Why Are So Many Christians Leaving the Church?

I don’t even know why I care about the church anymore. I’m trying desperately to figure it out. I think it’s because even though I’ve been badly burned by many Christians for years in church, both as a general member of churches or in a leadership capacity, I still can’t avoid the concept that the church must be important to God. When I read things like the book of Ephesians, for example, it’s pretty clear from what Paul says that God himself hasn’t given up on the church, even though many people (including myself) have. The difficulty is that I’m struggling to figure out what is the purpose of the church. One easy answer, given by a friend of mine, was simply to quote the Great Commission (Matt. 28.18-20) as the purpose of the church: to go into all the world and make disciples, teaching them to obey everything Jesus taught. If that’s the answer, then how in the world did we go from that to what we see in so many churches today? How is it that Christians have such a bad reputation of being judgmental, condescending hypocrites that treat both their fellow-Christians and non-Christians so terribly? Why are so many people leaving the church in droves and not coming back (at least in North America, according to a recent Pew survey)? Beyond rattling off the Great Commission, my friend also advised me to stop caring so much about the church. As I said before, I don’t know why I even care. I think it’s because I feel passionate about what I call the “Ephesians 4 culture” concept, which involves the notion that leaders of churches ought to be spending most of their time, energy and resources in equipping their congregations so that they, not the leaders themselves, can actually be out doing the real work of ministry. What we see in so many cases, however, is the exact opposite: the leaders do the majority of the “important” work (and oftentimes get a salary to do so), while the rest of the congregation sits in the seats, maintaining a state of spiritual infancy because they aren’t allowed to do much of anything other than volunteer for ministries and tithe so that the staff can keep all the ministry plates spinning. For my part, this is why I quit the church. I know what my gifts are; I know what I’m passionate about; I’m a mature Christian who has served as a youth pastor, elder and senior pastor for more than a decade. But in the last several years, every time I try to offer my services to a church, the leadership won’t allow me to serve in the capacity of my gifts and skills. If I’ve questioned the status quo of the way things are being run, then instead of dealing with the issue straightforwardly in a Matthew 18 type of way, leadership blacklists me and refuses to let me do anything. Of course, they won’t ever come to me personally to work out whatever issue it is they have with me, but instead just ignore me and hope I’ll go away. This is why I’ve quit the church: I can’t take it anymore and I’ve had enough. I can only take being rebuffed so many times, so I’ve gotten the message and called it quits. For others who have left the church, it’s for a different reason: not only does the brand of Christianity they’ve been sold not work, it’s actually left them worse off than before they became a believer in Christ. This is because what churches are selling is religion and not an authentic relationship with God that truly transforms lives on a deep, inward spiritual level. How does this occur? Oftentimes churches and church leaders spend much of their time, resources and energy creating and maintaining rules for their congregations, arguing that by keeping these rules this is how we live a “successful” Christian life, grow closer to God and to other Christians, evangelize the lost, etc. Although most Christians would agree that they are no longer under the rules of the OT legal codes and laws, and are under “New Testament principles of grace,” religion has defined the church. Religion, according to Jacobsen and Coleman’s book So You Don’t Want to go to Church Anymore, is about the system that operates within many churches. The message is this: in order to grow in Christ and be better Christians we need accountability to one another; this involves making commitments to do what’s right and then follow through (p. 56). Leaders teach that this is part and parcel of living the Christian life: Christians should help one another with such activities like reading our Bibles and praying daily, praying with our spouses and children regularly, having devotional “quiet times” and studying our Bibles on a regular basis, attending church consistently, being involved in various ministries within the church, treating our spouses and children as God intends, dealing with sin management, evangelizing our lost co-workers, friends, relatives and neighbours, etc. etc. But here is the major problem with such a system of religious accountability: most of the time it doesn’t work, and this can lead to a self-defeating system that ironically can lead us further down the road of guilt, shame and defeat. “When we make commitments that we can live up to for only a brief period, our guilt multiplies when we fail. Upset that God doesn’t do more to help us, we usually end up medicating our guilt with something like drugs, alcohol, food, shopping, or anything else that dulls the pain, or it creeps out of us through anger or lust” (p. 57). Ironically such a system of religion that ostensibly was intended to help Christians grow in the faith and deal with their sin issues can actually lead to them sinning more and feeling like a miserable failure. After perhaps years of trying and failing ultimately many Christians “finally give in because nothing has changed on the inside. This is an outward-in