{"id":73893,"date":"2021-12-13T15:21:05","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T21:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/?p=73893"},"modified":"2022-07-21T15:21:47","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T21:21:47","slug":"pursuing-the-dechurched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/pursuing-the-dechurched\/","title":{"rendered":"Pursuing the Dechurched"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pursuing the Dechurched<\/strong><\/span>
\nBy Jim Davis<\/strong>
\nLead Pastor, Orlando Grace Church<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the pastor of a local church, I have a passion to reach lost people with the gospel, but in particular, because of where I am, Orlando, Florida, I have a passion to reach those who consider themselves dechurched\u2014that is, people who once attended church and no longer do.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I write today as a\u00a0student, not an expert. As leaders, if we are going to help people return to the church, we\u00a0first need to understand what\u2019s driving them away. Then, what changes can we make without compromising any of our doctrines?
\nPreliminary research is showing that we are likely living in the greatest religious shift away from Christianity in our country\u2019s history. The downstream impact of this current shift is nearly incomprehensible to those of us who have only lived within a largely Christian culture.<\/p>\n

While I care most about the individual souls leaving the church, I also realize that the erosion of the institution of church will radically change the very fabric of our society.\u00a0If you\u2019ve lived in Europe, you\u2019ve seen this. After I became a believer in college through the ministry of CRU, I moved to Italy as a missionary and church planter for five years. Italy, like much of western Europe, is a post-Christian place, as the number of people who don\u2019t attend church vastly outweighs those who go even just a couple times per year.\u00a0I\u2019m not saying the future is nothing but darkness and evil, but I\u00a0am<\/em>\u00a0saying that, on our current trajectory, it\u2019s not bright here, humanly speaking.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s much harder to share the gospel in a post-Christian environment, because they think they already understand it when they don\u2019t.\u00a0That\u2019s why it\u2019s imperative that we ask the hard questions\u00a0now<\/em>, before these younger generations join the ranks of the \u201cnones\u201d and \u201cdones\u201d of religion. I don\u2019t want this to be my kids or my grandkids one day,\u00a0searching for the good news that\u00a0we<\/em>\u00a0have while we struggle to share it in a meaningful or relevant way.<\/p>\n

Making Space in the Church<\/strong>
\nMy family moved back to Orlando three years ago. We want to give ourselves to this community and to the pursuit of the dechurched.\u00a0We want to learn to engage them in a manner that isn\u2019t self-righteous or condescending, but rather empathetic and open to hearing their experience with the church and even doubts about the faith.<\/p>\n

The more young people I talk to, the more I hear repeated themes that are worth leaning into as a church\u2014themes related to how we interact with one another about issues such as race, sexual ethics, politics, abuse, leadership, and more. Increasingly, young people don\u2019t feel there is appropriate space for these discussions within the church\u2014or that the church just doesn\u2019t have answers. And they aren\u2019t always wrong for thinking that.<\/p>\n

Where do we want them to go with their sincere questions, passions, and burdens if not the church? We should be the safest place!<\/p>\n

Last year, I hosted a podcast conversation with Christian leaders around topics that people care about but don\u2019t typically feel they can discuss within the church. The conversation was charitable, reasonable,\u00a0thoughtful, and biblical. This podcast was made for our church, but it gained a larger audience than we had anticipated, and it caused some turmoil for those who either didn\u2019t like what I had to say or preferred that I just don\u2019t speak on those topics.<\/p>\n

But what happened over the following months was very interesting. We lost a lot of people from our church, but our attendance\u00a0grew<\/em>. And that growth was mainly from young people.\u00a0I believe that when we make space for honest conversations from the Bible, young men and women show up.\u00a0They weren\u2019t looking for a polished look or flashy show; they were looking for authenticity and sincerity.<\/p>\n

If you come to our church, you would see that our worship is pretty simple. Historically, our church has struggled to see conversions. In the past ten years, I\u2019m not aware of someone we baptized who wasn\u2019t biologically related to us or the occasional foreign exchange student.\u00a0But now we are. In a few weeks, we will baptize a young woman who did not know the gospel before January of this year. She understands the true gospel and knows the True Christ.<\/p>\n

