How To Drive More People Away From Church

by Rev. Mark E. Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader

In the spirit of the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, please find the following six recommendations for immediate use, driving more people away from church. 

Invite Them To Passive Sitting.

Fortunately, this recommendation is low hanging fruit. Many churches are nearly there already. When it comes to worship, committee meetings, and lay leadership team participation, we want participants to believe their passivity is their strongest asset. When worship becomes a spectator activity, watching worship leaders conduct the show while passively watching and silently criticizing… then worship is drained of its power to transform people into Jesus followers. We are looking for passive participation in meetings, too, recognizing this communicates to people that their participation is unnecessary, moving them toward the back door. The more passivity in the system, the more likely they are to leave. 

Create Conditions Where Boredom Can Thrive.

What we want to do here is to cultivate church cultures where boredom is pervasive, influencing people to drop out. This takes time, but it can be done. Tap down expectations of spiritual transformation. By all means, avoid challenging people or asking much of them at all. Avoid trying anything new, keeping everything the same. Do the same annual activities over and over until people can predict exactly what the church will do each month of the year. When this happens, boredom can thrive, with more people quietly dropping church altogether. 

Make Discipleship Easy.

Expect so very little. Every time you begin thinking Jesus calls us into a rigorous kind of life, step away from the gospels or wherever these ideas are coming from. You know how people attend worship sporadically now, maybe once or twice a month? Act like this is normal, communicating that worship participation doesn’t matter. You know how the average contribution to churches is less than 2% of income? Praise this percentage as if it’s outstanding, rather than quite low compared to the tithe. At the same time, use our overly-scheduled culture as a fine excuse for people to avoid serving in the name of Jesus. Let them believe their busy schedules are more important than their connection with God or their church. After a while, they will learn their faith and church don’t mean much at all, becoming Dones. 

Ignore The Adventure Of Faith.

You know how so many in the Bible were caught up in adventurous ways of living, yielding robust lives worth living? Ignore that. Instead try to become a settled church. Pursue the big three: Safety – Security – Stability. This is an excellent way to ratchet down the energy in your church. Remember, you are cultivating a culture of boredom. Allowing Jesus to call people into holy experiments or stepping outside their comfort zones will lead to excitement and robust engagement, influencing them to become MORE invested in your church. We don’t want that. Turn the big three into idols in your church, elevating safety, security, and stability above all things, and more will leave. 

Avoid Cognitive Dissonance That May Lead To Life Transformation.

The theological word for this is conviction. Vitalized churches believe that personal and corporate transformation is a primary aim of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We want to avoid this so that people will become discouraged rather than encouraged. So, steer clear of the disparity between the way people live and the call of Christ. Do not under any circumstances point out or highlight the wholesale endorsement of greed, violence, immorality, and injustice Christians are caught up in. If you do, you will create cognitive dissonance — that uncomfortable feeling when the way we are living is incongruent with our beliefs. Instead, tell them everything is fine. Then they will come to believe Christianity is simply a way to confirm what they are already doing, valuing their faith less and less, leading to leaving church. 

Indulge Their Consumeristic Tendencies.

I’ve saved the best for last. This recommendation is powerful, since it collaborates with the innate selfishness of humankind. Tell them church is there to serve them, to meet their needs, to make them happy. When we do this, then they will inevitably be disappointed with their churches when churches don’t deliver what’s impossible to deliver. This, in fact, is the biggest driver of church loss… the disappointment that results from churches not meeting our expectations. If you can’t do the others, focus on this recommendation and more people will leave.

There you have it… the top six ways to drive people away from church. Some churches are already fairly skilled with this. But if not, don’t fret, this too can be learned and implemented. Best of luck.