approach, based on human effort, and it just won’t work” (p. 57). Moreover, to make matters worse, it would appear that as Christians spiral downward, they are unable to be transparent about their failures. One major reason why people don’t want to come to church is because it is not a safe or hospitable place to confess our deepest sins and secrets for fear of being judged; we can’t tell the “real story” of our struggles and instead confess to “acceptable sins like busyness, anger, or gossip” (p. 57). In the end nobody in the church is able to be real because it is merely the place where we put on the mask of perfection. And this is one of the major problems with religion as promoted by so many churches. It has ironically produced more people who walk away dejected, feeling like utter failures when they cannot live up to the systems of accountability and rules put in place by the church. The worst part of religious thinking “takes our best ambitions and uses them against us. People who are trying to be more godly actually become more captive to their appetites and desires” (pp. 57-58). The choices in life are not just between two options: to do good or to do bad. Trying hard to do good just “makes us work hard to submit to God’s rules. That one fails every time” (p 58). Religion is about conforming our outward behaviours to fit the rules but it typically results in only pushing the real problems deeper. Like the OT reward and punishment system under which ancient Israel operated, religion is about “man’s effort to appease God by his own work. If we do what he wants he will be good to us, and if we don’t then bad things will happen in our lives. On its best day, this approach will allow us to be smugly self-righteous which is a trap all on its own. On its worst days it will heap guilt upon us greater than we can bear” (p. 58). Religion is essentially trying to get God to love, accept and reward us for doing good and keeping the rules. This has nothing to do with an authentic and personal relationship with a loving God, and more to do with living like Pharisees who legalistically observed every single command in the Law (including tithing a tenth of their herbs and spices). For them it was more about observing rules than having and maintaining a relationship with a living and personal God. Another aspect of this religious approach churches have is that unwittingly they are reinforcing the notion that Christians have to earn God’s love through doing and serving. This is reinforced from Sunday school all the way through to adulthood: memorize enough verses and get a gold star, or even earn a free Bible. Attend every Sunday without missing a single week and get a trophy or a ribbon for good attendance at the end of the year. Come to youth group every Sunday and Wednesday and go on a mission trip to Mexico to build houses. Attend the college-age group and get involved in various activities with other singles. When you are older and have settled down with your spouse and have a few kids, serve the church loyally and consistently in a variety of ministries. Tithe faithfully each week or month in order to help the church continue to pay its staff members, maintain the building and fund various ministries. Go to men’s or women’s retreats every year and attend a weekly Bible study. Get plugged into an accountability group so fellow church members can make sure you read your Bible and pray every day. Finally, ensure that your children attend Sunday school every week and help them to memorize the same verses you did when you were a kid… and so it goes. But somehow in the midst of being caught up in all these actions of doing and serving, it is all too easy to forget that somewhere along the line whatever genuine and authentic relationship we may have had with God (if we ever had one in the first place) became replaced with busywork. Memorization of verses, consistent attendance at church and serving in various ministries do not necessarily help us to know God any better, but instead can easily contribute to our own sense of personal success. We can also become so busy seeking the approval of others that we do not realize that we already have God’s. We are trying to earn a relationship that we can never earn. Many Christians are pursuing religious activities not because we want to know God better, but because they want other people to think that they are spiritual. The Pharisees did the same thing in terms of outward appearance to be seen by others, and in that way that was their only reward—the approval of others. Worse yet, those Christians who are disciplined and seem to have it all together can often become smug, prideful and arrogant and look down their noses at those who fail. The reality is, however, that God loves us unconditionally and it has absolutely no bearing on how much, or how little, work we do for him. We cannot earn his love, approval or his grace. So why do we spend our entire lives at church trying to do just that? I’m still trying to figure out how churches have become the way they are, reinforcing religion rather than helping people to become what God created them to be: creative, fulfilled, happy people who genuinely care for and help others. Jesus said he came to give people life—and that more abundantly—but as I see it, finding that truly abundant life in your local church is proving to be extremely difficult. What we find instead are organizations that exist to reinforce their rules and burden people with those regulations. Of course, they can’t live up to the rules, so they spend their lives cycling around in a spiral of guilt and shame, feeling worse and worse about themselves because they are disappointing God and letting him down. Surely that cannot be the purpose of the church, can it?