The future of the church is five people sipping lattes while studying a copy of the Purpose Driven something or other. In 15 years, present trends continuing, the church in America will be half of what it is.
So says Julia Duin (pronounced “Deen”), the religion writer and assistant national editor for the Washington Times. Hardly a discontented rabble-rouser, Duin is a card-carrying Christian and award-winning journalist who has written a provocative new book, Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do About It (Baker Books).
Quitting Church differs from some recent works that pretty much dismiss the organized church as irrelevant in favor of some variety of (pick your flavor of the month) house church. Duin is committed to the church, and that’s why she takes us to task about what is at the heart of this exodus—namely, a lack of genuine “pastoral” care for one another.
Her book provides a captivating read, as you can see from the sample provided below. In an interview with YouthWorker Journal she provided additional insights.
Examining the Exodus
So it’s official: Evangelicals, for a variety of reasons, are heading out of church—not all of them and not everywhere, but the trend is undeniable. Sunday mornings at church have become too banal, boring or painful. Large groups of Christians are opting out of church because they find it impossible to stay.
In 2002, Barna gave Christianity Today “nine challenges” for American Christians.
1. Worship is stale: the “same old, same old.”
2. Evangelicals are watering down their theological beliefs.
3. Evangelical congregations are still by and large split into all-white, all-black or all-Hispanic groups. That shouldn’t be.
4. Many Christians, especially younger ones, don’t take the Bible seriously, especially on issues such as divorce and premarital sex.
5. Christianity in America has essentially no built-in cost.
6. Any expression of the supernatural has been excised from Sunday worship.
7. No one is ready for the fact that Gen Y Christians are going to radically reinvent the church.
8. U.S. churches tend to compete rather than cooperate.
9. There is a dearth of good leaders. Those who fill America’s pulpits, he said, are teachers—good people all—but not leaders with a vision.
After reading that, I began to wonder if the evangelical monolith is simply the emperor before losing his clothes. The form is there, but the substance—the strength and the people—has long departed.
My research fleshed out Barna’s data. Also, I ran across something impossible to measure in a survey: Many people I encountered were disappointed or perplexed in some way with God. They’d been Christians for more than a decade, and some had experienced serious suffering. The more honest ones admitted something was not working in their Christian faith. They were not connecting with God as to the reason for their sorrows; in fact, God seemed to be confounding their prayers. Their churches were useless in giving meaningful counsel; and if these people brought up their concerns in a Bible study, their doubts and anger toward God were frowned on by others in the group. They were like wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to a country that barely knew they were at war. Such people needed sermons on unanswered prayer, but their pastors were giving PowerPoint presentations on attaining breakthroughs.
My research suggested people are simply not being pastored. Often, ministers are out of touch with what’s happening on the ground, as they are surrounded by a wall of secretaries and voice mail. Congregants have to wait up to a month for an appointment, if they can get in at all. Once-a-week home Bible study groups lack depth and theological know-how for help with the serious problems many of us face. Many churches refer people to professional counseling that costs at least $75 an hour. Those lucky enough to have a health plan that pays for counseling usually find the only counselors on approved HMO lists have no concept of a Christian worldview.
I ran into demographic groups, such as men and singles, who have abandoned the church in large numbers because they are fed up with their needs never being addressed. Singles are the largest demographic among the unchurched. A third group, working moms, is about to join those two demographics. Many people no longer are content to waste part of their Sundays on an institution that gives them nothing.
Other concerns that alienate people are church scandals, irrelevancy, an inefficient leadership model, the quenching of supernatural spiritual gifts during Sunday worship, clergy who are too controlling of passive congregations, the impersonal nature of the typical service—and the list goes on.
This book is an attempt to get at the roots of these problems, understand why people are bailing out, and offer some ideas—my own and those of others—on what would bring them back. The hour is not too late; but if nothing is done, this exodus of desperation, this boycott, will continue.
Going Deeper
Recently, YouthWorker Journal writer Steven Todd, spoke with Julia Duin.
