White Horse Inn host Michael Horton recently talked with Julia Duin, religion editor for The Washington Times. She has won numerous local and national awards for her religion coverage and is also the author of Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do about It (Baker Books, 2008).
First of all, what interested you in doing the research and ultimately writing this book?
I was going through some of the experiences I describe in Quitting Church as I was one of about 400 people who left a certain church in northern Virginia. While I was looking around, I noticed that the Baltimore-Washington area is filled with very smart people, and I therefore expected the churches would reflect this. Instead, I found that many churches were stuck in the seeker-friendly mode where everything was simplified, dumbed down, and that everything appealed basically to one set of people-essentially, young couples with kids. There was not a whole lot to appeal to people who had been believers for, say, more than five years. This did not give me a reason to get out of bed on Sunday mornings, so, anecdotally, I stayed home on Sundays.
But I began to find other people who felt the same way. Some were going into home groups. I found that people from my college Christian fellowship group were not in church anymore because they weren't finding what they needed. I was running into a whole bunch of people, mostly the over-35 set, who were just very unhappy with evangelical churches. They were basically products of the Baby Boomer/Jesus movement/charismatic renewal generation: they came into the church in the 1970s and slid out during the purpose-driven church era of the late 1990s.
While you were doing your research, what did you come upon as some of the major reasons that people gave you for their leaving? And we're talking about evangelical churches here, not mainline churches, right?
Absolutely. In fact, as I researched the book, I found several subsets of people. We all know how men are supposed to be unhappy with church, but I found professional women and singles who were also unhappy. One of the reasons is that people who are perplexed and disappointed with God are not getting meaningful answers from their churches. In fact, they're encouraged not to think about their pain. Now, remember, these are people who have been in Christianity for, say, twenty years-they've been there, done that; they've been through all the programs; they've been through everything. But they're not seeing some of the simple basic questions of life solved. And they're saying, "Well, I've been in this for a while. I'm not a new believer anymore, and I'm not getting answers." Why not?
Another reason is that there is a lot of bad pastoring. People aren't getting decent answers to their questions. People aren't connecting with a pastor who could help them. Many pastors are walled off by church secretaries and appointments. I ran into a situation where I had to wait a month to get an appointment. So where people weren't connecting with pastors, they joined home groups; but the home groups were not good for pastoring reasons. When someone has major problems or questions, the home groups aren't helpful. They're good for fellowship.
I also discovered that a lot of people found that no one missed them at church. This is certainly true in some of the large churches. They felt as if they didn't make a difference in their churches. If they were gone, no one noticed. So I found an amazing dissatisfaction among people who are very mature. It's what I call a spiritual brain drain. When they leave-twenty years after they've become Christians and after a church has invested in them to train them as mentors-all that goes out the back door.
Where are they going?
A lot of them aren't going anywhere. I would count George Barna and also John Eldridge, The Ransomed Heart author in Colorado Springs, as those who aren't going to church. Again, there are a number of talented people who are just gone.
George Barna suggests that maybe the era of the church is over; and now people, if they really want to be sold out, need to get on a good website and be lone-ranger Christians out there.
There's a great deal of debate on this. I recently attended a press conference at Baylor University where they basically pooh-poohed George Barna, saying that he was wrong about people leaving church and that they think 36 percent of the American population is attending church. I challenged them on it. I said, "Come on, you really don't believe one-third of the American population is in church each week. They're in the supermarkets maybe, but they're not in church." I agree with some of the 2005 surveys that have come out that say it's more like 18 to 20 percent.
Barna says there are all these revolutionaries out there. I don't know if they're watching religious TV, but I'm not convinced that they're sitting in Christian coffee shops somewhere ready to do great things. I think they're just floating about, like little satellites.
One report I came across recently says that attendance numbers in America's megachurches continue to grow at very fast rates according to the latest research on the country's largest churches. Protestant congregations that already have at least 2,000 people in a typical weekend have an average rate of growth for five years of around 50 percent. How do you account for that? On one hand, it sounds like megachurches are growing, but you're suggesting that evangelical churches, which is where most of the megachurches are I would assume, are declining.
Ten percent of America's 331,000 congregations have more than 300 members. But more than half those attending religious services go to 33,000 or so churches. However, the other 90 percent-that is, most churches-are small. Isn't it interesting that although most churches are small, most people are in large churches? For instance, 28 percent of all churchgoers are Roman Catholic, but only 6 percent of all congregations are Catholic. They've always been huge because of the shortage of priests-it's one priest to every 3,640 Catholics-which is why the smaller Protestant congregations can pick them off.
I think people go to megachurches because of the programs. Sure, they may be growing. In fact, Baylor University's recent study's figures show that they're much more theologically conservative than smaller churches, which is why they're growing-people like the theological conservatism. Still, how many people are members at these places? How many are really there? Does anybody know how many people are in these megachurches? It's all attendance; it's not membership. I talked to Joel Osteen the other week. He has one of the largest churches in the country with an attendance of about 42,000. He doesn't know any of these people. It's more like a rock concert. Are these people being discipled? Does anybody track them? I don't think so. I'm a little leery of anybody who says that megachurches are growing. Does that mean that another 10,000 people are going to Joel Osteen's church? I'm not too sure the megachurches are healthy.
And how many of those people who show up next Sunday at a megachurch were at their smaller church down the street three weeks ago where maybe they were baptized and went to Sunday school; but now they want to go to the big flashy church? People may be moving from rather unpleasant church circumstances, but they're jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Yes, there are a couple of books out about that. Christine Wicker, former Dallas Morning News reporter, just wrote a book called The Fall of the Evangelical Nation where she made that case: a lot of the church growth is basically people moving from smaller churches to large churches. She also pointed out that the attendance figures seem totally blown up. The Southern Baptists say they have 16 million on their rolls, but 6 million actually attend services. That's quite a drop. If they're getting actual attendance of 6 million, you wonder about all the other denominations and what they're getting. It doesn't sound good.