I remember initially talking to the person who first shared the gospel with her and one of his initial questions to me was, \u201cBut she lives with her boyfriend. What do I do about that?\u201d My response was simple: \u201cJust tell her about Jesus.\u201d We can deal with things like a sexual ethic later. Right now, she just needs Jesus.<\/p>\n

Patrick Morley often says, \u201cOur goal isn\u2019t to fix behavior; it\u2019s to\u00a0don\u2019t fix behavior<\/a>.\u201d We trust that the Holy Spirit will bring conviction where it\u2019s needed. And sure enough, a short time after that young woman placed her faith in Christ, she said, \u201cI\u2019m starting to reconsider things in my life that I\u2019ve never felt like were wrong, like living with my boyfriend.\u201d And no one had ever even brought that topic up with her. The Holy Spirit was doing His work.<\/p>\n

By God\u2019s grace, our very ordinary church is slowly changing and growing in our understanding of how to walk with the dechurched, unchurched, and searching. It\u2019s messier than it used to be, for sure, but it\u2019s progress that I wouldn\u2019t trade.\u00a0On December 5th, we will welcome two new members to our church who have been dechurched for almost a decade.<\/p>\n

I believe that whether or not we make space in the church for people with different backgrounds, experiences, and thoughts about current social issues will determine much of our path forward. It comes down to our ability to differentiate, really, between the primary and secondary.\u00a0The primary for every Christian within the local church, I hope, is the gospel. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.\u00a0When we instead make a secondary thing a primary thing, it\u2014at best\u2014brings disunity, and\u2014at worst\u2014drives people away.\u00a0But I believe things can change.<\/p>\n

A New Path Forward in Pursuit of the Dechurched<\/strong>
\nThere seems to be a great filtering going on right now in the church. Nominal Christians are being sifted out, and those who remain have the opportunity to commit to being learners and lovers of people.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s more and more clear that simply telling people information about the Bible isn\u2019t working the way it did in the 20th century; the\u00a0new<\/em>\u00a0apologetics for those in their 30s and younger is the tone and heart of a counselor\u2014someone who cares about them within the context of a relationship. And in\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0context, we teach the Bible and share the gospel.<\/p>\n

During my time in Italy, we quickly realized that the order we typically have done evangelism and discipleship here is exactly the opposite in a post-Christian culture. Here, we tend to share the gospel, show someone scripture, and then build relationships.\u00a0But there, we had to deeply invest in relationships long before we saw gospel fruit. And it\u2019s the only way we saw anyone come to a true faith in Christ. Then, once they did, it was amazing to watch.<\/p>\n

I enjoy fishing, and it reminded me of when you drift fish out in the ocean. Suddenly, you just see the line go. It\u2019s happening! You just flip the bail. That\u2019s how it was there. All of a sudden, after investing in them personally, the line would just go. They\u2019d start reading whole books of the Bible on their own. They were unable to get enough.\u00a0They were caught\u2014not by me, but by Jesus!<\/p>\n

We can and should adopt that mindset and approach here, too. When it comes to reaching young people, we must build the relationship\u00a0first<\/em>. Plugging into a local church will often be the last thing that happens for people in their 20s and 30s. The front door for them is unlikely to be Sunday morning; it\u2019s going to be the relationship.<\/p>\n

Whether the young people we encounter are church casualties\u2014those who have been hurt or turned off in some significant way\u2014or casually dechurched who just gradually stopped going, the relationship is the key. That will be the approach that reconnects them to the heart of Christ and to the body of Christ.<\/p>\n

I see the trends; I see the numbers. But as a pastor, I have to tell you I\u2019m excited for the future. I think the church is being purified and that there is ground here for another spiritual revival to spring up in our lifetime.<\/p>\n

The reality is that we already know the church will be victorious. We know the end of the story. Now\u00a0we\u00a0<\/em>get to decide what role we\u2019ll play in it.<\/p>\n

THE BIG IDEA:<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Only through relationship can we reconnect the dechurched to the heart and body of Christ.<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 1986-2020\u00a0Man in the Mirror<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pursuing the Dechurched By Jim Davis Lead Pastor, Orlando Grace Church As the pastor of a local church, I have a passion to reach lost people with the gospel, but in particular, because of where I am, Orlando, Florida, I have a passion to reach those who consider themselves dechurched\u2014that is, people who once attended <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":73911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3380,4661],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-leadership-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}