Leaving Sundays and Quitting Church:

There came a Sunday in where I had made up my mind to attend church that week. I wanted to sing and hear some encouraging words. When Sunday came I just could not muster up the enthusiasm to get dressed and go. I skipped another Sunday and instead got more work done

I started another book “Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are fleeing” to gain more insight on what I was feeling. After the first chapter I realized that what I'm feeling about church and being a church dropout is happening all across the country and even the world as the most passionate and faithful people quit church.

The author Julia Duin was born again during the jesus movement of the 1970’s. I have heard Christians from various denominations speak of that time period as one that was flourishing for the local church. They always talk about the move of God during that time

Ms Dulin says in her book:

The spiritual power so evident in churches I attended in the 1970’s had evaporated. Church growth techniques were substituted. Everyone was into inner healing.

I wasn't Alive in the 1970’s but I can say even from the 1980’s in the denomination I grew up in things started to go downhill during the late 1990’s. As legalistic religions are prone to do, they were focused on rules and worship wars rather than God and the people so of course there was  no move of God in that type of church but I find it fascinating that this was going on in a larger scale and even earlier.

I do recall when I was in high school that there seemed to be an explosion of Jesus culture for young people but I maintain a lot of that had to do with fears that the world was going to end in the year 2000. That too seemed to fizzle out once Jesus didn't return and then it seemed like Christianity decided to go through a rebranding phase

They got rid of the stuffy hymns and replaced them with rock band or hip hop worship music. Then there were no more suits, ties, and sweaters here came the cool Christian pastors with lots of hair gel, tattoos, and leather vests or tight shirts and Jordans. It was all a superficial and shallow attempt to bring in the young people.

I maintain to this day that stuff doesn't work. This is a generation of people who are marketed to every second of their lives.’Putting tattoos on the preacher or remixing hip hop music and adding Jesus to the lyrics doesn't help anyone answer the hard questions of life or teach them how to do life. It also doesn't substitute the supernatural power of God. Being seeker friendly shouldn't mean watered down, superficial, and shallow teaching because why are we tehre?

Ms Duin noticed these changes back in the late 90’s and it's only gotten worse since then as everyone tries to become more seeker friendly. She writes:

Once spiritually powerful churches had become “seeker friendly” congregations and their main aim seemed to be make the service as short as possible. Everything seemed packaged.

Yes indeed It's all packaged and so superficial. Recently I read an article where they asked a young man why he left church and is now an atheist. He said he didn't feel that church took his questions seriously enough. He said they were too focused on making the youth group fun and essentially they didn't want to go deep and be serious. He wasn't fooled by the seeker friendly lack of substance church and decided since they couldn’t answer, then he was wasting his time.

If a young man could see through the nonsense, then what about those who had experienced God’s movement and power?

Ms Duin said she kept encountering people who had gotten saved during the Jesus movement of the 1970’e and had dropped out of church. Many said they were too disheartened to attend church now, knowing how vibrant it used to be and how dead it seems now.

Pointless. Vapid. Out of touch. Useless. Shallow. Superficial. Exclusive. Social club. Hustle. Scam. Den of thieves

These are some of the words I've used to describe church these days and I know that I'm not alone. What about people who are suffering from real faith crises? I learned years ago that If you're having a crisis of faith, then the last place you better voice it is in church. They're okay with preachers taking advantage of elderly church members or certain members lying and cheating but mention a crisis of faith and you're marked and on the highway to Hell. Church should be a place for people to openly question and debate their faith so they can know it's real. I truly believe if you've never had a crisis of faith, then you don't have any faith. Real faith involves questioning and testing.