What Is Casual Dechurching and Is There Hope?

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Jim Davis
Well, welcome to as in Heaven season three. My name is Jim Davis. I’m your host and pastor of Orlando Grace Church. I am joined by our guests, Patrick Miller today I get to know, Patrick fairly recently from the good faith debate season to where you and J Kim did an outstanding role job of arguing should the church be slow or quick to embrace new technologies and we are going to come back to that again, toward the end of it because it is central to what we want to talk about here today. Patrick is one of the pastors at the crossing church in Columbia, Missouri. He is co host of the podcast truth over tribe. And he also has a book with that same title truth over tribe came out in 2022. And man, I’m excited to be able to hang out today and talk because there are a lot of misconceptions out there about deep searching that we hope today’s conversation will bring clarity to if you follow much of the online discourse over the past few years, one of the biggest things that you might have been one of the big conversations you might have heard about is deconstruction. That term is broad and difficult to nail down. Sometimes it means leaving the faith altogether. For others it just means leaving certain important doctrines behind. For others. It means just disentangle disentangling the actual gospel from unhelpful sub cultural politics or unethical matters. So that conversation is an important conversation that we need to have. But it isn’t the conversation that we’re going to have here today. It’s related to it, but it’s not core to it. If this is your first episode, listening to the season, then by means of quick backstory, our podcast team conducted the most comprehensive and detailed quantitative study and national study of deep searching in America before recording the season. And we learned a lot. We learned a lot about where they’re going. We learned a lot about why they’re leaving, we learned some things about how they might come back, we learned that most people left the church not because they were deconstructing super angry or had been egregious ly wronged in some way, although that is a subset of people who are leaving the church. Because deconstruction is a little bit tricky to put a precise number on, it’s our best guess that only about 25% left the church in a really hurt way. Hence, in our forthcoming book, the great deep churching we have elected to coin two new terms and I want to give Skyler flowers credit for these terms, but we kind of divided these D churched. Two groups into what we call the church casualties. And the casually D churched. The casualty D churched are about three times the size of the D church casualties. And those are the ones that left with significant hurt. On the other hand Church, the casualty D church for people who moved to a new place life got busy, they never plugged in COVID Hit maybe they didn’t go to church for 18 months didn’t really miss their Sunday mornings at church, they picked up new hobbies, golf, fishing, line dancing, whatever it is that people do on Sunday mornings. But we learned a lot about this crew, what they believe we’ll get into that what might bring them back. So today’s episode, we want to really focus on this much larger and arguably far less understood. And I think what the data says is maybe even easy, much easier to reach group of the casually de churched. So I have my co host here, Michael Graham today, Patrick, on behalf of both of us. Thank you so much for joining us.

Patrick Miller
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Jim Davis
Well, my first question for you, Patrick is when Mike started getting the data back from Ryan Berger and his team on the study and was sharing some of the insights on the casually de churched you were involved in that process. You were you were aware of what we’re learning in many cases helping us sift through what we were learning. What were some of your first reactions to the data on the casually de churched

Patrick Miller
Well, I was shocked. I think like most pastors, I knew that something was happening, but I didn’t know precisely what was happening. And perhaps because I do a lot of work in kind of cultural apologetics. I had this sense that probably most people were leaving the church for culture warring reasons. And that’s really tough because resolving those it sometimes feels insoluble. How can you help someone move from a political position a into a less militarized position? And as Mike was talking to me on One level, it gave me hope. Because I realized that my perception that people were leaving the church for, again, these cultural reasons, or as you said, they were a casualty of the church, church hurt that kind of thing. I thought that was the vast majority. And when it came to understand that no, the vast majority are people who are casually detaching, again, this gave me hope. Because if they were still open to coming back to church, if they were still interested in returning to church, it was going to be much easier to welcome those people in. I think, on the other side of that I felt this sense of missional calling. I mean, if we’re going through one of the largest religious shifts in American history, which you guys have proved, yes, we absolutely are, we have a missional calling to reach people who are walking away from God. And this is really an intergenerational calling in my mind, you know, for Gen Z, we aren’t bringing them back. We are bringing them back to church. We’re bringing them to church for the first time, and for their parents and those who have left the church casually. Again, we might be bringing them back to the church. But it’s going to be a key part of reaching that younger generation to welcome in older generations who are leaving for the reasons that you guys laid out,