YouthWorker Journal: Julia, if I might “cut to the chase,” why did you write such a negative book?
Julia Duin: People don’t listen to subtleties any more. Trying to be “positive” just does not work. Plus, there are a lot of things wrong with the American church, and lots of folks are bailing out rather than working within the system. It used to be people stayed and worked—and worked from within to reform things; but now…the feeling is no one listens, so it’s a waste of time to knock one’s head against the wall. The church is seen as a closed system that is impossible to change.
YWJ: You make some rather dire observations about the future of the “organized” church. Is there any hope?
JD: It’s not going to die tomorrow, but there are some real problems on the horizon. Most churches simply are not relevant to the average person. The typical congregant used to have more free time; but now, people are looking for ways to carve out more time for themselves, and they see Sunday mornings as a real time waster. So out goes church attendance. I think there is hope for churches that use and practice the charismatic gifts (remember back in the ’70s when things were so exciting you didn’t want to miss a service?), where it’s easy to get to know people and where the preaching is far more sophisticated than what typically comes from the pulpit.
YWJ: Your book primarily addressed the adult population. Do you see similar trends among the youth culture?
JD: Although I am not a specialist on youth ministries, I do think young people see the church as irrelevant. What attracts them is the radical stuff, such as the folks I met during TheCall gathering here in D.C. in August where 50,000 people prayed and fasted for 12 hours on the Mall. One local house of prayer stationed teenagers in front of the Supreme Court 24/7 with tape on their mouths to portray the helplessness of the aborted. I did a whole column on why these youth are involved in such things and the reaction they got from bystanders. They loved the radicalism of it all. Churches or ministries that challenge youth will do well. Youth have an inherent nobility and a desire to do great things that has not yet been ground into the dirt by the disappointments of life.
YWJ: Do some of the large youth conference movements (Aquire the Fire, Desperation Conferences, etc.) seem to buck the trend; or, in your opinion, are they merely blips on the screen?
JD: All the creativity—what there is of it—is going toward youth ministry. There are some bright lights. The problem is, what happens to these folks once they turn 35? In previous books I have written about singles in churches, I’ve researched how there is this invisible age limit beyond which no one receives ministry. The young are like unplowed ground. They have not come up yet with the mid-life crises where none of the tried-and-true answers shoveled out by the typical church are working. If you read up at all about the mess in Lakeland, Fla., with the pseudo-evangelist Todd Bentley, you may have noticed on the YouTube videos how much of the audience was young people who had not wised up to what charlatans look like. The older Christians could see through this guy far better than they.
YWJ: You say a lack of pastoral care for individuals is a major factor in the shrinking of the church. What should be a youth pastor’s primary focus?
JD: Give these kids a realistic idea of what’s ahead for the next 40 to 60 years. I wish someone had warned me my prayers would not always be answered (We always were told they would be.), that I might experience suffering (which I have), and how to weather crises without believing God had walked out on me. No one—NO ONE—prepared me for hard times.
YWJ: Some detractors might suggest your conclusions are driven by a discontented minority. Your thoughts?
JD: It is still a significant minority, usually the most experienced people in the church. It’s the over-35 set who have some track with the Lord (how else to express it?) who are leaving. These are the fathers and mothers in a congregation. Churches cannot afford this spiritual brain drain. Why would you bore to death and drive off your best members? Calling the leave-takers a small slice of the pie is just an excuse to not deal with the increasing numbers of folks who are opting out.
YWJ: What do you hope will be the result of people reading your book?
JD: I am not for the end of the church at all. I wish people would read my criticisms and put in some honest effort to change things. The estrangement and disenchantment are really out there. There are immense spiritual battles people face when they get to middle-age, and far too often the church is not there for them. Pastors have only simplistic answers to give to life’s very complex problems. The honeymoon of their early Christian involvement is very much over. Finally, people come to see going to church as a time waster, and they drop out. If church leaders would put into practice even one chapter’s worth of recommendations, I’d be happy.
