Many have been saying it for years. It’s important that we start listening.
The Church in North America is dying.
Anyone over 50 in your church today who grew up in a church sees this. They know it is not what it once was. They may have moments of nostalgia, where they wish things could return to how they used to be. Or maybe they are deeply concerned that their kids are no longer attending church. Their grandchildren have not been to church in months or years. There is a problem.
At the end of 2023, Jim Davis & Michael Graham published a new book chronicling what is happening. It’s called The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?
Let me say at the beginning that you need to read this book. Full stop. If you are a pastor or church leader, this book will help you and your team diagnose some of the issues faced by the North American Church.
Having said that, I do also admit that I have a love/hate relationship with this book. I hate the fact that a book like this is needed, and I hate that people do not already see the solutions discussed here. But I love the fact that Davis and Graham are balanced in their approach to the problems and solutions.
They define a Dechurched person as “someone who used to go to church at least once per month but now goes less than once a year” (xxii). According to Davis & Graham, this equates to about 15.5% of the U.S. population or 40 million people.
Through significant research and assessments, they categorized the different types of dechurched people into five groupings. This is part 2 of the book.
- Cultural Christians – Those who casually attended church because it was the thing to do.
- Dechurched Mainstream Evangelicals (DME) – Those who were serious about their faith at one point and the busyness of life overtook them.
- Exvangelicals – Those who have been so hurt by the church that they say they will never attend a church again. The authors refer to them as “dechurched casualties” (69).
- Dechurched BIPOC – Those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. They are overwhelmingly male and used to attend an evangelical church.
- Dechurched Mainline Protestants and Catholics – Those who grew up attending mainline churches (this one is self-explanatory).
While it is important to get a picture of the different types of dechurched, the book’s best parts are after that. In part 3, they advise on how to engage the dechurched, and then in part 4, they share lessons the church needs to learn.
One of the greatest lessons to learn is how many people are willing to return to church someday. My favorite part of the book is this admonition:
“That day will perpetually remain tomorrow until someone invites them back to the community of God’s people. If there is one single application from our research that you walk away with, please let it be this: invite your dechurched friends back to a healthy church with you. But unlike a simple nudge to go back to the gym, we would do well to open the doors of our homes and chairs at our table. We aren’t just telling them they should go back to church; we are inviting them into our lives, which includes church” (123).
This hits home for me and our team. This is what we teach through MyCircle Training. We want to help churches love lost people purposefully. Be in their lives. Be their friends. Invite them to dinner. Spend time with them. Invite them to be part of your life, which includes church.
I wish I could require every pastor I know to read part 4 of this book.
- Chapter 13: Confessional and Missional. Their main point in the chapter is that you can’t be one or the other. You need to be both. It’s not just about content above context or vice versa. It’s not just about being engaged in your community or biblical truth. It’s both.
- Chapter 14: Embracing Exile. Yes, our world is not what it once was. But it has never been about this Country or our world. We are exiles as Christians. They say, “A common thread throughout all of church history is that the more Christians lose in this world for Jesus, the more willing they have been to talk about Jesus” (217).
- Chapter 15: Five Exhortations to Church Leaders. I’ll just share one now (grab the book for the rest of them). Be Patient. While we want God to conform to our time schedules, that’s not how things work. Trust Him and wait on Him.
They end the book with the account of the Prodigal Son.
“Having the conform of Christ and his gospel means we have something to offer those who may one day, by God’s grace, choose to return. Because if they do, and some of them will, it will be incumbent upon us not to stay back and glare in suspicion and jealousy like the older brother. If we are still here when that moment comes, it will be our responsibility to drop everything and run along-side the Father to welcome them home. To remain in the church means to continue to identify as a child of the Father, and ours is a Father who runs after prodigals. Let us then pray for grace to remain and grace to run” (239).
Grab the book.
Read it with your leadership team.
Pray for those who have left.
Mobilize your people to love the unlovely.
Engage the lost.
Share Jesus.
Trust God.
