People leave Church, for all sorts of reasons – and that's Church, not just their local church.
We know people move from one congregation to another, and that's basically OK. Sometimes they just get busy with other things. Sometimes they fall out with the pastor or another member of the congregation. Sometimes they get tired – so many rotas, so little time.
These are the things we'll admit to without too much argument, partly because they're things we can fix, at least in principle. But what about the people who just stop believing?
According to a recent Pew Research study, nearly half of those who rejected the faith of their childhood was because they just didn't believe it any longer. One respondent said: "I'm a scientist now, and I don't believe in miracles." Others cited "common sense," "logic" or a "lack of evidence" or said simply that they did not believe in God.
And that's much harder to deal with. Rather than just rejecting us – a congregation of fallible human beings, most of whom have felt like walking out at some point – they rejected the God in whose name we do Church in the first place.
Sometimes that's going to happen, whatever we do or say. But we have to ask ourselves the hard question: are people leaving Church because of ordinary human sinfulness, or is it because we've offered them a God who is just not convincing enough? Here are five challenges to today's Church about how we talk about God.
1. Is our God scientifically credible?
That's not the same as saying, "Can we prove he exists?" We can't, though there are hints and indications of a Creator in the nature of the world. But to be credible means that the God we preach shouldn't contradict the findings of scientists about things like the age of the earth or the development of life. If people live in a Christian environment in which everyone around them thinks the same about these issues, it's easier. But sooner or later, they are going to go out into a world where it's taken for granted that the world is billions of years old, not just a few thousand years. If belief in God is tied to a particular interpretation of Genesis, that belief is going to be shaken.
2. Is he true to life?
We should be very, very careful about making claims for our faith that aren't backed up by the promises of Scripture. If churches claim that God will heal every sick person if they have enough faith, sooner or later reality will hit home. If a church is wrong about that, maybe it's wrong about everything. Or a church might teach God wants believers to be rich. So why, the churchgoers thinks, am I still poor? Or perhaps a church majors on charismatic experiences and gifts of the Spirit. Some people just don't seem to be wired that way. It doesn't make them less Christian, it's just that they respond to God differently. But if they're told all true Christians have a certain experience, faith suffers and can die.
3. Does he fill us with wonder?
There's a strand of Christianity that majors on propositional truth – and it runs across all Church traditions from evangelical Protestant through Roman Catholic to Orthodox. What you believe is vitally important. So faith becomes a learning exercise, in which we accumulate more and more knowledge about faith.
Doctrine is important, but doctrine by itself is sterile. In the earliest days of Christianty, faith was simply faith in a person, Jesus Christ, and a commitment to follow the Way of the Cross. Now, because – at least in the West – the Church is such a text-bound culture, we can get so tangled up in doctrinal disputes and church politics that we hardly remember Jesus at all. But at the heart of our faith is a deep wonder and gratitude that we are loved by God. If we can't transmit that, we won't keep believers faithful.
4. Does he make our lives richer?
Isaac Watts, perhaps the first great English hymn-writer, once wrote: "Religion never was designed/ To make our pleasures less." Irenaeus, the Church Father, wrote that "the glory of God is a human being fully alive". When church becomes a place that narrows our horizons rather than broadening them, that stops us living the full, rich lives God intended, we're likely to make it harder for people to stay, and harder for them to believe. Church should be a place that encourages joy in music, in art, in sport, in nature. As another hymn writer said, "All good gifts around us/ Are sent from heaven above..."
5. Does he judge us?
Everything we've said so far could be just a vaguely Christianised version of a self-help philosophy. But one of the things that makes Christianity different is that it says God judges us. He doesn't just want us to feel good, he wants us to be good and to do good. When we fall short of his standards, we are to feel shame. We are to repent, and do better next time.
If we're talking about why people drift from Church, this can be a double-edged sword. We don't like to feel judged. Perhaps it's easier just to walk away. But the challenge to recognise sin and seek forgiveness is integral to the gospel.
If a church preaches judgment without grace and forgiveness, it has nothing to offer; it's spiritually dead.
But if a church preaches forgiveness without repentance, it has nothing to offer either. It's spiritually slack, undemanding and so uninteresting. It's in the tension between what we are and what we ought to be that a relationship with God is formed.
We can't stop people walking away from Church if they want. But maybe we can make our churches places they're less likely to want to walk away from.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
