It was one of those little pieces of information that helped clarify so much in my mind, that described through data what I had seen with my own eyes and experienced in my own ministry. It is a piece of information we all ought to be aware of and one we all ought to consider. It warns us that one of the most innocent things a Christian does may also be one of the most dangerous.
Ryan Burge and Paul Djupe spent two years conducting a large and comprehensive study of people who have “dechurched”—who once faithfully attended church but now no longer do. The results were published in The Great Dechurching and were widely reported in a host of media outlets. In one article, the authors list some common misconceptions about dechurching, and it was the very first one that especially captured my attention.
The misconception is this: People leave primarily because of negative experiences with the church. Our assumption as we consider people who have left the faith is that they had a negative experience within the church—that they observed or even faced abuse, or that they grew tired of scandals or politicking in the name of Jesus. Or we could assume that they began to critique their faith, perhaps under the tutelage of the many YouTube or TikTok deconstructionists. Then, as they began to doubt the faith, they began to distance themselves from it.
One of the most innocent things a Christian does may also be one of the most dangerous.Share
But that has certainly not been my experience. I have seen quite a few people leave our church and others over the years, and could count on one hand the number who left because they were revoking their faith. Burge and Djupe’s data bears this out. In fact, they found that the majority of people who have become dechurched continue to consider themselves Christian and continue to affirm a basic confession such as “Jesus is the Son of God”—hardly the profession of an acolyte of Bart Ehrman or Richard Dawkins.
So why do people leave? “Are you ready for the number one reason people stopped attending church? They moved.” The study found that around three out of every four people who left the church “did so casually, for pedestrian reasons including moving, the inconvenience of attending, kids’ sports activities, or family changes like marriage, divorce, or having a new child.” In other words, it was not their convictions that led the way, but their circumstances. They didn’t mean to leave the church, but inadvertently allowed their lives and lifestyles to hinder their attendance. Church got displaced by other priorities until it became little more than an afterthought. They became unintentional deconstructionists.
And this was the “aha!” moment for me because it is so consistent with what I have observed. We have had people join our church after moving to Canada from another country. They arrive with glowing recommendations from their former church. They were active, they were involved, they served in many capacities. But they are not with us long before their attendance begins to decline and we begin to see them rarely if at all. We do our best to reach out to them, but find they have stopped attending not only our church but any church. What happened? They moved, and somehow their faith was not equal to that move.
Church got displaced by other priorities until it became little more than an afterthought. They became inadvertent dechurchers and unintentional deconstructionists.Share
It can happen with former members of our church as well—that they move away, perhaps to study, perhaps to work, perhaps for economic reasons, and when we follow up to try to ensure they are integrating into a church in their new community, we find that they are not attending church at all. They moved and it somehow undid what seemed to be a thriving faith.
Neither of these scenarios is universal, of course, and we have had many people move in and move out who commit to their new church and thrive there. But both of these scenarios are common enough that we need to be aware of them.
Every journey begins with a single step and that is true of so many of those who leave the church. They leave by inches. They leave without meaning to. They leave because they have not been adequately cautioned about the coming challenges—that what seems like a time of exciting new experiences and new starts, may actually be a time of unintentional dechurching and inadvertent deconstruction.
I think the caution for all of us is that moving or other major life transitions can be an unexpected enemy. We need to caution ourselves when we prepare to significantly change our lives and we need to caution others when they do. We need to understand that one of the most common things we do is also one of the most perilous. We need to know that one of the most dangerous things a Christian can do is move.

May the God of love and peace be with you today.

(Yesterday on the blog: None of Us Will Ever Forget What You Did)
Important Contexts for Understanding Reformed Theology
Keith Mathison reminds us that context matters in history and theology as much as in Bible study. “Reformed theology was a fruit of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, and that Reformation took place in a particular historical and cultural context. The authors writing at the time wrote within a particular philosophical and theological context. Having a grasp of these various contexts is important for understanding Reformed theology. I want to briefly mention three such contexts: the historical, philosophical, and theological contexts.”
Sometimes Leaders Need to be Carried
Jared Wilson: “Leadership of all kinds is lonely and costly. It is tiring. For every person with a problem, he or she is essentially all that exists. Affliction has its way of self-centering. But all the problems that exist are the leader’s.”
Another Year Under the Sun
“People who ought to know keep saying that this year we will finally put the pandemic behind us. I’ve given up predicting myself, but I hope they’re right. If they are, I wonder how we’ll remember these last couple years.” Matt McCullough shows how Ecclesiastes may be particularly important at this time.
Should You Leave Your Church? (Video)
Todd Friel considers whether or not you should leave your church.
We Are Both Job and Job’s Friends
This is a helpful little reflection on the fact that we are sometimes Job and sometimes Job’s friends.
Carrying Each Others’ Burdens and Why It Can Be Hard
Carrying each other’s burdens can be hard, and this article tells why.
Flashback: I Feel I Think I Believe
…we as Christians must know what we believe and we must believe these things with strength and confidence. It is not wrong to feel, but it is not enough. Feelings will not sustain us when the world turns against us.

We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves. —David Platt

May the Lord bless and keep you today.

This week Westminster Books is offering a discount on a book that will interest pastors, scholars, and serious students of the Bible.
Talitha Cumi
This is a sweet bit of writing. “With the quiet of the room and the mourning of the parents… With Peter and James and John looking on… With a twelve year old girl lying dead in her bed… With all the wailing outside and the mockery of Jesus… 
With the words of her death spreading around the small town… Jesus, the precious savior, takes this little girl by the hand and whispers in Aramaic: Talitha cumi.”
The Deconversion Stories That Go Unnoticed
Here is something to consider the next time you hear of a deconversion story. “I won’t speculate on the reasons for such celebrity deconversions as I am poorly qualified to speak on any of it. What is striking to me though is that for every high-profile professed Christian that turns his back on the faith, there are 100s overseas that make the same stated professions, walk away from the faith….and it goes largely unnoticed.”
Sometimes People Just Ain’t That Grateful
Stephen Kneale points out that some people just aren’t all that grateful and says, “We can’t live and die on whether people are grateful for what we do.”
The Insidious, Fake Intimacy of Algorithms
Yikes! “Many of us have deeper relationships with the algorithms than with the people in our churches. This is not surprising. When we spend more time tapping on our screens than we do talking with our friends, our algorithms will know us better than our loved ones do.”
Are Pro-Lifers Just “Pro-Forced Birth?”
“Abortion advocates are brilliant at playing word games. Using clever rhetorical moves, they are able to make protecting preborn children look bad and killing preborn children look good.” Tim Barnett provides an example.
How Do We Know We Can Trust the Bible? (Video)
I’m very glad that RTS’s “Wisdom Wednesday” videos are back. In this new one, Dr. Zachary Cole talks about why we can trust the Bible.
Does This Really Matter?
Gretchen Saffles: “How we spend our days isn’t just how we spend our lives. It’s how we become who we are and who we will be. It’s not just about what we’re doing, but the heart behind how and why we’re doing it. ”
Flashback: A Failure of Worship
The addict is not merely following deeply-ingrained habits and physical desires, but seeking the escstasy of worship. The problem is not the desire to worship—we are created to be worshippers—but the idolatrous object of that worship.

Waste no time in defending your Bible; preach it and let it defend itself! —Theodore Cuyler