From the Pastors Desk

Where Did Everyone Go?

From the Pastors Desk - August 11, 2024

I don’t think any of us can argue that church attendance is down significantly since the pandemic. This is not something that just affects Good Shepherd. It is affecting a significant amount of churches across the United States. In order to address the issue and increase attendance, which all churches aim to do, we first must understand why the decrease is occurring. The rest of this article will contain excerpts from an article from the Washington Post by author, Bob Smietana, entitled The Great Dechurching looks at why people are leaving churches.

A new book by Jim Davis and Michael Graham , “The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?” looks at the decline in church attendance in recent years. Davis and Graham knew of a number of people who had stopped going to church, and the two pastors started wondering how common that was. With the help of friends, they raised about $100,000 and enlisted the help of two political scientists who survey religious trends in the U.S. — Ryan Burge at Eastern Illinois University and Paul Djupe of Denison University — to create what they think is the largest-ever study of folks who stopped going to church.

That study, combined with other data about America’s changing religious landscape, led them to a sobering conclusion.

“More people have left the church in the last 25 years than all the new people who became Christians from the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, and Billy Graham crusades combined,” Davis and Graham write in their book, “The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?”

Davis and Graham said they wanted the study to be informative and rigorous, which is why they decided to work with academic researchers. The study included a survey of 1,043 Americans to determine the scope of dechurching — which was defined as having attended service at least once a month in the past and now attending less than once a year. That initial survey found that about 15% of Americans are dechurched.

A second phase included a survey with detailed questions for 4,099 dechurched Americans. Their answers were sorted in clusters using machine learning, said Burge — creating groups of people who had statistically similar answers to questions.

Burge said the book’s surveys build on previous studies of the nones as well as studies showing the decline of congregational life in the United States. The 2020 Faith Communities Today study, for example, found the median congregation in the United States stood at 65 people, down from 137 two decades ago.

A recent look at the effect of the covid-19 pandemic found that the median congregation in 2023 is now 60 people. The Pew Research Center projects that nones could make up as much as half the population by 2070

The dechurching study eventually yielded profiles of different kinds of dechurched Americans: ”cultural Christians,” who attended church in the past but had little knowledge about the Christian faith; “mainstream evangelicals,” a group of mostly younger dropouts; “exvangelicals,” an older group who had often been harmed by churches and other Christian institutions; “dechurched BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) Americans,” who were overwhelmingly Black and male; and “dechurched mainline Protestants and Catholics,” who had much in common despite their theological differences.

The researchers also sorted dechurched Americans into two major categories: the “casually dechurched,” who lost the habit of attending services because they moved or had scheduling conflicts; and “church casualties,” who stopped attending because of conflict or because they’d experienced harm.

Each of the five profiles had a wide range of reasons for leaving their churches and why they might be open to returning. For so-called cultural Christians, they left in part because their friends weren’t there (18%) and because attending was not convenient (18%) but also because of gender identity (16%) or church scandal (16%).

Mainstream evangelicals dropped out because they moved (22%) or services were inconvenient (16%) but also because they did not feel much love in church (12%). Exvangelicals in this study left because they did not fit in (23%), because they did not feel much love in the congregation (18%), because of negative experiences with evangelicals (15%) and because they no longer believed (14%). Many BIPOC dechurched Americans left in their early 20s, often because they did not fit in (19%) or had bad experiences (11%). Mainline Protestants left because they moved (25%) or because they had other priorities (15%) or did not fit in (14%), while Catholics who are dechurched said they did so because they had other priorities (16%) or had different politics than others in their parish (15%) or the clergy (15%).

The dechurched also differ in why they might return. Mainstream evangelicals were looking for friendship, while mainline and Catholic dechurched Americans were more interested in spiritual practices and outreach programs.

Many dechurched Americans might return to churches if they found a stable and healthy congregation, Davis and Graham said. But those congregations aren’t always easy to find, given the level of polarization affecting churches and other institutions.

Among other findings, Americans who have higher levels of education or are more successful in life are less likely to drop out. That concerned Davis, who worries that churches only work for people on the so-called success path in life.

Despite the sobering statistics, Davis and Graham remain hopeful about the future and end their book with a set of exhortations for church leaders.

Part of their advice: Be patient. The Great Dechurching didn’t happen overnight and won’t be reversed quickly. Congregations will need what the authors call “relationship wisdom” and a “quiet, calm and curious demeanor” where leaders are quick to listen and slow to speak.

And that, my friends, is what we are up against. A group of people who have left the church under varied circumstances, but one thing they all have in common is their lack of presence in the church pews. How to entice these folks to return to church will be a hefty task. It looks like we have our work cut out for us!

Faithfully,

Lei Fahrner