My family and I drove into Hansen Dam Aquatic Center this past summer while a swarm of people were driving out.
At first, I didn’t think anything of it—people can leave for all sorts of reasons. Maybe they had been swimming for several hours and were finished. Maybe they realized the price was too high and didn’t feel like paying to play.
But as we neared the entrance, we could tell everyone was leaving, and that led us to begin asking serious questions.
“Why is everyone leaving?”
“Where is everyone going?”
“Is it closed?”
“What’s that cloud of smoke behind the center all about?”
It turned out, just over the hill was a raging forest fire and the authorities were evacuating everyone. In the end, we left too.
Anytime great swaths of people leave something, it forces us to wrestle with why.
Some of us may not feel like staring that question directly in the face—we may prefer to ignore the deeper questions of life altogether.
Others of us may feel a little unsettled about where it could lead us if we entertain possible answers for why people are leaving. It may feel more stable to conclude the issue lies with the ones leaving and not with what they have left.
Most of us eventually circle around to evaluate the deeper motives and realize that often when large groups of people leave the same thing the common denominator has to do with the thing they are leaving.
A lot of people are leaving the church, these days.
Ironically, it’s people who want more of God that leave. Those who couldn’t care less, seem to be okay with the way things are.
Why are people leaving?
Why are those who want God leaving the church?
Few are actually leaving the faith—they’re simply leaving conventional church. Some aren’t even leaving conventional church, they’re just crossing denominational boundaries.
I’ve grown up in the church. My dad’s a pastor, my wife and I both come from family’s involved in ministry all our lives.
As a family, ourselves, we’ve lived overseas serving with a mission organization, and are now in Los Angeles working with a church plant.
We’ve been on the cutting edge—not in the sense of trying new things, but in the sense of people who leave their church often pass us by on the way.
Not only that, we’ve interacted a lot with church leaders and those who care about why people leave.
I have heard people surmise about why others leave. Some conclude rather harsh things, such as, “They don’t want to be told what to do.” “They don’t want to submit to the commands of Christ.” Other’s come to much more naïve conclusions, like “They’re just finding themselves—everything’s fine.”
But perspective changes when I listen to those who are leaving. I hear things like, “I never felt cared for—I sensed closer community with people outside my church than those inside my church.”
I hear people whose parents never allowed them to question what the church did; or who, when they decided to leave, were told by those they loved that they were a great disappointment.
Some leave because the pastors are covering for one of the men struggling with sexual assault. They don’t like sin being covered up.
Others leave because their pastors are “coming down hard” on them for a certain sin—they don’t seem to have any grace.
My conclusion?
I think people are leaving because the church is burning up. The place is on fire.
What kind of fire am I talking about?
I’m talking about relationships.
People walk away because the relationships of those within their church were based more on a common way of thinking than on the fact that they were human and worth being treated and loved with dignity.
Nobody really cares about anything…until something external changes. Then, when the externals change, we cut off all communication.
We’ve lost the art of relating in tension.
We can’t stand tension. We don’t know how to handle opposing viewpoints. And instead of continuing to pursue those we don’t see eye to eye with, we use the Bible as evidence for disciplining or rebuking those who refuse to come to our side of the table.
We’re right; they’re wrong, and there’s nothing more to discuss unless they want to change.
A wrench is thrown into all of this, however, when people we love and have known all our lives decide they too need to leave–they too see smoke and a fire about to erupt. All of a sudden our world is shaken, and we are forced to reckon with whether we stay and try to put out the fire or join the throng and flee the scene.
When a group of people gathers around foundational doctrines that are supposed to transform the way humans relate with each other, yet fail to be transformed, it begs the question “Why stick around?”
Too much of the church has gathered around common ideas.
Everything changes in how we relate with each other when we discover we disagree on “fundamental doctrines.”
“What’s the Big Deal about the Head Covering?”
The tradition of men not covering their heads and women covering their heads serve as signs for remembering and showing honor of each other’s place in Christ, which helps us walk in unity.
It’s time we regather around a common relationship. It’s time we become more passionate about creating places of safety–even for elements of sin–then about getting everyone to where we’re at in life. And this is what happens when we gather around our relationship with Jesus.
When we center around Jesus who allowed himself to be touched by unclean women and socialized with the homeless and lesbians of his day, we open the doors for people to share their struggles and differences earlier on in their journeys.
And until we can do that, we can expect to see a lot more people leave.
As we go throughout this series, I’d love to hear your feedback. Feel free to share in the comments below why you think people are leaving the church.
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