Mike Graham
when our initial data set was coming in, it definitely made you sit back because of all the things that you’d expect to be there with respect to people who are, you know, had tremendously painful experiences. And I do want to just kind of speak to everybody here, too. With respect to this particular episode, we are going to get to the people who have had significant church hurt and these different kinds of things in about two weeks. So we have no interest in ignoring, minimizing or patronizing discharged casualties. Okay. It’s just the scope of you know, our episode here today is on a much larger, larger and arguably far less understood casualty churching group. So, as Jim kind of alluded to, you know, in his intro, some of the top reasons why the casual D church people left the church were things like moving, attendance wasn’t convenient. COVID-19 got them out of the habit, they had other priorities for their time and money, they chose to worship online, and divorce, remarriage or some other significant family change. So there’s a lot of people who out there who have just kind of been adrift, literally 10s of millions of people. So some of them are quite Orthodox, and others are hit and miss doctrinally, but there’s so many people that just kind of quietly walked out the back door of the church and just haven’t come back. So yes, there are some other things in there for many of them, you know, some relational tensions, some political tension. Some other things they might have disagreed with either the clergy or with the church or individual people. But when you drill down, those issues don’t really seem to be the driving force for this, three quarters of you know, the whole D churching. phenomenon. And so it isn’t easy to kind of put your finger squarely on one particular thing. But if you had to, you know, probably the word apathy is the word that would kind of encapsulate most of what you’d think about in terms of casually D churching. In terms of most of these people having in common, cherish wasn’t just, it just wasn’t working for them. And so they walked. And so, Patrick, I have a question for you with respect to you know, your context in you know, Columbia, Missouri, which is obviously a college town, he got Mizzou there in the city. Have you observed many people who have casually discharged in your city?

Patrick Miller
It’s a great question, because I can only answer it with retrospect, one of the problems is that when people are leaving, whether it’s because of church hurt, or as I alluded to earlier, culture war issues, they tend to leave rather loudly. And as a pastor that draws a lot of your attention, because these might be people that you care deeply about. These might be people who are saying difficult things about your church. And so naturally, you’re just going to be fixated on that. But when you started pointing out this group of casually D church people, I started, in retrospect, thinking through people who had left the church over the last, you know, even five to 10 years, and I realized there was a very large subset of people who just quietly exited. And it was hard to track because it was, at least in my experience, never very sudden, it would be, maybe they stopped attending their small group, and maybe then they stopped serving, maybe then they stopped attending Sunday morning worship. And at each of those points, you try to grab those people, you try to welcome them back in. And they would often say things like, oh, you know, I just need a break. For now I’m going to come back. But slowly, over time, they would drift off, which is actually much harder to deal with pastorelli, because it’s almost easy to allow them to drift off because you don’t want to be forceful, or, or pressuring people to do things that you want them to do. And so I started talking to other pastors in our town to see if they were experiencing the same thing. And they had the exact same experience. He said, I hadn’t even thought of this before. But now that you’re describing it, I can name multiple families in my church who left in that exact manner. And so that’s why I think this is such a helpful category is because again, it’s not a loud category. It’s a quiet category. It’s a slow category, and those are precisely the kinds of categories that tend to fall off our map.

Jim Davis
So I want to follow that up. Because you I’m always amazed when I talk with your text with you like you have good numbers behind what you better numbers than most. It’s not just anecdotal. So what percentage would you say in your college town context have casually discharged versus D church casualties? And let me let me have a second part to that. You’re in a larger church context, we’re kind of in a medium church context, you’re networking with smaller churches to how does the size of the church affect the the nature of the people who casually D church?

Patrick Miller
Well, in some ways, I think this can be a larger problem for a large church. I mean, to state the obvious. One thing that draws people to large churches is that they can worship somewhat anonymously, they can check things out for a little bit, they’re not going to be graded right away and invited into things immediately. And there’s a beauty to that, because sometimes there are people who are in process, and they need some space to just try it on for a little bit and think before they they want to take that next big social step in their life, but really embedding their wives inside of a church. But again, in a large church context, the opposite can be true as well, which is as people are casually leaving, it’s easier not to catch it, it’s easier not to see it. Now speaking on a broad city wide level, I don’t think I could give any hard numbers because obviously, I only have access to our own church. Now we have some really specific numbers in terms of how COVID affected the churches in our environment. And so we can talk about that in just a second. But just anecdotally, speaking, talking to pastors, this is a pattern that’s not just happening at our church, it’s large churches, it’s medium churches, it’s small churches. And so everyone I know is seeing people, you know, D church quietly. And I think this is especially possible in college towns, because as you can imagine, a college student comes to the university and they have to make a choice, am I going to go to church, and that’s a huge inflection point for them. They might start detaching from the minute they arrive on campus. But we see the other thing happen as well, which is that they might get involved their freshman year, but slowly over time, they begin to drift off or drift away. Um, similar things go for people in their 20s and beyond. So while I can’t give a super hard number of what’s the percentage inside our exact city, what I can say is that it’s a pattern that as I talked to pastors, I see across the board, and COVID is really the key here. Because what COVID did, at least in our church and other churches, it took that pattern of people casually detaching and it put it on steroids, we saw something that we’ve never seen before. And it was exceptionally hard to track because depending on, you know, when your city opened up, and how long you had to worship online versus in person, you really might not know that someone had the church because it happened over a period of a year or a year and a half when there was lots of people not coming back to church for health reasons.

