By the way, make sure you see more information about Josh Packard's research below my video.)

While there were many presenters at the Summit, the most important, by far was Josh Packard. Josh is a sociologist who's research has uncovered the fact that 65 million Americans (31% of the adult population) are what he calls the "Dones". These are people who were once part of a church. In fact, they were often leaders, the "best and the brightest" according to Josh, but they are now "done" with church as they have known it. What's more, these people, for the most part, aren't going back. I can't tell you what a staggering statistic this is!

The picture that came to me was Morpheus talking to Neo in the movie The Matrix. (Although Josh is nothing like Morpheus!) Morpheus: Let me tell you why you are here. You are here because you know something. What you know you can't explain. But, you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there is something wrong with the world (or the church?). You don't know what it is but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind.

Click on the photo to watch this 5 minute clip of Morpheus talking to Neo.

For a long time, a great many people have had this "splinter in their mind" regarding church but they couldn't explain it. And, now Josh has pulled the cover back and exposed what is really going on.

Two ways to hear more of what Josh has uncovered...

• 8 minute video describing the "Dones" ("They are not "casual Christians" or occasional attendees. Most were in some leadership position in their church."
• 90 minute video. In depth interview with Josh Packard about the "Dones". ("Most of these people are not coming back.")

Back to the Future

While the Dones are not going back to the institutional church no matter how much it is "tweaked", most of them have not abandoned God. In fact, some say that they have left "the church" to preserve their faith. And, the kind of church they are interested in looks surprisingly like the church portrayed in the book of Acts. Here are some of the characteristics of that church ...

1. All the churches in the Bible met in a home and functioned like a small spiritual family. The current institutional church, by contrast, spends a great deal of energy and money getting and maintaining a church building.
2. The churches in the Bible were simple. We describe "simple church" as a way of being/doing church where any believer could say, "I could do that!". ("they were astonished that Peter and John were unschooled, ordinary men" (Acts 4:13).) The institutional church, by contrast, requires highly educated, highly school (seminary, etc.) highly creative people to be successful. (Think Rick Warren, for instance.)
3. In the New Testament (NT) churches, everyone used their gifts. In institutional church, only a few, highly gifted people (worship leaders, preachers, etc.) use their gifts.
4. In NT church, Jesus brought the agenda for the meetings. In institutional churches, a few, very smart people design the worship experiences.
5. In the NT, churches were started in a few hours or a few days. Institutional churches require a great deal of planning and resources and take months or years to start.

Next step?

Want to learn more about doing/being church outside the institutional church? Check out a free four week course called Church 101.

Adapted from Felicity Dale's blog, Kingdom Women. Felicity Dale is an author and an advocate for women in the church. She trains people to start simple, organic house churches around the world.

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The Real Reason So Many Christians Are Leaving Church - Jennifer LeClaire

The Real Reason So Many Christians Are Leaving Church

5/18/2015 JENNIFER LECLAIRE  charisma news

Statistics about Christianity in America should both alarm and motivate pastors. (Flick/Creative Commons)

The number of Christians in America is dropping, according to a much-hyped Pew Research Study. If this isn't a wake-up call to pastors and churches across the nation, what is?

Here's the gist of the study: The number of Americans who identify with Christianity has dropped drastically in the last eight years. During that same time frame, people who didn't affiliate with any religion continued to grow in numbers.

Sam Rohrer, president of the American Pastors Network, says the findings are evidence of the greater impact pastors and churches must have on society.

"These statistics should alarm every Christian in America, yet they should serve to motivate every pastor and Christian to greater biblical obedience," Rohrer says. "In the early church, Christians 'turned the world upside down' because their faith in Jesus Christ had been put to the test and they experienced firsthand the transformative impacts of the gospel and unconquerable power of the truth of God's Word. Our nation is in desperate need of pastors and Christians with the early church's passion." 

Pew also reported that between 2007 and 2014, the number of Americans identifying as Christians fell from 78.4 percent (178.1 million people) to 70.6 percent (172.8 million people). And the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans rose from 16.1 percent to 22.8 percent in the same time frame—or about 60 million unaffiliated (including atheists, agnostics or those who claim "nothing in particular") Americans in 2014.

The decline in Christianity is exhibited across nearly all demographics, as the Pew report added, "while the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among women as well as men."

"The decline in Christianity in America is a call not simply for Americans to return to church but for the church itself to return to God's Word," Rohrer continues. "We know from research that too many pastors are not preaching the whole counsel of God's Word as it relates to societal issues, holy living and true discipleship. Therefore, many Americans are leaving the church because the church has left the authority of Scripture. It's past time for pastors to take a stand for obedience to biblical truth if we are to see God's blessing return to our nation."

