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

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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.

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.

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.

In this thought-provoking book, author, journalist and committed-Christian Julia Duin looks at the epidemic of people simply walking away from church. And they are not just walking away from one church, virtually every Christian denomination is experiencing this phenomenon, with the Catholic church experiencing growth fueled entirely by immigration (which masks the flight of older members). Ms. Duin searched across the length and breadth of the United States, talking to those who left church, and those who stayed. What is it that people want from church that they are not getting? Ah, there's the rub.

I must admit to being of two minds about this book. First of all, I must say that I think that the author did a great job of casting a wide net, and really getting to what people are thinking. My problem is that, it seems to me, the people don't really know what they want. For example, right after pointing out that congregants wanted deeper more committed preaching of the Bible, she told the story of a pastor who burned out because he changed his view of scripture, and came under the attack of "packs of wolves" who did not like his more liberal view of the Bible.

The author experienced a profound and life-changing religious experience in the 1970s, during the "Boom Awakening," when she attended a church that practiced a form of Christian communitarianism, really making Christianity come alive for her. However, the problem is, as I can tell you as a student of Christian communistic movements, that Christian communistic communities tend to be short-lived, rarely outlasting the initial firebrands that began them, with most of them not lasting anything like that long. Where are the old 1960s and 70s churches that held property in common, how many are still the dynamic organizations they were 30 and 40 years ago? As the author herself found out, not many. The people themselves changed and moved on.

So, while I really found the author's research to be fascinating, I am not sure that it supports her conclusions. What do the congregants want, and is it possible to make a church that can be all things to all people in such an individualistic society? I'm not sure that I know, and I am not sure they do either.

Review: by Stephanie S. Sawyer

Quitting Church
By Julia Duin, Religion Editor, The Washington Times
Baker Books 2008 ISBN 978-0-8010-6823-2


When Julia Duin, Religion Editor of The Washington Times, gave us Quitting Church, she filled a void oft felt by scores of parishioners and former congregants that is simply not heard in the institution of the church. We have waited for this book a long time.

Julia defines and brings to light what thousands of us who are fleeing already know deep within. ("It was not enriching their experience of God," p.170). Quitting Church will not only enlighten those staff who will dare to read it, but also break the isolation of those who know the despair of the loss so deeply felt after having known the glory of what a church can be.

Julia reveals the depth of the errant attitudes in the church today as it has drifted from the powerful proclamative and charismatic draws known forty to fifty years ago at the height of the Jesus Movement. The church's appeal through open community, discipleship development, worship in the Spirit, and spontaneous living from the 60's to the 80's has subsided into ritualized liturgy as scandal rocked the leadership. Rebounding the broken congregations revealed little but lack of pastoral care, skeptical staff unwilling to visit parishioners, and a lack of Biblical teaching for the sake of winning over a growing culture focus population. `Openness to the Spirit' during a service with its spontaneous worship became a grasped memory despite present desire. Those grounded in the Jesus Movement fled having known the fullness of what the church can truly be.

Every pastor, every priest, and all staff authority should read Quitting Church for the sake of growing community within the flock. Health of the parish, pitfalls in direction, and discernment in leadership are all covered by one of our nations finest religion writers.

Ms. Duin's book is a good overview of why many still-believing Evangelicals stop attending church. She arranges her study by affected groups, such as Charismatics, Emergents, women and singles. She also deals with pastors as cult personalities, an affliction that has killed many a congregation.

The strongest chapter in the book deals with singles. Ms. Duin questions the mindset of churches that do not meet the needs of singles or deal with their spiritual concerns. She correctly condemns the refusal of pastors to address sexual longing in real terms and wonders, if marriage is the normal state for Christians, why do churches not attempt to find mates for unattached members? This chapter alone is worth the cost of the book.

Other sections of the book contain interesting insights, even if I do not agree with Ms. Duin's conclusions. Her chapter on women, for example, is correct in pointing out how they have often been used as churchly cannon-fodder fit to be mere nursery workers or kiddie teachers, but this can be fixed without resorting to the solutions proposed by secular modernity.

If you are not Pentecostal or Charismatic, you may be put off by the author's occasional longing for the spiritual excitement of the Jesus Movement of the '70's, but don't let that theological quirk deprive you of the benfit of the rest of this well-written book.

This book is a good start at defining the problems that lead many otherwise faithful people to quit church. Based on a gathering of statistical data and interviews with many people, the author identifies seven of the biggest reasons people give for leaving church. This is truly an eye-opening read, and I hope that pastors, ministers, priests, and other spiritual leaders will read this and take heed. I'm not sure the author knows what the potential solutions are in detail, but I hope that recognizing the problems will be the first step in seeking the solutions that are so desperately needed.