Jim Davis
One of the things that was so interesting in the study, Berger, and I really looked at this is, since you’re in a college town, and the majority of my ministry context has been in college towns, we found that students who are involved both in church and a campus ministry are three times more likely to stay in the church after college. Now some of that involves self selection, because the kind of student is going to stay with their faith is going to opt into those things. But even so, you had a big period where there was nothing like he did they didn’t have either, that has to have had a big effect in context like yours. I do. I want I want you to keep talking about you alluded to COVID. And the the way that it affected loss of churches, obviously, you’re specifically what percentage of people in your city would you say, casually de churched, or went adrift during the COVID? Area era? And what have you done to try to regather? Some of those people?

Justin Holcomb
Yeah, that’s a fantastic question. What I can say with a high level of certainty is that at our church during the pandemic period, about 34% of our church, the church and just passed orally, I can say that was not in large part because of church hurt, or some of these cultural warring issues. It was a quiet day churching I think about a woman who I just saw at church a few weeks ago, and she came up to me and she said, I haven’t been to church in two years, I haven’t been here since COVID happened. And I’m so glad that I’m back now we implemented some strategies to actually reach people and try to reengage them because Mike was giving me this data. And I realized we have to be really intentional about drawing people back in. But of course, the problem is, is more broad in our community. We realize there’s lots of de churched people in Colombia, and we have to draw them back in. And maybe one encouraging factor here is that well, we lost 34% of the church during the COVID period to this kind of casual de churching phenomenon. The opposite has also happened. We’ve brought in a little over 40% new people in the in the interim. So I mean, it’s I try to put numbers on this. This essentially means that if you had 100 people at our church, about 34 of them We didn’t see again. And yet somehow through some of the strategies, I think we’ve put it into play. And obviously, God’s providence working in people’s lives, we’ve seen an additional 40 plus people arrive. But here’s one of the keys, the people you’re losing aren’t always the exact same kinds of people that you’re bringing in, right, you might be losing people who were in small groups, and they were serving and they were giving, and they were really embedded in the life of the church. And the people that were bringing in, they’re very much so in process, in my experience, they might be battling some mental health issues, you know, they’ve they battle with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, many of them are coming from some, like you said earlier, my broken family environments. And of course, that means that they come in with a certain level of hurt and needs that we have to meet. And their process of getting involved of serving of worshiping consistently of giving, that’s a longer process than maybe those previous people who were there to get there. So again, at one level, I’m really deeply sad. And I don’t want to see anyone do church. But on the other level, I have this deep sense of hope, because we’re actually seeing the church grow as a result of being intentional about reaching the church people in our community.

Mike Graham
So everything that you’re saying here, Patrick definitely resonates, I think, pretty deeply with me. And Jim, you know, we don’t have as good of analytics on some of these things as what you do. But I would say anecdotally, a lot of the dynamics that you have seen that you’ve seen there in Columbia, Missouri, have very much been true for us also in Orlando, Florida. And just in terms of the kind of the reshuffling of the deck, and I think some of these things are also just part of the great reset, as some have called it just kind of cultural iden, you know, in America as well. I wanted to just kind of drill down a little bit on on what you said there on, you know, obviously, you guys have been employing some tactics to just kind of put D churching as dealing with D church people in your city in in a way that’s has increased intentionality to it. What are some of the things that you guys have been doing and what seems to be resonating with people in your particular context? Yeah,

