Dear Church, Here’s Why People Are Really Leaving You

A hard, honest look at why people are really walking away from church.

Being on the other side of the Exodus sucks, don’t it?

I see the panic on your face, Church.

I know the internal terror as you see the statistics and hear the stories and scan the exit polls.

I see you desperately scrambling to do damage control for the fence-sitters, and manufacture passion from the shrinking faithful, and I want to help you.

You may think you know why people are leaving you, but I’m not sure you do.

You think it’s because “the culture” is so lost, so perverse, so beyond help that they are all walking away.

You believe that they’ve turned a deaf ear to the voice of God; chasing money, and sex, and material things.

You think that the gays and the Muslims and the Atheists and the pop stars have so screwed up the morality of the world that everyone is abandoning faith in droves.

But those aren’t the reasons people are leaving you.

They aren’t the problem, Church.

You are the problem.

Let me elaborate in five ways …

1. Your Sunday productions have worn thin.

The stage, and the lights, and the bands, and the video screens, have all just become white noise to those really seeking to encounter God. They’re ear and eye candy for an hour, but they have so little relevance in people’s daily lives that more and more of them are taking a pass.

Yeah, the songs are cool and the show is great, but ultimately Sunday morning isn’t really making a difference on Tuesday afternoon or Thursday evening, when people are wrestling with the awkward, messy, painful stuff in the trenches of life; the places where rock shows don’t help.

We can be entertained anywhere. Until you can give us something more than a Christian-themed performance piece—something that allows us space and breath and conversation and relationship—many of us are going to sleep in and stay away.

2. You speak in a foreign tongue.

Church, you talk and talk and talk, but you do so using a dead language. You’re holding onto dusty words that have no resonance in people’s ears, not realizing that just saying those words louder isn’t the answer. All the religious buzzwords that used to work 20 years ago no longer do.

This spiritualized insider-language may give you some comfort in an outside world that is changing, but that stuff’s just lazy religious shorthand, and it keeps regular people at a distance. They need you to speak in a language that they can understand. There’s a message there worth sharing, but it’s hard to hear above your verbal pyrotechnics.

People don’t need to be dazzled with big, churchy words and about eschatological frameworks and theological systems. Talk to them plainly about love, and joy, and forgiveness, and death, and peace, and God, and they’ll be all ears. Keep up the church-speak, and you’ll be talking to an empty room soon.

3. Your vision can’t see past your building.

The coffee bar, the cushy couches, the high-tech lights, the funky Children’s wing and the uber-cool Teen Center are all top-notch … and costly. In fact, most of your time, money and energy seems to be about luring people to where you are instead of reaching people where they already are.

Rather than simply stepping out into the neighborhoods around you and partnering with the amazing things already happening, and the beautiful stuff God is already doing, you seem content to franchise out your particular brand of Jesus-stuff, and wait for the sinful world to beat down your door.

Your greatest mission field is just a few miles, (or a few feet) off your campus and you don’t even realize it. You wanna reach the people you’re missing?

Leave the building.

4. You choose lousy battles.

We know you like to fight, Church. That’s obvious.

When you want to, you can go to war with the best of them. The problem is, your battles are too darn small. Fast food protests, hobby store outrage and duck-calling Reality TV show campaigns may manufacture some urgency and Twitter activity on the inside for the already-convinced, but they’re paper tigers to people out here with bloody boots on the ground.

Every day we see a world suffocated by poverty, and racism, and violence, and bigotry, and hunger; and in the face of that stuff, you get awfully, frighteningly quiet. We wish you were as courageous in those fights, because then we’d feel like coming alongside you; then we’d feel like going to war with you.

Church, we need you to stop being warmongers with the trivial and pacifists in the face of the terrible.

5. Your love doesn’t look like love.

Love seems to be a pretty big deal to you, but we’re not getting that when the rubber meets the road. In fact, more and more, your brand of love seems incredibly selective and decidedly narrow; filtering out all the spiritual riff-raff, which sadly includes far too many of us.

It feels like a big bait-and-switch sucker-deal; advertising a “Come as You Are” party, but letting us know once we’re in the door that we can’t really come as we are. We see a Jesus in the Bible who hung out with lowlifes and prostitutes and outcasts, and loved them right there, but that doesn’t seem to be your cup of tea.

Church, can you love us if we don’t check all the doctrinal boxes and don’t have our theology all figured out? It doesn’t seem so.

Can you love us if we cuss and drink and get tattoos, and God forbid, vote Democrat? We’re doubtful.

Can you love us if we’re not sure how we define love, and marriage, and Heaven, and Hell? It sure doesn’t feel that way.

From what we know about Jesus, we think he looks like love. The unfortunate thing is, you don’t look much like him.

That’s part of the reason people are leaving you, Church.

