First, welcome back, Todd.  You’ve been missed.

There is a theme to those reasons above that can be condensed in a single thought: most of those people who are leaving are not saved.  I’m sorry, but, “Wanting a break from church,” shows a heart that does not align itself with the Christian faith.  Same with spending more time with friends and attending church only to placate parents.  We just don’t have many people nowadays who are willing to say this.

--
CS

WOW!

1. They simply want a break from church
So do I sometimes.
2. They felt church members are judgmental and/or hypocritical
We are.
3. They moved to college and didn’t find another church (25%);
Did they really look or want to look?
4. They have work responsibilities that keep them from attending
Lame, sorry, but lame…
5. They moved too far from church
See above
6. They just got too busy, even though they’d still like to attend
They’re being trained to follow the American dream of bizziness… sad, but reality.
7. They didn’t feel connected to the church in the first place
We probably didn’t give them a reason to feel connected. We often don’t.
8. They disagreed with the church’s political/social stance
Young people want to create truth in their own image… they’ll learn… maybe when they have kids.
9. They decided to spend more time with friends
None of their friends are church people?…
10. They were just going to church to please their parents
Many of these kids never owned their faith. I’m not surprised, we didn’t include them in the church except in “youth ministry game time”, we never answered their tough questions, we often don’t accept them as they are, and we often make church look like a social club that doesn’t want you as a member.

CS, I have to disagree.  To say that “most of those people who are leaving are not saved” is a stretch and a broad blanket.  Some have really legitimate reasons (to them) for leaving and others are emotionally or spiritually immature. 

As I think back over the last few people/families to leave our church, a couple of have been due to music/sound issues, one was a young man who took a position with another church, but was starting to not feel connected based on our church’s approach to membership. 

I can relate to the feeling of needing a break from church.  Although, I have not stopped going to church altogether for that reason, I have taken Sunday’s off (from church, not Christ).  The taking time off though is primarily for me, due to people issues.  Let’s face it, the church is made up of people, and we can be a bit much at times, particularly if you’re in leadership.  But, I guess maybe I’m just not saved…

CS,

I know plenty of people who are definitely saved who have “left the church” over the years.

Although it is very true that many (most?) church-going kids who go off to college and abandon church might not have ever had a real faith journey going on… it’s not the case with every one.

I think we need to examine what we’re doing with these people when they are in our influence to see what we are communicating. For many of them, we’ve only communicated conformity and some kind of intellectual faith that they in the 21st century, can’t even get. Randy says it well above. [One author wisely wrote that true regeneration does not produce a head full of facts but a life full of actions.]

If these people have some good habits of prayer, service, and just plain loving their neighbors as opposed to what many of our churches give them (which is often, as far as they can tell, a head full of unconnected doctrine), perhaps we’ll be giving them an opportunity to really encounter the redemption of Jesus, and maybe they WILL be transformed, regardless of whether they take a few years “off” from a church experience that they see as irrelevant.

I’m not talking about the ones who leave for bad reasons necessarily, but just yelling “repent” louder, as many advocate, isn’t the answer here.

I am really moved by P. Hamm’s comments. I think they are quite true and shed light on many of the internal issues facing the church today.

Still, we as leaders need to be careful. When people are wounded/offended the enemy seizes the opportunity to create a breach. Why are churches so willing to just let people leave? What happened to leaving the 99 to recover the one? Remember it is our love for one another that signifies that we are His, not our ability to avoid the door as people leave. Consider all that God has developed in you and all that He continues to do and realize that He could have simply allowed you to walk out the door, but love caused Him to reach for you AND work hard to keep you. Our love for Him should cause us to do no less. You can teach someone how to love God and be in real relationship with Him using your life as the example. Perhaps the church needs to conduct self-examination to determine if what we display from the pulpit to the back pew is causing the strain.

The church understands the real cost of separation. We can ill afford to simply say goodbye to those who leave.

After my first writing here this morning I received a very positive email from a NON-CHURCH, organization that seems to have it figured out.  Saved people, new members, income ,,,,,,,

I am not a member of this organization, do not own a motorcycle and have never attended one of their meetings. But, I get a lot of of each Monday, with MMI and CMA.  CHECK OUT THE LINK BELOW

Dear friends in Christ,,,,,,, IT IS HAPPENING.

http://www.cmausa.org/cma_national/

whoops the link didn’t work, when you click on the link , then click on CMA NATIONAL

CS,

God news, I’m not advocating salvation by works.

I am, however agreeing with the entire book of James that if you say you have faith and there is no works to show it, then your faith is dead and worthless (perhaps non-existent?)

I think that a lot of these folks leaving High School have a dead and worthless faith, and I’d like to see what the church can do to give them something alive and vital instead…

The premise is that we should try to go after people who drop out of the church. Hard to argue with that because of course, they’re important to God and to us. We WANT them to become (or stay) connected with the church. I think the bigger question is whether we CAN effectively draw people back into the fold once they’ve made a decision to leave or have become complacent about attending.

Faith and love for God doesn’t seem like something one can compel another person to put on. People who make an excuse that work, busyness, people problems, etc., keeps them from church, probably aren’t going to change their minds - either they’ve become spiritually complacent or they’ve decided that corporate worship isn’t for them at this time. It’s a wrong decision, but I have to believe that if they really know Christ or have been in relationship with him, then inside, they know it’s wrong, but are choosing to do what they feel like doing. They’re most likely to withdraw from those who would tell them otherwise.

