Thursday, December 22, 2016
20 headlines about churchless christians from yesterday FaithResearch2016 conference 1st session
20 headlines about churchless christians from yesterday FaithResearch2016 conference 1st session
On Wednesday 18/5/16 I attended the 2016 Faith in Research Conference in Birmingham UK. At the foot of this post are links to other selected posts from various talks/conferences.
Research&Stats CofE ?@cofestats Great turn out at #FaithResearch2016
The conference is organised by the CofE’s Research & Statistics Dept. The Bishop of Manchester welcomed attendees and amongst other things reminded us that ...
Barry Hill ?@revbarryhill #FaithResearch2016 @BishManchester reminds us that research & facts are our friends in discernment (though hopefully not our only friends!)
Following the headlines below is some more detail about the 1st session at the conference on research on churchless christians. But if you are in a big hurry the headlines are:
15% of churchless Christians have never attended a church. As concerns the other 85% …
1) the majority still had their faith and for many that was important to them & their lives;
2) in gender and age they were representative of congregations;
3) most didn’t leave when they moved home – ½ had spent their whole lives in the area;
4) ¼ had long term 25yr + commitment to the church;
5) they disengaged from church gradually over a long time of frustration & deep soul searching;
6) they did not disengage over trivial issues - 1/3rd left due to changes in themselves, 25% felt they didnt fit in, 1/3rd mentioned sermons relevance, ½ mentioned church feeling like another planet;
7) most still felt part of the worldwide Church;
8) when they leave nobody notices or they leave without a fuss;
9) in situations where there was a "final straw" that led to them leaving 50% said it had to do with a life crisis and 20% said the church had let them down at a time of personal need;
10) some said they left as they had a hunger for deeper teaching whereas that provided locally was superficial;
11) some said that the lack of opportunities to explore questions and doubts was a reason for them leaving;
13) some found that when they left the church “it was like getting an 8th day each week” as they had been expected to commit so much time to remaining part of a congregation;
14) 2/3rds of leavers had no intention of re-engaging;
15) for the remaining 1/3rd the reasons they gave for leaving were 1/3rd about style preferences and 2/3rds about fitting in with rest of their life;
16) leavers fill the church gap with fellowship and friendship;
17) sexuality wasn’t an issue for leavers – theological issues were the main reason for a small no. of leavers;
18) maybe some of the leavers are pioneers the church failed to ID;
19) leavers aren’t angry with the church
Steve Aishorpe on “The Invisible Church: Learning from the experience of churchless Christians”
Steve is the Church of Scotland’s Mission Development Worker and he has written a book on this. He started by pointing out that typically churchless Christians are seen as a problem - leakage that needs to be fixed.
Charlie P ?@CharliePeer link to tweetSteve Aisthorpe wanted his book to be reliable, readable, and accessible. How refreshing. #FaithResearch2016
- His research commenced with some 30 in depth interviews where interviewees were asked to talk about their story as relates to church. There were no structured questions and from the recorded interviews some 27 themes came out.
- Further research was via some 2500 telephone interviews - from which the stats in the tweet below emerged. This left some 423 valid surveys as concerns looking at churchless Christians
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Meg Gilley ?@MegGilley1 link to tweet
44% Ppl who stop going to church still have faith, half high scorers on religiosity scale #FaithResearch2016
(Later in the research these surveys were compared with the other areas of Scotland and found to be representative in that: a) the respondents mirrored the geographic distribution of the general population; b) Some 60% were female, 40% male – representative of congregations, c) 50% were baby boomers; d) 50% had spent their whole lives in the area; e) 25% had been with a congregation more than 25 years; f)
Simon Foster ?@roseheadboy #FaithResearch2016 15% non-attending Christians have NEVER belonged to a church.
Note also that d) above seems to counter the idea that people leaving church is linked to them moving homes, and e) above seems to counter the idea that leavers are somehow not committed to the church.
So what were some of the findings from this survey of churchless christians?
1) The majority had not lost their faith.
(Of course an obvious challenge is what did respondents mean when they said they were christian – by using the Hoge Intrinsic Religiousity Scale it was determined that 1/2 thought their faith was important to them and made a difference to how they conducted their lives)
2) They disengaged from church gradually.
- Meg Gilley ?Available link for download