These words may get you really, really angry, and you may want to jump in a knee-jerk move to defend yourself or attack these positions line-by-line, but we hope that you won’t.

We hope that you’ll just sit in stillness with these words for a while, because whether you believe they’re right or wrong, they’re real to us, and that’s the whole point.

We’re the ones walking away.

We want to matter to you.

We want you to hear us before you debate us.

Show us that your love and your God are real.

Church, give us a reason to stay.

It’s not you, it’s me.

That’s what you seem to be saying, Church.

I tried to share my heart with you; the heart of me and thousands and thousands of people like me who are walking away, to let you know of the damage you’re doing and the painful legacy you’re leaving, and apparently, you’re not the problem.

(Which, of course, is still a problem).

I’ve relayed my frustration with your insider, religious rhetoric, and you responded by cut-and-pasting random Scripture soundbytes about the “Bride of Christ” and the “blood of the Lamb,” insisting that the real issue is simply my “biblical ignorance,” and suggesting that I just need to repent and get a good Concordance (whatever that is).

I let you know how judged and ridiculed I feel when I’m with you, how much like a hopeless, failing outsider I feel on the periphery of your often inward, judgmental communities, and you proceeded to tell me how “lost” I am, how hopelessly “in love with my sin” I must be to leave you, reminding me that I never really belonged with you anyway.

In the face of every complaint and every grievance, you’ve made it clear that the real issue is that I’m either sinful, heretical, immoral, foolish, unenlightened, selfish, consumerist or ignorant.

Heck, many days I’m not even sure I disagree with you.

Maybe you’re right, Church.

Maybe I am the problem.

Maybe it is me, but me is all I’m capable of being right now, and that’s where I was really hoping you would meet me.

It’s here, in my flawed, screwed-up, wounded, shell-shocked, doubting, disillusioned me-ness that I’ve been waiting for you to step in with this whole supposedly relentless, audacious “love of Jesus” thing I hear so much about, and make it real.

Church, I know how much you despise the word Tolerance, but right now, I really need you to tolerate me; to tolerate those of us who, for all sorts of reasons you may feel aren’t justified, are struggling to stay.

We’re so weary of feeling like nothing more than a religious agenda; an argument to win, a point to make, a cause to defend, a soul to save.

We want to be more than a notch on your Salvation belt; another number to pad your Twitter posts and end-of-year stat sheets.

We need to be more than altar call props, who are applauded and high-fived down the aisle, and then forgotten once the song ends.

We’ve been praying for you to stop evangelizing us, and preaching at us, and fighting us, and judging us, and sin-diagnosing us, long enough to simply hear us …

… even if we are the problem.

Even if we are the woman in adultery, or the doubting follower, or the rebellious prodigal, or the demon-riddled young man, we can’t be anything else right now in this moment; and in this moment, we need a Church big enough, and tough enough, and loving enough; not just for us as we might one day be then, but for us as we are, now.

We still believe that God is big enough, and tough enough, and loving enough, even if you won’t be, and that’s why even if we do walk away, it doesn’t mean we’re walking away from faith; it’s just that faith right now seems more reachable elsewhere.

I know you’ll argue that you’re doing all these things and saying all these things because you love and care for us, but from the shoes we’re standing in, you need to know that it feels less like love and care, and more like space and silence:

If someone is frustrated, telling them that they’re wrong to be frustrated is, well, pretty freakin’ frustrating.

It only breeds distance.

If someone shares that their heart is hurting, they don’t want to hear that they’re not right to be hurt.

It’s a conversation-stopper.

If someone tells you they are starving for compassion, and relationship, and authenticity, the last thing they need is to be corrected for that hunger.

It’s a kick in the rear on the way out the door.

So yes, Church, even if you’re right, even if we’re totally wrong—even if we’re all petty, and self-centered, and hypocritical, and critical, and (I’ll say it), “sinful”—we’re still the ones searching for a place where we can be known and belong; a place where it feels like God lives, and you’re the ones who can show it to us.

Even if the problem is me, it’s me who you’re supposed to be reaching, Church.

So, for the love of God; reach already.

By John Pavlovitz

John Pavlovitz is a pastor/blogger from Wake Forest, North Carolina. An 18-year veteran of local church ministry, he currently writes a blog called Stuff That Needs To Be Said, and in January is launching an online Christian community called The Table.

The Meaning of Fellowship

Fellowship. 

What does that word mean in the context of a Christian life?  Potluck dinners?  Church programs? Building cleanup days? Christmas plays and cantatas? Could the meaning in today's culture look different than it did in the time that Jesus walked the earth? What do you think it means?

Read the original meaning David Mathis believes God intended for His church below and contemplate. How far is your church and/or small group from this meaning? And how can we facilitate change? 

