George Barna - Churchless: Understanding Todays Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

IS CHURCHLESSNESS A CRISIS?

Why People Leaving Churches Matters to the Church

If you are like many churchgoers, you have mixed feelings about the unchurched in America.

You may often feel sorry for the churchless, knowing they are missing out on the special experiences and relationships accessible only through the community of people devoted to following Jesus Christ. At other times you may envy them, wishing to flee your church ties and be free, like the unchurched, from the petty jealousies, impractical teaching, second-rate events, and hypocritical behaviors you sometimes witness in congregational life.

You may feel frustrated and helpless in the face of many unchurched folks self-imposed distance from the love and forgiveness of Christ, and agonize over their inability to live a consistently moral and meaningful life without a deeper understanding of Gods ways. Yet occasionally you may wonder if the only distinction between churchgoers and the unchurched is merely a Sunday attendance record.

You might focus on the challenge of reaching the churchless with the gospel and motivating them to attend religious events. Or perhaps, at least some of the time, you get on with your life without giving the spiritual condition of the unchurched much thought, realizing they are human beings with free will who do not want to be anyones religious project.

Most churchgoers have a sense that involving outsiders in a vibrant community of faith would enhance and improve their lives, while at the same time help Christs disciples to satisfy some element of the Great Commission. However, that sense whether its from duty or love for others doesnt make the task any easier. Knowing how to connect with those who have chosen to ignore churches, how to successfully invite them to engage with a community of faith, is a challenge that eludes simple, step-by-step solutions.

It is our hope that this book will help you and your faith community feel more empowered to approach and connect with unchurched people. Weve done a lot of homework on the churchless population and believe that what we have discovered will help you to be more confident and effective at building bridges between outsiders and your faith community. Our hope is that the information in these pages will give you insights that enable you to create deeper, more enduring relationships with the unchurched people you encounter, leading to their positive introduction to and lasting relationship with Jesus.

Interpreting Culture

We have spent a significant chunk of our lives nearly sixty years between the two of us trying to understand culture. The ongoing work of Barna Group affords us the unique opportunity to speak both to our fellow believers about the broader culture and to church outsiders who want to understand the faith community. We take seriously our role as interpreters, and always seek to give as accurate an accounting of reality as possible.

One substantial reality is the growing sense among North American Christians that the culture is changing faster than we can keep up with or respond to and were not always sure how to live faithfully in a world that feels like its headed off the rails. Not too many years ago, church attendance and basic Bible literacy were the cultural norm, and being a Christian didnt feel like swimming against the cultural current. But now?

Churchless confirms that the world has, indeed, altered in significant ways during the last few decades. Its not just your imagination. Real data confirm how drastically the moral, social, and spiritual lives of Americans have changed and are changing. Well lay these data out for you as accessibly as we can, with plenty of charts and tables so you can see for yourself the trajectory of the changes over time.

But numbers only go so far knowledge and wisdom are related, yet different, things and so in these pages you will also find cultural analysis that can help you in your efforts to live a Christ-honoring life in the midst of these massive changes, especially in relation to your non-Christian peers, neighbors, coworkers, and family. One of the things we will suggest again and again is to embrace the churchless whether they are following Jesus and disconnected from a local church, or not following Jesus at all as people from whom we can (and must) learn.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and martyr at the hands of the Nazis, observed that the church is the church only when it exists for others that is, for outsiders. This is an identity that will be difficult to live if we imagine the churchless to be aliens and strangers to our values and priorities. If we perceive the gap between us and them as wide and essentially uncrossable, we are less likely to get close enough to offer ourselves in real relationships. And that is a significant problem: We hear again and again, both from the unchurched and from local churches that are deeply engaged with the unchurched in their communities, that loving, genuine relationships are the only remaining currency readily exchanged between the churched and the churchless.

For the sake of the life-changing message of Jesus, and of the Great Commission to share that message entrusted to us, the Christian community has an obligation to understand the unchurched. It is our prayer that Churchless will give you the knowledge and wisdom you and your faith community need to reach out with renewed joy to the unchurched in your sphere of influence. We believe that now, more than ever, it is urgent for church leaders and all Christians to understand cultural dynamics, to understand the times (see 1 Chronicles 12:32), in order to respond as Gods people.