Phil Smith points to a good post by Yasmin Finch on the “de-churched.” She quotes a study with five categories, but Phil argues for a sixth category;
Despite my faithful attendance in body, my mind and soul are unashamedly becoming increasingly dechurched. You see i might be there, but that’s more out of habit than desire and so, to the authors of mission shaped church, i call for a sixth category “The Dechurched Regular”, who goes week in week out but really is pretty tired of the whole thing and hopes to find a righteous way out soon…
I realized I was one of these people for a while, and I know people who are in this category. At the risk of offending “Missional Chickie” I also know people who don’t attend church regularly but haven’t quite let go of church entirely… they would be fairly solidly in the de-churched camp, but don’t tend to admit it freely, particularly with the still-churched crowd.
In addition, there is also the re-churched/de-churched person. I’m running into some of these lately…. people who are de-churched, but for one reason or another have returned to or remained in a church structure. Normally this has to do with their kids or some program they’re involved with. When friends recently announced their intention to start attending a church again because their kids were asking to be involved in a youth program, we expressed our concern… is their faith strong enough to survive in a church context?
Phil’s next post mentions my piece at Emergingchurch.info — he swapped recommendations with a de-churched person, and got back Jake Colson’s e-book titled, “So You Don’t Want To Go To Church Anymore.” The e-book is unfinished, but most of it is online so you can still get a good feel for it. If you aren’t already living it, that is.
Bro.- care to comment on Colson’s book?
I am a “Dechurched Regular” and I know of several more ppl on staff who fall into that category! It’s kind of a “yuky” place 2 b…but oh, well, still lookin’ for that “righteous way out”. I’ll let ya know when I find it!
I love yasmin finch’s site…and yes I agree with her – I’m in that boat, but I am trying to see if there is a leak in the boat and if I will sink or not. I am praying for a leak. However, Franklin – I would say follow Luther on “the righteous way out” …excommunication or better yet follow Jesus and just sacrifice it all.
if anyone is interested, i’m half way through the book and it’s good but not all hat creative. it kinda serves as a beginners guide to the post-evangelical rather than a good novel… to much didachtic teaching not enough story…
Oh and thanks for the blog, keeps me well entertained!
Phil, thanks for popping by. As you get through the book, I hope you’ll post some comments or review on it, give us a heads-up if you do.
Cindy, I’d like to offer a more substantive opinion, but I just haven’t had enough time to get into it yet… hopefully Phil will oblige. After a while you sometimes start to wonder and evaluate who books like these are aimed at… if aimed at those in the institutional church who just can’t understand what their weird nephew or neice is thinking and why they stopped going to church, well, I’m just not the target audience for that anymore. I don’t know that this is such a book, but it’s a question I’m starting to ask before investing the reading-time these days, as I’ve got so much reading piling up.
Ditto on the piled up books, etc. I read the first couple of chapters of this one, and wasn’t sure I had the time for more. I’ll look forward to Phil’s review.