Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It [Hardcover]

Julia Duin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2008

Several recent studies reveal that churches across America are hemorrhaging--they are losing members at a life-threatening rate. Intrigued and disturbed by what appears to be an epidemic, Julia Duin, a religion reporter for the Washington Times, amassed research on the issue, interviewed many who have left church, and attended numerous churches in hopes of making sense of this phenomenon. Quitting Church reveals the startling findings of her research. It explains to church leaders why this mass exodus is happening--and what can be done to reverse it. Beginning with the cold, hard facts, Duin then takes readers through a number of issues that influence a person's decision to leave the church, including irrelevancy, hidden suffering, family-centric programming that leaves singles out, impersonal or bland worship services, a lack of biblical literacy, and much more. This eye-opening book will be essential reading for pastors, ministry leaders, and churchgoers who wish to bring these disenchanted Christians back into their midst.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Duin brings two kinds of experiences to bear in this engaging little jeremiad: as religion editor for the Washington Times, she is in her element marshaling statistics, interviewing authors and clergy, and commenting on the trend of faithful evangelicals who increasingly vote with their feet by leaving their churches. But she's also a self-described born-again evangelical herself, coping with the personal pain of not having a viable and permanent church home. Drawing heavily on research by pollster George Barna, Duin diagnoses a widespread dissatisfaction among evangelicals, who feel their churches do a decent job with new Christians but fall far short with mature believers. In particular, Duin shows, women and singles are leaving churches in ever-greater numbers. (As a single woman herself, she discusses her own experiences with being marginalized while successfully evoking a larger context through research and polls.) Duin has some prescriptions to help with these problems, including meatier sermons that address real issues; house churches and micro-churches that foster more genuine community; and even in-church matchmaking services to help singles who want to find a mate. (Sept.)
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From the Inside Flap

As a successful religion reporter, Julia Duin has heard from many--and experienced in her own life--the difficulty of feeling connected to churches that too often seem disconnected from real-life pressures and unresponsive to personal needs. Yet she was surprised to discover just how many, from all walks of life, are simply giving up and quitting the traditional church altogether. Her journalistic yet personal exploration of this church-leaving epidemic offers pastors and church leaders a helpful first step in understanding and engaging the true spiritual and practical needs of church-weary and church-less believers.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Baker Books (September 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801068231
• ISBN-13: 978-0801068232
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #778,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sept. 2 review from the Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2008

By 

Evangelical2 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It (Hardcover)

Sunday Morning, Staying Home
By TERRY EASTLAND
September 2, 2008; Page A21

Quitting Church
By Julia Duin
(BakerBooks, 186 pages, $17.99)
[Sunday Morning, Staying Home]

By now we know that evangelical Protestants -- generally supportive of Republican candidates but eagerly courted by Democrats this year -- are a crucial voting bloc in the November election. Thus it was big news when Rick Warren, the evangelical megachurch pastor, recently asked both John McCain and Barack Obama about their religious beliefs, in part to address the concerns of church-going "value voters." But what about the evangelicals themselves? Is all well within their communities? Is their own passion for church-going as strong as their supposed political passion?

According to Julia Duin, a religion reporter for the Washington Times, more and more evangelicals are in fact fleeing their churches. Indeed, Ms. Duin regards church-quitting, at least among evangelicals, as nothing less than an epidemic. The problem, in her view, is not in the souls of the church quitters but in the character of the churches they choose to leave. "Something," she observes, "is not right with . . . evangelical church life."

The faults she points to -- relying on her own reporting and survey data -- are many. They are surprising, too, running counter to the stereotype of evangelicals bonding happily in their churches. She reports, among other things: a lack of a feeling of community among church members, inducing loneliness and boredom; church teaching that fails to go beyond the basics of the faith or to reach members grappling with suffering or unanswered prayer; pastors who are either out of touch with their parishioners or themselves unhappy, or who fail to shepherd their flocks, or who are caught up in scandal, or who try to control the lives of church members in a high-handed way. She claims that many churches have "inefficient leadership models" and that many, preoccupied with the care of families, neglect single people.

Women in particular leave evangelical churches, Ms. Duin says, because they are asked to do too little by their churches. Ms. Duin, who has a seminary degree, writes: "I have been one of those unwanted women for years." In fact, Ms. Duin's interest in her subject is partly autobiographical: She left a church in 2001 and didn't find a new one until 2007. She has lived through the process of church-quitting, and she has interviewed a lot of people with the same experience.

There is no doubt some truth in what Ms. Duin reports. But is there truly an epidemic of church- quitting? She says that evangelical churches, which for decades increased their numbers at impressive rates, are today growing "only appreciably." If so, church-quitting may be one reason. But so, too, may be the undisputed demographic fact -- not explored in "Quitting Church" -- that evangelical parents are having fewer children these days. And the church-membership surveys Ms. Duin cites do not include nondenominational churches. They tend to be large and evangelical, and their growth rate remains strong.

If the trend Ms. Duin describes is not as big as she thinks, her concern is still understandable. It is truly disturbing -- to some of us, anyway -- to hear of a longtime church-goer deciding to stay home on Sunday mornings and read, yes, the New York Times; or to hear of a best-selling evangelical author quitting his church and arguing that leaving the institutional church is something that "mature Christians" should do. Whatever the incidence of church-quitting, it is not a happy development for those who regard public worship as essential to the Christian life.

