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Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2007

Grace Church of Burlington October 14, 2007 “The Church is like Noah’s Ark. You couldn’t stand the stench inside if it weren’t for the storm of God’s judgement on the outside.”                                   Warren W. Wiersbe    Do your neighbors or friends go to church? If not, do you know why? Their reasons may not be the ones you'd expect.    Recently, LifeWay Research conducted a survey of formerly churched adults in America, hoping to uncover certain trends about the “de-churched.” While the results gave a great deal of insight into the minds of the formerly churched and why they left, they also revealed some common themes on how to bring them back. The findings were cause for both worry and encouragement.  Most of us know someone who is a professing believer who no longer attends church. And it's no surprise that the U.S. Church is in a general state of decline. The magnitude of the decline, however, is staggering. Of the 300 million people in the United States, fewer than 20% regularly attend church. The research even suggests that close to 7.9 million people may be leaving churches annually. Crunch the numbers, and you realize that our churches are probably seeing more than 150,000 people walk away each week!    So why did they leave? LifeWay’s research revealed several common themes as to why such a sizable segment of the local church body is choosing the exit door.   1) Change in life situation. The No. 1 reason for leaving church is a life change that prompted people to stop attending worship. Nearly 60% of de-churched people said that some adjustment to their lives is the primary reason why they no longer attend church. Specifically, one-third of the formerly churched believe they’re simply too busy for church. To them, life changes—often family or home needs—are as important or more important than attending a local church. Several people reported that family responsibilities were causing them to feel too busy to attend church. And women (64%) are more likely than men (51%) to feel this increased pressure from home responsibilities. One of the more surprising results about the formerly churched was the tendency to blame a physical move away from their home church as a reason for not returning to any church. About 28% of those reporting lifestyle changes said that a move to a new location caused them to stay away from the Church. Such a reason for leaving the Church demonstrates a great need for more outwardly focused churches. When a person or family moves to a new place and feels no motivation to join another church, it's up to congregations within that community to reach out to them.    2) Disenchantment with the church. A large number of the de-churched claim they're disenchanted with the current state of their church. And 37% say this disillusionment is one of the primary reasons for leaving. Perhaps even more surprising than this percentage are the reasons for their cynicism. One major factor is their view of the pastor. They perceive the pastor to be judgmental, insincere and lacking good preaching abilities.    It's interesting to note that only 15% of those who feel displeasure with the church say it's due to a moral or ethical failure of the church leadership. While the local and national press often have a field day with moral breakdowns of pastors, that's not a major contributing factor to people deciding to leave the Church.     3) The unloving church. Not only is the pastor a contributing factor to discontentment within the church, the way the formerly churched perceived the people within the church also motivated their leaving. Of the formerly churched who expressed dissatisfaction with those in the church, 45% said the other members were judgmental and hypocritical.    In 1 Corinthians 1:10, the apostle Paul urged the church to preserve unity, having "no divisions" within the body. The research shows that unity is key in the success of a church maintaining a healthy percentage of its members. If church members hold grudges against each other and don't seek to sustain harmony within the body, people will leave. Of those who said the church is unloving, many left because they didn't believe God was at work within it. Clearly, for God to use a local body for His glory, it must keep a balance of unity and love.   4) Not Christians. One of the biggest mission fields may be the people sitting in church every week. While we will ever know how many attending worship are believers, many are leaving the Church because they never were Christians. Our survey found that about a quarter of people leaving the Church expressed a change in beliefs or simply lost interest in religion. Of that group of people, 62% stated that they had stopped believing in organized religion altogether.  Don't miss the enormity of this issue. Not only are people leaving the Church, but many are coming in and out of our doors without meeting Christ. Inevitably, some will simply refuse to accept Christ no matter how evangelistically healthy a church becomes. But a large group of people, who could be reached for Christ, are leaving the Church.    People will always leave churches. Some of it is unpreventable but at the same time, Biblically, we must do what we can. We must make sure that we are not doing things like being unloving, unchristlike or carnal, that might drive them away. We must continually seek to demonstrate love for one another and unity in the body, as we’ve been studying in 1 John. We must continually work at being the family that God desires for us to be. We must also not assume that just because someone sits next to us in church, that they truly know the Lord. How tragic that someone could attend our church for any period of time and not really know Christ.    Next week I’ll use this column to talk about some ways we can work at ministering to the de-churched and seek to bring them back.