Patrick Miller
so there’s a fantastic article on Murer orthodoxy called the four quadrants of church life in the gray zone. How’s that for a title? by Dave Strunk and Ben rack, I’m not sure if I pronounced his name, right. But one of the points they make is that looking at the post COVID world, there are two kinds of commitments that seem to be doing really well. And that would be low time commitment, low risk commitments, so low time, low risk. And then interestingly, the exact opposite, high time high risk. So in the secular world, you could look at things like CrossFit and homeschooling or kind of the resurgence of homeschooling, those are high risk, high time commitment things. But on the low, low risk, low time commitment thing, you can think about following an influencer or engaging with someone online. Now, again, for the average church, they might see this as a real obstacle, because what we all in the church world tend to be really good at is hitting smack in the middle. Right? It’s kind of halfway between low time commitment and high kind of halfway between high risk and low risk. And so what we realized is that we needed at least at this stage to focus a lot of time and energy on the low time commitment and low risk, because we’re talking about re engaging people, but people don’t go from zero to 60. And so the way we did that was we actually went through our church database, and we began to segment out groups of people. And we were able to identify people who hadn’t reengage and what ministries they had previously been engaged with. And we gave those email lists to ministry leaders, and we said, hey, what can we do to bring them in. So here’s a great example, that our women’s ministry, we have a fantastic women’s ministry at our church. And they had a good list of people who simply had not come back to anything involving our church or women’s ministry in general. And we gave them the list of people who were there. And so they created a very low commitment, low risk event, it was a little painting event, it was a one off event come in, we’re going to paint together, we’re going to have some tea, again, Low risk, low time commitment, just an hour. And they invited women on that list to come in. And they’ve repeated this, by the way several times. And this has led to, so far as I can tell, well over 100 people who would have just casually D church, they would have just disappeared off the map of our church life. They’ve reengaged. And the stories were really moving. I mean, we had multiple women come in, he said, Man, I haven’t been in a big space like this since COVID. I haven’t been back to church since COVID. But now that I’m sitting here, and I’m with community, and I’m seeing my friends and I feel reconnected, I realized I was longing for this. I desperately wanted to be a part of it. And so those are some of the strategies that we’ve really been implementing on a church level. But we’ve also been intentional about doing that on a more local level. We’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out how to target de churched people online. So this is using things like metas ad platform and Google’s ad platform and targeting ads to people that are inviting them again into Low risk, low commitment thing. So it’s things like hey, it’s the Christmas season. We’ve produced a little Advent devotional that goes straight to your email. Well, the average D church person they aren’t close Just off to spiritual things. And they think, Gosh, I haven’t been to church in a while I missed that connection to God, I could do an email devotional. And what’s wild is that 10% of the people that we reach locally with those kinds of very low commitment, low risk things, 10% of them will show up in person over the next year. And what’s even more exciting that is of those people who show up, about 80 to 90% of them stay connected as time goes on. And so we’re trying, you know, people see technology as a real obstacle to I think, maybe the D churching, or deconstruction or whatever phenomenon you’re talking about. And we’ve really taken the opposite tack and said, no technology is the gateway to getting them into these low time commitment, low risk situations, so they can re embed themselves in community. And then from that point forward, we can take them on a journey towards deeper relationship, a deeper walk with God alongside our church community.

Jim Davis
Well, let’s stay with that technology stream for a minute. The good faith debates that you participated in. The argument that you and J Kim engaged in was should should the church be quick or slow to embrace new technology? And honestly, you guys just nailed it. I mean, I thought it was. It was so helpful, so thoughtful, so charitable, I imagined that it would be widely listened to as widely listened to as any debate that doesn’t have Jen Wilkin in it, probably, but But you just did a great job. So I want to pull on this thread a little bit since you brought up technology. What are other ways that either you’re using technology to reach to the church? What are some things that churches doing poorly about embracing technology? Because I know from knowing you, you’re not you’re not? I love what you say about replacement versus the alternative? So so how should churches think about technology as a way to engage the casually de churched?

Patrick Miller
Well, I know that what I’m about to say is going to sound counterintuitive, because Mike already said that one of the things that can lead to casual, detaching is watching Church Online exclusively. Now, that goes to the point you just made, which is I do not think that the internet or digital technology can replace what we do together collectively in worship. That’s not the goal. I do, however, think that it has a tremendous power to enhance it. There’s a fantastic article in compact magazine by guy named Jack, John Ashkenaz. Again, don’t know if I’m saying his name, right. But he makes the point that technology has a tendency to liquidate tradition, you can think about this with farming, right? You just go back 100 years, and what did farmers have to do to have a good plot of land, they had to do crop rotation. But then once you get to the 1940s, and 1950s, in the introduction of chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers, you no longer had to do crop rotation. And so that’s a major change to the traditional life to the traditional form of farming. Now, what John says, and I think he’s right is we can see this as an obstacle as a problem, we need to go backwards, you know, maybe we should be Amish or Luddite and, and just kind of go back to the world before technology that changed our traditions. But he says we need to have a different orientation towards technology, we need to see technology as something that can reinvigorate and re energize our institutions. And that’s my encouragement to church leaders. Yes, you cannot replace what you do on Sunday morning, or what you’re doing in small groups or service. So many of the things that the Church says you cannot replace it with technology, however, you can radically enhance it. And you can as we’re experiencing, I mean, again, we’ve brought something like 1200 new people into our church using technology, that’s the thing that brought them in, that’s not the end of it. Again, they have to come they’re gonna get involved. But that’s the beginning of it. And I don’t think any of this takes a rocket scientist to understand. You know, I think there’s a few great examples you could look at, I’ll go outside of our church. There’s a church in Nebraska called corn Daioh. And one of the things they do is they have a midweek podcast, where they discuss in a little more depth, what they talked about on Sunday morning, and so they see this as kind of a Christian education discipleship tool. And here’s the beauty of that, again, 100 200 years ago, people could only go to their local church, the local parish church, wherever they could walk to, and there was a beauty to that, because the pastor could walk around the neighborhood, go inside the office, you know, connect with people where they were living, and I see technology as a new opportunity to be in the everyday lives of people. We do that by creating little 10 minute devotionals we do for a week. And that’s a way that I mean, people tell me they’re like I was out running on the trail. I was listening to this podcast, it has the inverse effect also of you’d be surprised the amount of people who do church previously said, I’ve been listening to this podcast I’ve been learning on it and that’s what actually pushed me impressed me towards coming back to church in person. So we can’t see these things as in opposition to one another let’s not replace but Let’s enhance