What is the answer? For Ms. Duin, churches will have to become places that people feel eager to attend -- "decent" churches, as she puts it. She calls for better teaching, better preaching and better pastors, who are in touch with the lives of their worshippers -- in short, for better churches, where "community" is cultivated, women are taken more seriously and singles can find mates. With such changes, "people will begin craving church instead of quitting church, and the exodus will be no more."

Perhaps, but Ms. Duin's brief is more sociological than theological, as if a church exists to "serve needs," like any other community organization. It does so in a way, of course, but it exists primarily to serve biblical purposes. Ms. Duin does say that churches should "concentrate on discipleship," and here she hits on a theological point: The church's mission -- as defined in the Gospel of Matthew -- is to make disciples of all nations by teaching them everything that Christ commanded. That imperative entails teaching what is termed "the whole counsel of God" and not the Christianity lite that Ms. Duin finds in many evangelical churches.

According to Ms. Duin, churches dedicated to making disciples will "do well in this era of dumbed-down, purpose-driven, seeker-friendly Christianity." But is that really true? From a theological perspective, there is no guarantee that churches will prosper as they attempt to make disciples -- if we judge prosperity by church membership alone. A church might conscientiously carry out its biblical tasks and yet, by measures of popularity, do poorly in this world. Such a church would not be doing right if it adjusted its mission for the sake of higher attendance records. Note that by the end of his ministry the number of disciples with Jesus was down to 12. Now there was a decent church, one might say, if a small one.

Mr. Eastland is the publisher of The Weekly Standard.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poor Research, March 18, 2009

By 

Tom C. Abella (Fairfax, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It (Hardcover)

I was looking forward to this book, but quickly found myself disappointed with the methodology used in it. Duin begins well enough by stating the problem: more and more Americans are leaving their churches (both in weekly service attendance and in outside activities). The follow-up point is well-made and certainly interesting: those who are leaving their church are not abandoning their faith, but are seeking alternative avenues to understand and explore it (such as attending "house churches" or doing their own research).

However, after this intriguing start, the remainder of the book feels flimsy. In chapter after chapter, we hear one description after another of (a) reasons people give for leaving their church, (b) inventive new paths that some people are trying, and (c) recent history of failed attempts at inventiveness. The real failure is in Duin's inability to make persuasive judgments (indeed, almost any judgments) about anything beyond the complaints of people who have left their church.

Page after page after page is filled with direct quotes from people who have left their church, with their own opinions, memories and anecdotes being presented as fact (often following up a poll or study). Time and again we hear about people leaving their church because the pastor was "too controlling." In my own experience, such claims are often made by people who present unworkable, poorly-planned or -executable ideas and are rejected. Duin, unfortunately, piles these anecdotes together as though they were actual evidence.

Let me stop for a moment and state something clearly: I don't have any idea whether or not most pastors are, indeed, too controlling. My objection in this book is that individual accounts are stacked 10' high without any apparent attempt to get the other side of the story. For all I know, all of these people are correct and their pastors are too controlling. Perhaps 50% of them really are too controlling, and 50% people coming forward with unreasonable/unworkable ideas (which would certainly be an interesting discussion to have). If there was a little more research into the particulars of each relationship, Duin would make a stronger case. Of course, such reporting might uncover information that goes against her own preconceived notions of what is wrong with churches based on her own personal experiences.

Ultimately, this is the biggest problem I have with the book. Duin begins by starting her own personal journey and dissatisfaction with church, before documenting nearly a dozen different areas in which people are feeling dissatisfied with their church (and subsequently left). Again, each topic is simply described through an occasional poll or study and backed up by anecdotes, but rarely does she attempt to draw a larger lesson. Finally, the book essentially concludes by saying that churches should be more like the ones that she used to enjoy attending, though she doesn't mention how that would address at least 2/3rds of the problems that she documents.

There are a few rare glimmers in the text of hope; unfortunately, none of them are ever discussed in great detail. Perhaps the most striking to me was the serious lack of discussion of the methods and practices of Mormons. While not a member of their church, it seems to me that in a book trying to understand (a) why people are leaving their churches, and (b) what churches can do to reverse the situation, it might be a good idea to take a look at a very large Christian denomination that is growing by leaps and bounds. The one time they are mentioned, they would seem to be the model to which churches should aspire (requiring their children to spend an hour each morning reading from the Bible and studying), but Duin doesn't draw any conclusions from this.

I was ultimately very disappointed in this book (after seeing the good reviews and some positive mentions of it by people I respect). What would have been much better would have been a methodology akin to that found in "Good to Great" , where the authors set out to identify companies that transformed themselves into highly-performing organizations. Though it studies business, the book is really about ways that any organization of any size can improve itself (if your church is underperforming, I'd recommend a copy of G2G before this). I would have been much more interested if Duin had been able to hold up churches (or even whole denominations) who were bucking the nationwide trends and increasing their numbers, identify common threads between them, and compare them to those churches that were losing members. Instead, what I got was a long, long list of people's complaints about their old churches without anything tying it all together.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fair Assessment, October 30, 2008

By 

Daniel L. Moore "dpastordan" (Piney Point, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It (Hardcover)

This is a fair assessment of what is happening in portions of the American Church today. Duin includes interviews and observations of those who were once active and then became burnt out with church life. What she describes are a symptom of deeper issues in church life today. Also, there is a heavy emphasis on those who experienced the charimatic movement of the 60's. Many of those interviewed in this work, including the author, were products of that movement. There is no real solution as the issues vary from church to church. Basically, this is a diagonsis that says, "There is a problem." Duin offers some suggestions on how churches can attempt to reconnect with the departed but unless there is a move of God...this will continue to be a challenge in the church in America.