It's like saying, "Italy is Catholic."
Exactly. We're all wondering where these people are. Supposedly the number of unaffiliated people has gone up from 8 percent to 14 or 16 percent, but only 4 percent are atheists. The others are spiritual, but they're not in a church. There are a number of people just floating about.
When I was growing up in evangelical circles, it was always the mainline Protestants or liberals who were nominal. Is it the case that evangelicals are becoming-ironically, in the pursuit of relevance-now the nominal part of American Protestantism?
I think there is a danger of that. I don't know if they're becoming nominal, in terms of just losing their salt. But that is a great question, and I think we don't know yet. A number of folks are fighting to make sure that doesn't happen. I see a lot of what we call the New Reformed Churches. I visited one in Seattle: Mars Hill, which is Mark Driscoll's church. They're bursting at the seams. There must be five or six branch churches now around Seattle, which is one of the more unchurched places in the country. Driscoll says that people don't want to hear the watered-down gospel stuff, and so he preaches a very strict gospel.
I think evangelicals could become nominal if they don't watch out. There has been the seeker-friendly church and the purpose-driven church and all that-which I think started as really good ideas-but they've contributed to a real dumbing down of the service. This is great for new believers, but after five years, you've got to do something for your more mature cohort.
Willow Creek, one of the bigger megachurches in the country, conducted a study in summer 2007 where they found out that 25 percent of those questioned were very unhappy, very dissatisfied with their church experience and were basically ready to bolt. As a response, the Willow Creek folks said that they needed to teach them how to be self-feeders. In other words, they need to learn how to get their own spiritual food, which is totally the wrong answer. They absolutely missed the point. No, you've got to have better teaching! They need stronger stuff: meat, not milk. I am just not seeing it in a lot of places. It seems a lot of pastors think that their believers are stupid, that they need to have the basics over and over again. After a while, people just say: "Hey, I could get this on TV."
Are people really even getting the basics? If you think of the basics, for example, being the articles of the Apostles' Creed, where you see in study after study, most evangelicals really can't say the creed, or even identify basic teachings of the Bible or the basic plotline of the Scriptures, what does it mean to call this movement "theologically conservative" if they're not conserving anything?
Actually, I will say as someone who has grown up Episcopalian: we can say the creed because we say it every Sunday. One good thing about going to a liturgical church is that we chant the words every single Sunday; so we do learn the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and all that. But, yes, in most evangelical churches they wouldn't know the creed if they fell over it. They might teach its precepts, but they don't know it, and they don't know what we call the Thirty-nine Articles in Anglicanism.
What are they conserving? Good question. I think the typical pastor is totally torn. They say 50 percent of all pastors quit in the first five years anyway; so here you have an occupation under tremendous stress, expected to minister and be all things to all people-but what they need to do is just teach more basics. In fact, I was at a Pentecostal church last week where they were handing out stuff saying, "We expect you to be reading the Bible to your kids, and here's everything you're supposed to read." I thought, "You must be kidding. You want me to read Titus to my three year old?" But then I realized that they actually have standards at that church and that they expect you to do the reading. I've rarely ever been told that I'm expected to be biblically literate.
Isn't that amazing at a time when people are saying that we need more discipleship? What does "disciple" mean? It means learning the faith and following Christ as someone who understands who he is.
I think people don't know apologetics, they don't know how to defend their faith. The way church is structured-you walk in, sing a couple hymns, listen to a sermon-it's not one for taking in information and then reprocessing it out. You almost need some kind of back and forth Plato style, or rabbinical style answering of questions. I've listened to a lot of sermons and then I've found myself in the middle of an argument where I know there is a good response for it but I can't repeat it. There must be a better way of organizing where you actually school people more, teach them more, where they're taking notes and then they have to feed it back, where you cement that in your home groups or in your families. I think the whole system of the way we run church is awful, and it's not good for retaining information. In this day and age where you have everything coming against you-and some very knowledgeable people are arguing against Christianity in every single way-you've got to be schooled in the basics and people aren't.
We all know about the Mormons, and we know what they do. During high school, they go to something called "seminary" early every day and study; and then they go to school for the day. After three years, these kids know their faith, or they at least know enough to be missionaries. We may disagree with what the Mormons say, but they have a knowledgeable laity. I think the whole way we do church is too passive; it's not participatory; it needs to be rethought. That is my problem with megachurches. It's like going to a rock concert, which is why-and I know I'm going all against the survey data-I don't think megachurches are going to last. I don't know when they're going to die; I just don't think they're going to last. I don't think that form of Christianity is going to hold.
The age of Wal-Mart will finally be unappealing.
If times get hard, you've got to have fellowship, you've got to have some group that you're accountable to, and you need people to pray for you. Can you get that in a megachurch? I don't think so. I'm not going to pick on Joel Osteen, but I'm just curious-I wonder how knowledgeable a typical megachurch member is about the Bible? I've asked him in an interview, "Why don't you mention Jesus?" He answered, "Well, I do give the plan of salvation." I said, "In your book, I don't even see Jesus' name." How schooled are those 47,000 people who show up at one service a week? How trained are these people? I doubt they're much trained at all.
Unfortunately, I couldn't agree with you more, Julia. Thank you for all of the work that you've done to help us understand this phenomenon a little bit better.