Jim Davis
Well, and what what’s interesting to me and makes sense when we talk about The reasons that this kind of technology works. Now, of course, I don’t want you to get the role of the Holy Spirit calling lots of lots of things. But what we are seeing in our study is that these teachers, Evan Jellicle, specifically, are very willing to come back to church, we said in a previous episode 51% think they will go back to church, the large, a large portion of those are the casual at church. And we’re going to jump into the data here in a second with Mike. But as I started to have these categories more clearly, in my mind, it was shocking to me that these people need like, what they really need is a nudge. It’s kind of like people who, you know, I’ve had seasons where I don’t go to the gym, but I know I need it, I desire to go back. And really all it took was somebody inviting me yesterday, I got my teeth cleaned. And I was asking the dental hygienist about her, you know, she got to church, and I quickly realized she’s in this does casually D church category, one invite. And she was like, Yep, we’re gonna do it. We’re coming. We’re coming. We don’t even know each other that well. And so it makes sense to me that technology would be this low hanging fruit, if there’s already this disposition. So with that in mind, Mike, you we talked in episode two with Ryan Berge about machine learning the six different profiles you all developed in the different types of deep church person, if you if you haven’t listened to that episode, I really recommend going back and listening. But you also did a deep dive on those who are casually the church understanding their animating concerns, their needs, ways the church can engage them. So as a next step of this conversation, would you would you flush that out for us a little bit?