In no way am I saying potluck dinners should be abolished (no way - so many great cooks in every church!). But are we sharing a meal or a mission?  Instead of looking at it as taking something away, maybe we could look at it as adding on to what is already in place.  



It’s a shame that the word fellowship has fallen on hard times in many church circles. Nowadays, fellowship means you’re just doing something social together and you just happen to be Christians. That's not at all what is meant by the richness and the strength of the New Testament word often translated as fellowship.

Maybe you hear people pronounce the Greek word as "koinonia." In the New Testament, fellowship refers to a partnership, a collective, a mission where everyone is all in together. They’re risking life. They’re risking all of their possessions. They’re risking their money, to put it in a shared venture together and to have that shared mission and enterprise.

The first thing to say about the fellowship as a means of grace is that it is a mission. Rightly did J. R. R Tolkien call his first book The Fellowship of the Ring. Because there was a lot at stake; they were on a mission together. They weren't just sitting back and having a pipe, sipping on the Gaffer's Old Winyards, and just shooting the breeze in a social situation. The world is at stake and they’ve got to get the ring to Mount Doom. This is what’s involved in a fellowship.

So, when I say fellowship as a means of grace, I don’t mean just Christian social situations but rather a shared mission together. Jesus put his church on mission in the declaration of the great commission—the commission to make disciples of all the nations. That begins locally but then extends internationally. We are on mission together in the gospel. So the first aspect of fellowship is being on mission together.

Another aspect of the fellowship is worshipping together. Let me give you a verse to go with that: Hebrews 10:24-25, where the author says,


And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

He's encouraging his readers to come together, strengthen each other, and do that in a context of worship. And so, in that context of fellowship as corporate worship together, we will get various means of grace like sitting together under the preaching of God’s Word and the corporate interactions that happen before, during, and after those gatherings. There's also taking the Lord’s Table together as a means of grace. There's being baptized or watching in faith as others are baptized as a means of grace.

The third aspect of fellowship is our life together as Christians. The text for this one is Hebrews 3:12-13:


Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:12-15)

And the amazing thing about that passage is that it’s not an exhortation to individuals to watch out that their own hearts might not become hardened. Rather, it’s an exhortation to the community to be on the lookout for other people in the community who don’t have the spiritual strength—who don’t have the spiritual wherewithal—to watch out for their own souls. And so, healthy Christians are being encouraged to take notice of others—to be aware enough of others—that they'd be able to speak a gospel-word into their brother or sister's life—encouraging that person in a season of difficulty, dryness, depression, or suffering.

An important aspect of the fellowship is our external mission together, our vertical worship together, and then internal care and love for one another—our being a means of grace to someone else. One of the first questions to ask about fellowship is not "What is this body doing for me? What is this local church doing for me? What is this Christian community doing for me?" The local church will be a means of grace in your life. However, a very important question to ask first is, "How can I be a means of grace to others in this community?"

We need to think not only about how to receive God’s Word in Bible intake and how to speak to God and receive the blessing of being in communication with him in prayer, but also how to be a means of grace to someone else. How can my life in Christ be a means of grace to someone else?

Here's one way to think about it: it’s amazing that God put these holes in the side of our head. And what you can do is you can put words in those holes for somebody who’s struggling or for someone who’s dry. What that person needs is a good word—a manifestation of the gospel. Perhaps they’re so spiritually lethargic that they’re not ingesting the Bible well for themselves via reading and studying and meditation. Maybe they don’t have the heart to pray. But what they do have, typically, are holes in the side of their heads. And you can put gospel words into those holes, so that even when they're is not doing well spiritually, you can help them by speaking a word of grace into their lives.

Rooted in the Local Church

God has often used this to bring people back from dangerous spiritual situations. Bringing back a sinner from his wandering as James 5:19-20 talks about. This is being a means of grace to others. It’s most important that this would happen in covenant contexts. A lot of grace can flow in situations where it’s a Christian community. But where there is covenant membership in the local church is the place where lives flourish as we experience receive God's grace through significant relationships.

So, for instance, we wouldn’t say, "Well I love these people enough, I don’t need to commit to them." Rather, we’d say, "I love these people enough that I’m willing to commit to them in sickness and in health, when times are joyful and when times are sorrowful," as you would do in a marriage. Hopefully you wouldn’t say, "I love her enough; we don’t need a commitment and we don’t need a piece of paper." No! The question is, "Do you love her enough to commit; to be there in sorrow, in pain, and in sickness?"

That’s the opportunity we have in covenant fellowship. We say, "I love these people enough that I’m going to commit to be there in the hardest of times. In the worst of times. When they’re the driest. When they’re the most depressed. When they the most need help, I want to be there and I want to be God’s means of grace in their life. And I want to be that means of grace in my life as well."

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