Did you like this article? You'll enjoy Jennifer LeClaire's book, The Spiritual Warrior's Guide to Defeating Jezebel

Which One of These 8 Reasons Is Really Why Millennials Are Leaving the Church? - ROB SCHWARZWALDER

Is American Christianity trying too hard to be "cool"? (Flickr/Brett Jordan [edited])

Which One of These 8 Reasons Is Really Why Millennials Are Leaving the Church?

CHARISMANEWS  4/24/2014 ROB SCHWARZWALDER  

Many young people are leaving Evangelical churches. Statistics vary, but there is general consensus that large numbers of post-high school age Evangelical youth shed the faith of their fathers and mothers upon beginning their college years.

The reasons given are multiple. They include such things as over-identification of older Evangelicals as angry Right-wingers who disdain homosexuals and are skeptical of global warming; a subculture that is unwelcoming to the young and secular; Christianity's claim of exclusivity as to truth and salvation; and the general superficiality of the preaching and teaching.

Summing up much of this line of thinking, Carol Howard Merritt writes, "There are three major reasons that a younger generation is leaving Evangelicalism: pernicious sexism, religious intolerance, and conservative politics"

Yet this analysis, so neat and damning (and, for critics of Evangelicalism, rewardingly severe), seems woefully incomplete.

First, the idea that younger Evangelicals are jettisoning their youthful faith could well be overstated. University of Connecticut sociologist Bradley Wright, author of Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites and Other Lies You've Been Told, challenges the conventional wisdom regarding the young and Evangelical Protestantism:

Evangelicalism increased among all age groups from 1972 through the early 1990s, and it has decreased in all groups since then. The differences exist in rates of change, namely it's dropped among young people faster than older people. It's worth noting, however that the biggest drop of faith in young people happened in the 1990s, and that current levels are about the same as the early 1970s. 

Still, this doesn't alleviate the fact that a noticeable number of younger Evangelicals are departing from the pews in which they were raised. Let's also agree that the verbal and political excesses of some Evangelical conservative leaders have been off-putting and that personal friendships with gay men and lesbians make younger believers alert to real and perceived insults by believers of homosexuals.

But is the (supposed) ecclesiastical exodus of collegiate and post-collegiate Evangelicals really as simple as disgust with the excesses of political conservatism, discomfort with Christianity's claim of exclusivity regarding the path to salvation, a desire to "live green," and simply get along in an adverse society?

I propose several other reasons why some young people are leaving their Evangelical heritage. They are these:

1. Evangelical churches try so hard to be palatable and relevant that we become distasteful and irrelevant.

Desperate contemporaneity has become the coin of the age as Evangelicals make gasping efforts to draw in the disaffected. We preach on methods of achieving various kinds of success (with one or two Bible verses thrown in) instead of the books and themes of Scripture. We have become what Michael Patton calls "the entertainment driven church." After awhile, manic superficiality in the name of "relevance" induces cynicism, and rightfully so. As described by Alan Jamieson, "the institutional church" has become "irrelevant or unhelpful ... for so many reflective and intelligent believers today" (quoted in Julia Duin, Quitting Church, p. 175).

"We've taken a historic, 2,000 year old faith, dressed it in plaid and skinny jeans and tried to sell it as 'cool' to our kids," writes Marc Yoder. "It's not cool. It's not modern. What we're packaging is a cheap knockoff of the world we're called to evangelize."

This plunge into irrelevance through "relevance at any cost" is the fruit of a tepid theology and only further weakens the orthodox spine. This theological weakness is augmented by something we find decidedly uncomfortable raising: the sin of Eden, also known as pride. As an anonymous contributor to "Juicy Ecumenism" has written caustically:

A lot of people come up to me at conferences, to which, as a very successful hipster-progressive post-evangelical blogger, I have been invited to speak, asking me how they, too, can make a name for themselves as a voice for the disaffected semi-faithful ... The trick of post-evangelical blogging is to take the issue du jour, be it gay marriage, birth control, gun control, abortion, or assisted suicide, and re-interpret it as a fundamental and authentic challenge to the assumptions of the suburban evangelicalism which for you represents the sum total of Christian belief and experience. 

As King's College President Gregory Alan Thornbury writes, "If we cannot reconcile our theology with the sturdy basis for biblical Christianity that framed evangelicalism and once made it great, we will find ourselves and our children cut loose from our tradition" (Recovering Classic Evangelicalism, p. 208). This result must be unacceptable to those born of the Spirit.