Mike Graham
Yeah, absolutely. So basically, among like, of those six profiles, four of those profiles are D church evangelicals. So I want to really just kind of primarily speak to the four D church evangelical categories. So have two of those four profiles. Most of those two are like the first two of those four profiles are D Church of the church. evangelicals are people who would call primarily casually D church. So again, you can go back to episode two with Ryan Berge to learn more about those particular groups, but we call those groups cultural Christians, which is about half of the church evangelicals. And then one six of them are mainstream teacher, she evangelicals, probably also about half of the fourth group, which he called the bipoc group, which is a group that’s comprised entirely entirely of non white persons is more casually de churched. And then the the fourth category, there of extra angelical, that group is entirely deep church casualties. So overall, about 75% of the D church evangelicals are of the casual variety. Same with the broader trends. So there’s, again, there’s nuance in both in episode two. And then when our book comes out, in kind of summer of 2023, you can read in much, much more granular detail about each of these different things and what it looks like to, you know, engage with you with each of these things. I’m going to paint and really broad brushstrokes here. So like we mentioned earlier, these folks didn’t have tremendous pain, church hurt, abuse, horrible experiences, they’re just kind of a drift because they move because of COVID, travel, baseball, laziness, golf course, that kind of stuff. Here’s the big thing. The biggest thing, that this group of people 75% of, you know, the D church people, we’re talking 30 million people, okay? Here’s what they need. They need close friendship, that results in invitations to church that results in follow up with discipleship. It’s that simple, close friendship, which results in invitations to church, which results in a long, a long arc of discipleship. Let me double click on kind of each of those things. Before I do that, I think of, of, of the D church casualties, I think what you’ll experience is three different types of casualty D church people’s responses. One group, as Jim mentioned, like the dental hygienists from yesterday, they just need a nudge, a second group they need, they need to be at your dinner table before they’re ready. And then a third group are going to be very reluctant. And they might, you know, put you off forever. And they might or they might just take years of consistent things. So you’re just going to have to use relational wisdom to know the difference between those two things. The person that needs a nudge the person that needs to be at the dinner table, and the person who just needs years of really consistent relationship, but let me drill down kind of on each of those things. close friendship, invitation to church, discipleship. So with respect to close friendship, you have to employ relational wisdom. Okay, we’ll have a whole a whole episode here in three weeks from now on. Um, on relational wisdom, relational wisdom is what helps people experience you as calm, non anxious, and curious, the kinds of things that you would want from like a really excellent counselor, right? Well, those kinds of skills and traits, they’re not that complicated, you just have to have a level of security in yourself in knowledge that we have a God who’s good in control. And if you possess those things, then we have a lot of comfort in moving into other people’s lives. In just being excellent active listeners, ask good questions, be quiet. And then let people tell you what they care about. Let them tell you about what their vision of truth, what their vision of goodness, and what what their vision of beauty is. And when people experience you has been calm, non anxious, and having a curious posture, it creates an environment of infectious relationship building. And that’s the soil that’s, you know, that’s key for being effective. For people, especially the people who need a little bit more than a nudge, the person who needs to be at your dinner table before they’re ready to, you know, see an invite to church, or the person who just needs years of, you know, faithful, consistent, you know, genuine good faith, you know, not beaten, so, you know, we’re not in relationship with any of these people, because, you know, they’re a project or anything like that we’re doing these things, because every human being that you interact with, is an immortal creature that is made in the image of God. And we should be curious about everybody. So that’s the close friendship piece. It really requires relational wisdom. The second piece is invitations to church. Ideally, it shouldn’t be, you know, any church, one of the things that we learned among the, among our study was basically the value among this group for consistency and ethics. So ideally, you’re inviting somebody to church that has a high value of not just, you know, the truth of the gospel, or not just the goodness of the gospel, or not just the beauty of the gospel, really all three of those things at the same time. And then finally, discipleship, we don’t want to just like invite people, you know, to church, you know, one off and just kind of forget about them, those people are definitely going to be at risk of detaching again. So we definitely want to have some kind of plan for them to grow emotionally relationally. And intellectually,

Jim Davis
it is so interesting to me, the low hanging fruit that we see before us. So Patrick, if it’s not already clear from everything that we said, so far make this really clear for the listener? In what sense? Do should we interpret it as good news, that so many of the 15 million people who have deep church who have teachers left Evan Jellicle? Churches have done so casually? Why? Why should we see that as hopeful?

Patrick Miller
I think it’s incredibly hopeful for a number of reasons. One is, I mean, just to be frank, if you had to go to Europe, where it is inevitably years of relationship, before anyone is going to ever step inside a church, or you can go to the United States, where you have 15 million people who are saying, I just need a relationship, and a nudge and an invitation. And that’s all it’s gonna take for you to reconnect me with God. I mean, almost everybody, at least just on the surface level of what’s easiest, you’re gonna say, I want to go to the place where where we’ve got warm leads, where people are excited to hear more about this. But I think more broadly, it’s that the answers here are relatively simple. I mean, think about the book of Acts, and it talks about the apostles trying to be faithful in their own generation, I didn’t get to choose what time I was born, and I am born here. And now and I’m being called to faithfulness. And my generation, I have to trust the power of the Holy Spirit to work in people’s lives to draw them to Jesus. But I also have to be thoughtful and strategic to make the decisions that will actually invite them in. And that’s the part that I kind of feel a real missional urgency around, which is that churches, you cannot reach casually, D church people by being casual yourself. If you don’t have systems and structures in place to take people on the journey that Mike just described, you will not reach these people. And there’s a lot of intentionality that can be built into this. I’ve already talked about creating OnRamps digitally to get people to come and be involved. But but we go far further than that, you know, one choice we’ve made as a large church since the very beginning, was we weren’t going to view our church as a hub for everything that happens in someone’s life. So for example, there’s no sports leagues at our church, you can’t come and do the Christian sports and I don’t have a problem with Christian sports leagues. But that was intentional because what we wanted people in our church to do was go and be involved in the secular sports leagues where where parents would sit alongside other parents and develop the kinds of relationships that you’re it. So that there would be opportunities not just to grow a depth of relationship, but invite people into the story of Jesus. And so again, we have to be really intentional, we need to make sure that we’re pushing our people out into the community actively to be involved in the lives of people who are D church, or who aren’t Christian at all. And then we also have to make sure that inside the church, we’ve built systems and structures so that people don’t fall off the map. I mean, one of the things that we are really, really serious about is that we have a very specific journey that we want to make sure everyone who walks inside our doors goes on. And we are checking in with them at every point to make sure that they take the next step on that journey. And without that intentionality, like Mike just said, people would just do church again, they would just fall off the map. I think it’s a real tragedy. I’ve talked to multiple people who said, I’m looking for a church. I mean, this has happened, someone looking for church for two years, and they’ve gone to multiple churches, and they weren’t quite sure which one was right. And they found one they liked. And they told me, I just can’t figure out how to get involved. And then they kind of figured it out. And they realized, oh, for me to get connected and relationship, it’s going to take me waiting another nine months, because that’s the next open period, for me to get connected. And I thought, you know, the church is doing its best. So I’m not trying to be critical. But if we don’t create very specific avenues and ways for people to get connected, when they’re ready to get connected, we’ve already given up. And I get that maybe that presses against, you know, your staffing needs, or whatever your specific values are, if we can emphasize process and say that we’ve got to create these, these open lanes and spaces for people to get connected. I think that again, there’s tremendous hope, because they desperately want it, they want relationship and that relationship, that sense of belonging, we can say just sociologically will almost always inevitably lead to a deep sense of belief and trust and faith in Jesus. And of course, that’s my goal. At the end of it, I want people to have a life giving relationship with Jesus. But that’s not going to happen if I don’t take my responsibility seriously, which is building these strategies and praying and trusting the Holy Spirit to work through them in his way to bring about the results he wants in the lives of everyday people.

