“For the first time in eight decades that Gallup has tracked American religious membership, more adults in the United States do not attend church than attend church,” write Jim Davis and Michael Graham. “This is not a gradual shift; it is a jolting one.” Over the past 25 years, almost 40 million Americans stopped attending churches.
Jim and Michael commissioned Dr. Ryan Burge (Baptist pastor and political science professor at Eastern Illinois University) to study and analyze what they’ve dubbed “the great dechurching.” They found that dechurching wasn’t limited to specific sociological categories or denominations. Instead, it’s wide-reaching.
Their 2023 book The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? explores exactly what the subtitle says. The authors divide those who have left churches into three categories, explain the driving factors behind their leaving, and offer potential steps to reconnect the dechurched with a local body of Christ.
Along with many other denominations, the Presbyterian Church in America believes that the local church is an important part of our walk with the Lord. This is, of course, biblical. See Hebrews 10:24-25, Colossians 3:16, or Acts 2 for examples set by the early Church.
The Church is where we can hear the Word preached, worship together, partake in communion, and practice serving, being served, and living in unity. A local body of Christ is also a home base from which we step out in mission to our local communities. Because we want believers to be connected to a local church and we want to open our church doors to seekers and unbelievers, the current dechurching trend is sobering.
In the book, the authors add two other implications that even non-Christians might care about. First, religious nonprofits account for about 40% of America’s social safety net. Assuming those who have left churches practiced tithing and giving while in church, potentially $25 million is no longer entering that social safety net.
Second, the authors write, “Institutions play a key role in holding society together.” They explain that churches help people practice being in community with those who are different from them.
Neil Placer and Rob McGarvey, members of Grace+Peace in Ooltewah, TN, talked with Michael on season three, episode five of their podcast, “A World in Tension.” Michael explained that when he and Jim heard that half of their city (Orlando, FL) was dechurched, it saddened them. They enlisted the help of Dr. Burge because “there just wasn’t enough data that was either recent or granular enough to be actionable from a philosophy of ministry standpoint.”
The book defines “dechurched” as someone who used to go to church at least once a month but now goes less than once a year. Michael told Neil and Rob that the book’s target audience is primarily churchgoers who miss those who’ve left. Clergy and those in ministry are a secondary audience, and people interested in sociological and cultural shifts are the tertiary audience.
In addition to Neil and Rob (who fall into the primary audience), a number of pastors within the Tennessee Valley Presbytery (who fall into both the primary and secondary audiences) read the book and participated in a video meeting with Michael last fall.
One of these pastors was Hutch Garmany who said, “Some big takeaways for me were how many of those who have left are very open to returning. They are the low-hanging fruit. Also, I was struck by one of the author’s primary suggestions for the church moving forward and reaching those who have left: hospitality. They shared that hospitality can be a powerful and effective strategy (also of course a thoroughly biblical strategy!) for winning them back.”
The Great Dechurching reports that 51% of dechurched evangelicals said that they would be willing to try church again, and many still held orthodox beliefs. What they need is a friend to invite them back. However, the authors make it clear that hospitality and invitations back to church are not solely the responsibility of pastors; these must be authentic, natural practices of the church members, rather than programmatic or institutional plans and goals.
As Matt Rogers wrote in his review of the book (published by The Gospel Coalition), “It’s unlikely that simply doing church better, inventing new programs or polishing old ones, or other top-down, event-driven plans are going to halt the dechurching pattern. Churches need bottom-up, member-driven approaches that prioritize simple conversations and verbal witness in neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and dining rooms.”
The Great Dechurching also addresses the ever-increasing political and social polarization of our nation, explaining that some groups left church because of politics. The authors write, “There is no such thing as a Christianity with no political implications…the gospel comes with an ethic that will always overlap with our national political conversation.”
Therefore, as Matt explained in his review, “Churches and their pastors can’t merely stay out of politics. However, they must hone the skill of prioritizing the gospel center along with exhorting their congregations regarding the implications of these gospel truths, while avoiding undue partisanship.”
Citing the political division in our country, Michael told Neil and Rob, “Going into this thing, I didn’t have a whole lot of hope. What am I gonna do about all that stuff? I can’t change any of those things.”
However, he, Jim, and Ryan found that most people left for pragmatic reasons and are willing to return. Micheal says, “That’s something I can do something about. I can love the people that God is consistently putting right in front of me.”
One particularly difficult group is labeled as “exvangelicals” by the authors. This group is unwilling to return to an evangelical church but would consider other Christian groups. Exvangelicals hold liberal views that are not in line with the Bible, hence their major disagreements with evangelical churches.
Explaining to Neil and Rob how we can interact with exvangelicals, Michael says, “You can be sitting across the table from someone who you disagree with vehemently on ideas. I’m not asking you to change your ideas. That’s not what Paul meant by ‘becoming all things to all people.’ But what you can often do is validate their experience of the world. Even when you have significant disagreements ideologically, you can often validate people’s emotions.”
Michael also explains the long-term implications of the current dechurching trend, saying, “A generation of dechurched people are going to raise a generation of unchurched kids.” However, he sees tremendous hope in churchgoers’ ability to reconnect with their dechurched friends and neighbors.
Neil and Rob’s next episode featured their pastor (Benjie Slaton) and Matt Busby (senior associate pastor of The Mission Chattanooga, an Anglican church). Partly inspired by The Great Dechurching’s discussion of polarizing views and the need for unity, Neil and Rob wanted to practice talking about differences in denominational beliefs while providing an example of relationships that can handle dissonance.
When the discussion turned to why being physically together at church is important, Matt described the deep richness found in church that starkly contrasts our society’s empty individualism. He said, “There’s a thick identity that’s being shaped on Sunday that can then send me out into the world.” In both his and Benjie’s experience, this “thick identity” is drawing even those who are on their way out of the church back into church community.
Benjie added, “I think one of the best things we can proclaim in the Western world right now is that you are not the center of the world; Jesus is.”
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