Have you thought lately about the people you used to see at church? They may be folks who came regularly prior to COVID-19 and the resulting closures. They could be people who spent most of their time around the edges of church life—the ones who may not have fully committed to the cause of Christ.

Even now, you may be thinking about someone specific, or even more telling, someone who’s currently in danger of joining the growing ranks of those who used to go to church.

That topic is fully discussed in The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis and Michael Graham. Their research describes the 40 million Americans who’ve left the church in the last 25 years: dechurched people that represent 16% of the adult population. Perhaps the most significant consequence of this seismic shift are its effects on subsequent generations.

What will the absence of faith, spiritual growth and meaningful church relationships mean for them? For a broad range of personal, relational, sociological and moral outcomes, it can’t be good.

The research in The Great Dechurching offers some very Big Ideas for churches:

• Moving — When churchgoers move to a new city, they are removed from their previous rhythm of church attendance, relationships and accountability. It’s no surprise that many fall away and never find their way into a new church.
• Discipleship — Shallow and nonexistent disciple making structures are the single most important explanation for American dechurching. Meaningful membership and a robust discipleship process are essential in twenty-first century churches.
• Relationships — Everyone needs deep relationships for their emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing. More than a club you join, church is a family with heartfelt connections and deeper than surface-level conversation.

Discipleship matters. A startling observation about the dechurched is the strong tendency for people to decouple from a local church when they move to a new city. This speaks to the habits and rhythm we establish in our lives, but more importantly, it tells us we haven’t discipled folks carefully enough to establish sustainable Christ-centered, missional maturity in their lives.

Our Great Commission mandate is to make disciples, which translates to clarity in our disciple-making process and the church’s primary role as an incubator for personal spiritual growth. When our churches fail on this point, we invariably leave many people in a vulnerable state, susceptible to a degraded culture and worldly decoys that pull them away from God and His church.

Relationships and biblical community matter almost as much. That means loving, caring, sharing and listening. So many dechurched people have experienced some form of relationship trauma, often unforced and unintentional, and usually the result of the broader cultural trend of less social interaction. Incidentally, this coincides with a general diminishing of relational intelligence and soft skills both inside and outside the church.

What’s our best response to this grim assessment of our current reality? We should reengage the people around us with our full relational attention, armed with the gospel and God’s loving embrace of those who are lost and adrift. Graham and Davis say that: “Some people need a nudge, others need a dinner table, and others need years of patient and prayerful, consistent movement into their lives.”

In other words, dechurched people need our time, our patience, our prayer and our devoted attention to forming real relationships and deeper connections.

All of this resonates with the bigger cultural conversation we’ve having about the loneliness epidemic, anti-socialization tendencies and increasing isolation felt by a growing number of Americans. A recent survey by the Harvard School of Education reports that 21% percent of adults have had “serious feelings of loneliness.”

Among people ages 18-29 the rate was 24% and among those ages 30-44 the rate was 29%. According to the survey, a leading cause of loneliness was “no religious or spiritual life” and “too much focus on one’s own feelings, and the changing nature of work” by around 50% of those surveyed.

So what’s the Big Idea?

A strong discipleship process and healthy, biblical community are what vibrant churches do to engage Christ-centered people and help them grow spiritually. And it’s the very thing that keeps churchgoers from joining the growing ranks of those who used to go to church.

Resources

• The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis and Michael Graham
• The Unsaved Christian by Dean Inserra
• Replicate — Discipleship Consulting, Coaching and Resources
• The Loneliness Epidemic by Susan Mettes
• “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace” by Pew Research Center
• “2020 PRRI Census of American Religion” by Public Religion Research Institute
• “The American Church Faces Its Kodak Moment” on Big Ideas Blog
• The Great Dechurching Discussion Guide
• “Loneliness in America: Just the Tip of the Iceberg” PDF by Milena Batanova, Richard Weissbourd and Joseph McIntyre

Sources

Jim Davis and Michael Graham, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2023), 50.

“What Is Causing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and How Can We Fix It?” by Elizabeth M. Ross, Harvard Graduate School of Education (October 25, 2024), https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing- our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it.