Jim Davis
Well, I love how you you contrasted our context to like Western Europe, I lived in Italy for five years. And what you’re saying is absolutely true. Anybody, anybody, everyone we saw who was not a Christian, and eventually plugged into a church as a believer, it was years of relationship before they would ever step foot in. And then I contrast that though, on the other side, with my friends in East Asia or other places where there was a lot of fruit, people come to faith, but the discipleship, meat needs were just off the charts because they had no context for Jesus being the God man atonement, Trinity, these kinds of things, worship, and the people in our context already, largely already have that, that at least intellectual foundation, if not at a heart level. So I appreciate the way that you flush that down. All right, I want to get talk about you personally, Patrick, on this issue, what are you doing, personally, in your regular rhythms to move into the lives of the church people in your city?

Patrick Miller
One of the temptations of anybody in our moment, is to live a highly online life. And what I mean by that is we spend a lot of time on our phones, we spend a lot of time consuming content, we don’t spend much time on actual people to people life outside of maybe work. And so in our lives, I think this looks like a lot of different things. One thing I encourage everyone to do is Christians should be invested in their local institutions. That could be the school board, that could be the PTA that could be the local Rotary Club, or the organization in your city that helps small businesses grow, there’s so many different spaces for you to go and rub elbows, so to speak with people who are de churched or who aren’t Christians. And that’s how I’ve tried to live this out, you know, I’ve decided I’ve got a first grader, I’m going to be very involved in the life of my first grader school, I’m on the school board for my first grader school. And that’s part of my value system is saying that that’s going to be one of the ways that I can connect with people and create relationships. But the other element is, I think what Mike just said, which is table fellowship, if you look at the Gospel of Luke, it’s almost like a moveable meal. I mean, Jesus is just eating in one place after another place after another place. And so we modeled for us what it looks like to invite people into our houses or to go into the houses of other people and have hospitable meals, where you get below just the you know, ordinary swimming level of hey, we’re talking about weather and sports and all the basics. And we actually start scuba diving, we get deep into people’s lives, and we show a real curiosity about who they are. And why did why are they wired the way that they’re wired, and why do they believe what they believe? You know, and so it can be exhausting. And by the way, very expensive. I my wife and I joke we’re like we could save so much money if we were way less hospitable. that that will be the number one way for us to grow our savings account. But I am more than happy to expend resources trying to give people extravagant experiences in my house. I mean, I’m not saying actual extravagant, I want them to have amazing experiences in my house, so that it creates doorways for them to want to come and be a part of our church. So again, that’s how I try to live this out. Personally, I think it looks different in everybody’s environment. I mean, if you’re, if you’re in the workplace, and you’re building relationships with people there, get those people into your house, be the one person at your work, he says, Hey, this relationship doesn’t stop. After the nine to five ends, you’re going to be a part of my life. I’m going to know your kids, I’ll know the quirks I’ll know the funny things about them. Because that’s going to be the bridge that allows you to invite them to be a part of your Jesus community.