Very poignant book! Different from Barna's 'rant,' in that Julia doesn't say that all is lost regarding the future of the "organized" church. Her observations are clear, compelling, and at times, disturbing, but her 'bottom line' is that people need to be cared for (pastored). Pastors and Church leaders would do well to read this volume!

Although Duin writes about church matters at large, and focuses most of her attention on evangelicals, she is clearly coming from the perspective of a charismatic Christian. As such, I'm afraid she's guilty of applying a bit too much of her charismatic experience to the rest of evangelicalism, although she shares non-charismatic anecdotes and some "research", relying heavily on Barna.

She and I share many similarities having grown up in the charismatic movement of the 70's, but it's something I ultimately rejected after seeing far too much emphasis on unbiblical elements within "spirit-filled" churches. Undoubtedly, the non-charismatic evangelical church has it's share of problems that need to be addressed too, and Duin covers much of this ground as well. The over reliance on small groups in the larger churches for starters. Yet, she's chosen to ignore many positive signs as well. My denomination is successfully planting churches throughout the country that appeal to young and old alike. I honestly think this book reflects the author's gloomy spiritual condition. Most of us realize that our churches are less than ideal, but I'm not ready to start worshiping on Sunday in someone's living room!

Julia Duin is a church searching born-again Christian. She writes this book as a result of organized religion's lack of proper outreach (and inreach) to non-mainstream would-be church members. She also seems to imply that some local churches may have unChrist-like attitudes which repel prospective congregants. She reports her personal pain that she notes violates the way church ought to be. She adds hard data, opinions of scholars and ordained clergy as she claims too much of church life in America can be hurtful and unfulfilling. This can lead many people to leave their local congregations. As an active pastor for fifteen years, I have observed similar troubling situations she outlines in her book.

She seems to be sincere in her desire to find a church home that would meet her needs and allow her to practice her spiritual gifts. She yearns for a warm religious family to call her own, where "everyone knows your name," a church family that creates an environment for her to touch others. The author, in agreement with Barna, asserts that many churches disenfranchise the unmarried and women. And these people within these demographics are responding by exiting churches in large numbers.

One can learn a great deal from this heart-felt plea and it would be wise for church leaders to try to understand the mindset of the unchurched that were once the churched.

She offers some practical solutions to help create a church that is more open to singles and women. Many of her ideas are biblical and helpful for the pastor, elders and ecclesiastical leaders. A few notable ideas she dispenses are: better and deeper sermons that address personal pragmatic issues are necessary; the creation and supporting of smaller more intimate groups such as churches in the home (Barna); better and sustained ministry aimed at meeting the needs of singles.

Julia Duin is a bit weary; nevertheless she denies she is proposing that the end of organized religion would be a welcome model.

Much of her statistics are not up for debate, yet, as much as I empathize with her, I disagree with her some of her premises and with some of her conclusions. I have observed, though media reporting and personal fellowship, far too many joyous and fulfilled believers to agree with some of what Duin has suggested.

I would offer these observations:

1. Yes, there are problems in churches and some needs are not being met, but ten percent of 100's of millions of US Christians would be a large number. Nonetheless
90% would merit a grade of an "A." That is what I have observed. I may be incorrect. But countless Christians in America are truly enjoying and savoring their church life.
2. We are in church to glorify God. Lifting up and exalting Almighty God is obviously not the only thing a church is to offer (in particular; directly speaking since all we do should be an aspect of bringing glory to God), but it is the most important ministry a church should practice.
3. There are innumerable churches which base their whole aim at winning the unchurched and meeting their needs. They have 10,000's of members and utilize 1000's of outreach techniques and spend billions of dollars annually. All this is performed in an effort to make church welcoming and comfortable for the marginalized and the unmarginalized.
4. Many ministers (me included) have tried to reach out to those who withdraw from church, only to find out that our efforts add to the "hurt." It is so difficult to offer compelling care to some people who will not or cannot receive it.
5. Many followers abandoned Jesus during His life, at His death, and even after His resurrection. Many people left Paul and his ministry.

The solution to all of this is:
1. Jesus Christ. Jesus in all His wonder: Savior, Friend and Redeemer, Sovereign Lord who instructed us to follow Him, is the premier answer.
2. Faithfully teach and live scripture. Additionally the Gospel must be proclaimed.
3. Love. Love never fails and love endures all things (1Cor. 13).

I recommend this book to all ministers and to people have difficulties in their church life. The research is outstanding, the writing is engaging and the quest is sincere.