{"id":1695,"date":"2006-10-31T16:38:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-31T22:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=1695"},"modified":"2012-05-15T16:32:49","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T22:32:49","slug":"reasons-for-leaving-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/reasons-for-leaving-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Reasons for leaving the church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lifeway and <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/churchrelevance\/~3\/40566717\/\">Churchrelevance<\/span> share these results on why people leave the church in the first place:<\/p>\n<p><strong>59% of those who left the church did so because of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153changes in life situation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d 19% \u00e2\u20ac\u0153simply got too busy to attend church.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d 17% said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153family\/home responsibilities prevented church attendance.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d Other reasons explained were moving too far from the church, work situation and divorce or separation.<br \/>\n<strong>37% leave because of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153disenchantment with pastor\/church.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d 17% said church members \u00e2\u20ac\u0153seemed hypocritical\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153were judgmental of others.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d 12% said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the church was run by a clique that discouraged involvement.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n<strong>80% of the formerly churched do not have a strong belief in God, which the study indicated may account for their higher priorities of work and family over church.<br \/>\n42% said they are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christian, but not particularly devout.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n24% consider themselves \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spiritual, but not religious.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n19% said they are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a devout Christian with a strong belief in God.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n16% of those who left the church said nobody contacted them after they left.<br \/>\n16% said nobody seemed to care that they left.<br \/>\n14% said the church was not helping them develop spiritually.<br \/>\n14% said they stopped believing in organized religion.<br \/>\n10% confessed to wavering on Christianity.<br \/>\n6% said they were wavering on belief in God.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lifeway and Churchrelevance share these results on why people leave the church in the first place: 59% of those who left the church did so because of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153changes in life situation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d 19% \u00e2\u20ac\u0153simply got too busy to attend church.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d 17% said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153family\/home responsibilities prevented church attendance.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Other reasons explained were moving too &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/reasons-for-leaving-the-church\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Reasons for leaving the church<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-rl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}