Maybe the person just doesn’t like the church any more or doesn’t feel they’re “being fed” (I hate that term). In that case, why try to talk a negative person into staying - let them find some other church where they’ll feel a closer affiliation.

If an unbeliever tries a church and doesn’t return, one would hope that somehow God will use that experience and the word that was preached to later speak to and draw that person to God. I think some follow-up is good, but too much, or the person may feel a little entrapped or pushed and want to be rid of the whole thing rather than at least being left with a positive experience that they may want to return to later.

I think all bets are off though, when someone has gotten connected and enters into relationship with people in the church. Then, they’ve truly become part of the community and we have not just a responsibility to care for them through whatever they’re going through, but have earned the right through relationship to speak into their lives. And while the person leaving may reject the overtures, at least they should know that those they are leaving care and want to be of support.

I have five children, and at least four have been raised within a constellation of Christian communities that stress the need for redemtpion, the power of the Cross, the Resurrection of the body and a life responding to the gifts of Christ with Spirit led service. I am proud of each kid’s highly individualized/even idiosyncratic take on all this because it tells me they are thinking this stuff and behaving based on it all the time.

But I got to tell you that a region full of churches with youth groups and youth leaders pushing the idea of giving out free bottles of cold water on a hot summer’s day and telling the recipients that God loves them or holding block parties for economically disadvantaged neighborhoods; or hawking mission trips to the newest discovered biggest Latin American ghetto built on a grabage heap, replete with T shirts, a big sendoff and a big return marked by skype updates in between; or shepherding them to hear the newest Christian rock concert; or holding daughters of the King events so daughters can be queen to their father’s king impersonation--this isn’t helping anything.

The egotism & the marketing mentality when every event includes how much money was raised, how many souls saved, how many rededications took place; the reaffirmations of adolescent schisms between haves and have nots when there are a limited number of spaces, when you have to be the first to sign up with a deposit, when there are lots of adults praising the kids who give “the right answers” in Bible studies and lots more to patronizingly explain what’s wanted to the kids who don’t give the right answers, when ALL the adolescents selected to do solos are slim and good looking, when the kids on the autism spectrum and with Downs syndrome or tourette’s or PDD are kept in the back and out of sight; or the superficiality of the Chrisitan redemption shows up in the fact that all the elite at the local schools and the local sports teams turn out to be the elites at the church group.

Do you think that my son missed the fact that the youth pastor at our very big, very affluent church wouldn’t visit the son of one our friends when he was in a half way house because he didn’t have time, but was always hanging out in his sjeans and sandala and former Bulldogs physique with the cool kids?

Do you think my other son missed the fact that all the stories about the savagery of a local high school clique shared at a youth meeting at church were tales of the big adjacent Christian school and not the very proudly pagan local public school.

There is little heart for the Jesus of the whores and theives and tax collectors here in the affluent, Republican (I am both) suburbs of Southwest Ohio.  I want my newly licensed son to continue to drive slow because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, or to continue in his chosen celibacy because he just doesn’t think sex is apart of his relationships and God’s plan for him.  I want him to continue to get in avid conversations about how you reconcile a forgiving God with the reality of a final judgement, but I have very little hope that this is going to be aided and abetted by the church experience here or at college.

We are in a House church now, that is lit from withinby the Spirit, but my son is not one of the great mingling communicators and I don’t know that as he settles in to college it is realistic to expect him to “find” a church like ours, and he won’t go to the MC anymore.  My daughter went to Wheaton College and that worked out fine, but she is home in the house church and we will see what happens when she moves away.  The local young life won’t stop sending things about their program to my middle son’s parents (which angers him) and they won’t publically tell us where they meet so we can’t urge him to go.

Like Job I pray alot and I trust God a lot, but I am not counting oneither the mainstreet denominations or the Willowbrook association to yiled anything positive for my kids.

A lot of the people that have decided to choose the #1 excuse for not going to church, usually do because of the #2 excuse on the list.

Family in Christ,
I feel it necessary to point out that the Church, in its biblical essence, is the Body of Christ, not the set of organized programs, rituals, and meetings held in towering buildings all over America. Though some do leave the Body for the wrong reasons, it is inaccurate to claim that a person who chooses not to be a part of an established congregation is in sin or has “left the flock” or “left the faith.” Neither is it scripturally necessary to “join a church (lower-case “C")" in order to have a right walk with God. We do need the Body and I’ll not dispute that fact. But consider the faiths of those martyrs--both during the blossoming of the Body and even today--and how their “church” life was much different from what many Americans think is “right.” And many times it was necessary for these people to live solitary lives apart from the Body--Christ alone sustains people in those times. How will our country’s Body survive once following Christ is as illegall as it is in other parts of the world already if She does nor have a firm foundation in Christ and the Word apart from the weekly meetings and often guilt-driven activities?

Just because someone is no longer a part of a congregation does not mean he/she has left the faith. This person may have chosen to spend his/her life in greater service to the unsaved (something that is hugely lacking in most American churches) alongside a life of seeking God based on what His Word says, rather than what someone tells him/her it says, and cucltivating meaningful relationships with other Christians and non-Christians alike (the latter with the aim of sharing Christ’s love), something which is often largely absent in many lower-case “C” churches today.

I definitely concur with the notion that many American churches either have connectedness among their members and lack solid teaching, or vice-versa.

An interesting resource for those interested is the book, So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore? It has some really good insight.

In Christ and in love,
MK

The day Johnny was scheduled to be released, he stopped by the chapel and told us he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. He said he wanted to live his life for Christ and help others. The chaplain gave him the address of a couple churches in the area where he was going to live.