The Great Dechurching -- Insights from George Bullard

Not a Review of the Book. A Focus on a Fresh Churching of America Inspired by the Book.

The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back!

Check out this very popular book HERE.

ForthTelling Innovation Insights: This new book which has been out for less than two weeks has already been reviewed — even prepublication in several digital and print resources — so much that we will not offer another review. What we will do is make several observations — five — concerning learnings from the book. We do recommend the book as a good read. Buy your copy today. It is divided into four parts and parts three and four were not as helpful as parts one and two.

1. The Definition of a Dechurched Person: The authors offer the following definition — a dechurched person is “someone who used to go to church once per month but now goes less than once a year.” (xxii) Amazing! Chreasters and CEO’s are now fully churched people! The authors have moved the bar as a cultural accommodation — it would appear. (For those who do not know these terms, Chreasters and CEO’s are people who attend church around Christmas and Easter, plus one more time during the year.) Yes, it is true that four times per month and bring home a bulletin from the church you attended on any Sunday you were not present in your own church has been gone since the 1950s. One estimate is that the average Christian attends 1.5 Sundays per month. Frankly, anyone who attends less than that is in a category we would call “underchurched” and needs sister and brother church members to care enough to engage them are they will become unchurched.

2. The Generation Move from Dechurched to Unchurched: A quote on page 7 popped out to us. “The dechurched will give way to the unchurched—those who never attended church to begin with.” During the past year we have engaged in reading about and writing a successful grant to the Lilly Endowment for a denominational organization regarding Lilly’s Christian Parenting and Caregiving Initiative which deals with the role of parents and other caregivers (like grandparents) passing down their faith to their children. This is highly important. It is scary to think about the next generation in dechurched households and how they might become disconnected from a Christ-centered faith journey. Another quote on page 33 is relevant here: “In just a generation, the children of the dechurched will be unchurched, changing the nature of spirituality in America significantly.”

3. The Underfunding of Christian Denominations and Missional Engagement: A great point brought up in several places — pages 12 and 19 are examples — is the funding of Christian mission missing from the estimated 40 million dechurched people. Denominations and their local and global missional expressions are a great concern to us. Funding to denominations is in trouble. It will only get worse in the future without something dramatic happening. A few parachurch and church network organizations are exploding with resources. Many others are struggling. Dechurched people might focus any charity contributions on community-based organizations rather than the churches they left. We are not wanting denominational organizations to have this money back to build up their institutional presence. We are concerned about the focus on their mission locally and globally to the people who need the love that comes along with resources.

4. The Over-Focus on Ministry to Nuclear Families: The authors observe on page 27 that “the American church and especially evangelicalism is largely built for the nuclear family or those on that track.” That is an ongoing soapbox of ours. At least for the past 30 years. Last we read the single adult/parent households in the USA are way over 50% of all households. At one point we heard a figure thrown around that if a strict, traditional definition of a nuclear family is used, that it is way less than 15% of all households. This strictest definition is caricatured by a man and a woman married to each other — it is their only marriage — who have one or more children under 18 years old, and the father only works full-time. If this is the primary target group for Christian congregations, then the dechurched and unchurched will explode in size in the future.

5. Reasons for Returning to Church: With this book — and the research that undergirds it — we probably have enough research now on people leaving or never connecting with a Christian church. It is time now to turn to producing more research and strategies on why people will pursue a Christ-centered, faith-based relationship with our Triune God, and do this through active participation in a local church. Not church growth research on how you get them into church. But authentic spiritual research about engaging people in a lifelong Christ-centered spiritual journey that nourishes their earthly and eternal life. The charts and prose surrounding pages 62, 76, and 94 are a starting point for this. These charts imply a focus on friendships, God’s leadership, churches that provide true community, inviting and engaging pastors, and a life/career hinge point that motivates them to find God and church.