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How to REALLY understand the #PewReport: Church Refugees by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope

How to REALLY understand the #PewReport: Church Refugees by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope

Last updated on: June 5, 2015 at 5:39 pm by Guest Contributor

How to REALLY understand the #PewReport: Church Refugees by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope 2015-06-05T17:39:45-05:00 Guest Contributor

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By John Hawthorne

I was excited to receive this book by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope. It is a sociological report on The Dones: people who have been active in church life but have removed themselves from the institutional church.

I first became aware of this phenomenon two years ago thanks to some blog posts by Michelle Van Loon reporting on church decline among those over 40. I returned to the topic the beginning of this year when I became aware of some preliminary data from Josh.

Using a combination of sampling methods, Josh and Ashley were able to collect detailed qualitative data on over 100 individuals. He told me in an e-mail that sometimes all he had to do was say “hello” and the stories would pour out.

The Dones shared a number of characteristics. They had all been heavily involved in church life, some in official staff positions. They loved the church enough to be committed to seeing it become all it had the potential of being. But the costs of keeping up that energy against institutional structures eventually become too high.

There are several shared characteristics that cut across their stories.

High on the list is a desire for community. The Dones (which they also call the Dechurched) wanted their churches to be places where people connected in meaningful ways. This was more than just small group programs with defined curriculum but was the place where people actually connected. That community was important is evidenced by the ways they tried to reconstruct community in non-church settings after they were Done.

Related to this is a commitment to authenticity. They wanted to be themselves and make their questions and differences the raw material of their community rather than feeling that they had to demonstrate allegiance to the party line to avoid implicit or explicit judgments being made about them.

A third key is that the Dones had a bias toward action both inside and outside the church. They want faith to matter, not just in doctrinal adherence but in making a difference in people’s lives. But their desire for action and mission were often blocked by congregational priorities. In their view, the church was interested in program when it aided the growth and support of the church. Respondents were discouraged from actions with poor children because their gospel presentation wasn’t clear. In addition, this bias toward action was often met with bureaucratic obstacles as programs needed approval from committees and boards or were only done by people already responsible (with no guidance on how to get involved).

Those who left church were not likely to do so because of theological differences but because they weren’t allowed a safe place to discuss differences. This is an important distinction. It’s not that they didn’t believe Christian doctrine but wanted to explore its ramifications rather than being preached at.

This circles back to issues of authentic community. When this is missing, when people can’t find expression for their missional passions, when church leadership engages in oversimplification or hypocrisy, the costs of remaining become far too great. In reading the book, I was struck with the notion that the denial of authenticity may have exponential cost structures — each infraction magnifies the ones that have gone before. Every squelching of community creates a deeper longing for that one community that meant so much.

I want to underscore that the respondents in Church Refugees bear absolutely no resemblance to the characterizations so easily made by bloggers (not me) about people who want an easy faith and simply drift away because postmodernity is easier. These folks struggled. They had a vision of what the church could and should be and worked hard to make that happen.

In the final instance, they simply determined that the escalating costs were too great to bear.

It’s important also to recognize that once they left the institutional church, they found new ways of being in authentic community, of allowing conversations around important theological topics, of sharing life together, and of impacting the world around them. In that sense, they are remarkably entrepreneurial. If only they could have found an organizational openness to their creativity they might not only still be in church but would be bringing new vitality to the congregation through their efforts.

As I finished the book, I found myself pondering a key question: Why am I not a refugee? I’ve been looking for authentic community, honest dialogue, and meaningful mission my entire adult life. I think there are several reasons. First, I’ve been fortunate to be close enough to “the powers that be” in my congregations to feel some openness to new ideas. Second, and more important, I’m a stubborn idealist who thinks that someone will certainly value my sociological insights if I stay persistent. Third, I work in an environment that allows dialogue around issues of faith and life so church isn’t my only venue for such conversations.

But I understand those who have found the costs too great. One of my takeaways from the book is to ponder how many “near Refugees” exist in local congregations. How many people in the congregation are “one more thing” from making the decision to disinvest? For all of the bloggers’ suppositions about “casual Christians”, the resources for strengthening the local congregation, and therefore the impact of religion on society, may be right under our noses.

Research like Josh and Ashleigh have done is the next frontier of understanding the sociology of religion. As we get a better handle on the beliefs and behaviors of real people in real conversations, we’ll have a more robust sense of how faith works in this postmodern, complex, society. It’s quite likely that such research, rather than simply giving interpretations to shifting demographic patterns, will allow us to grasp the resilience of God’s work in a changing society.

John Hawthorne is professor of sociology at Spring Arbor University. This was originally published at his blog, Sociological Reflections.

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