Jim Davis
Well, I was You made me think about I was talking to a pastor who is really globally known for evangelism and discipleship and getting the Gospel where it’s not. And, and I asked this pastor, like, what, what does evangelism look like for you personally, and he said, My gym like, it’s my gym, it’s, you know, it’s a class type workout gym. And he’s, he’s like, I’m both the same people every day, bad things are gonna happen in their lives, because it does for all of us. And there’s trust, they’ve been in my home. And it was just this regular rhythm, like you’re saying of being around people, invite them in your home and being there for them when they need it the most to be able to communicate, this is why we need Jesus. And he has a variety of different casually the church and church casualties there and unchurched in his context. Alright, so I want to I want to transition from you to your church, what is your church doing corporately, to help equip them, your church leadership to equip your people to be able to engage D church people in your city more effectively?

Patrick Miller
Well, again, I think there’s some really good news here. Because, again, if there’s 15 million people who are casually de churched, who are still very open to coming back to church, you don’t need to develop apologetics experts who can defend the faith and, and give a you know, a 10 point reason why we believe in God and we aren’t atheists. I mean, that’s all wonderful stuff. I’m not against that. Here’s what they have to be, they have to be people whose lives exude the goodness, the truth. And the beauty of who Jesus is such that people see what they have. And obviously, they’re interested in it. They they want to know more. And so I think part of it actually always has to be discipleship. I already talked about that. That high commitment, high time aspect, we’re very intentional about creating spaces where we are discipling people deeply. We call it our leader track, you can call it whatever you want to call it. But this is a intentional, it’s a one year long commitment, where we have small groups of people who are intensely meeting week after week after week, there’s Christian education involved. There’s heart oriented stuff, hand oriented stuff, how do you live? How do you feel? And again, what’s the goal, what we’re training them to be leaders, and that doesn’t merely mean a small group leader. That means being a leader in your community, the kind of person who is drawing people to Jesus. Again, I think the other half of what we do, though, is what I already mentioned, we’ve made very intentional decisions to not make our church the hub of life. The church has a lot of value, right? We Let’s gather together and worship, let’s meet together in small groups, let’s serve along side one another, but we won’t be the hub. And actually service is a fascinating example of this, we’ve made the choice that a lot of our serving isn’t going to primarily be housed inside the church. Instead, we’ve partnered with a very large number of organizations. And I love this as if you went to these organizations, and you said, Hey, how would things go for you, if the crossing just closed down shop tomorrow, they’d say, Well, we lose 70% of our volunteers, we probably lose 70% of our funding, that would be very, very bad for us. And the beauty of it is if you come to Columbia, and you’re a refugee, there’s a good chance that the very first person you will meet is someone who goes to our church. If you’re a single mom, and you’re looking for services, you’re looking for support, you’re you’re just in desperate need of help. Because your life is overwhelming. There’s a very good chance that one of the first people you’ll meet someone who goes to our church, if you’re homeless, you’re looking for housing, you’re trying to get job training, there’s a very good chance that the very first person you’ll meet is going to help you goes to our church. Now, that’s not happening inside of our church building. It’s happening out inside of the city. It’s happening out inside of the community. And so again, we’re just very intentional. We want to push people, we want people to come in, but then we push people out to go live out the Gospel in a beautiful, good, just wonderful way. That creates avenues for people to come in. And I love it because if you come to our church, you’re gonna meet a lot of ex cons because guess what, you know, if you’re coming on parole, you’re gonna meet someone from our church. You’re gonna meet a lot of refugees, you’re gonna meet a lot of people who are coming from homeless backgrounds, single moms, you’re gonna find people who are hurting there, which is also by the way, wonderful if you want to reach D church people because if a lot of those people are hurting, they’re from broken families, if they come into your church and everybody’s just a button The up nuclear family and no one looks like them. And no one has a lifestyle like them, they’re not going to feel welcome. Well, I’ll tell you why you come into our church, you’re gonna see a lot of people who will make you feel really welcome because it is a mix of socio economic, of ethnic backgrounds, all the things that you would want to see in a church. But the only reason that has happened is because we haven’t made ourselves the hub, it’s because we’ve been very intentional about pushing people out and equipping them to invite people to church to love people. Well,

Jim Davis
well, I think every listener can see why we invited you on on the podcast for this episode. But I do want to say, as we finish the goal here, isn’t that after this one podcast, everybody would be equipped to reach the casual at church, our main goal is to introduce this category of casually the church. So when we meet somebody, we can understand what it is we’re interacting with. We’re going to talk more about church casualties. It’s a whole different thing. But we’re all three of us, too. We’re coming on the show, even though I would say Patrick is a little farther down the line. We’re learners. We want to start a national conversation want to learn from each other. And I just really appreciate everything that you’ve done, Patrick, I want to commend to listeners, your debate that came out back in February on technology with the gospel coalition, good faith debates, truth over tribe podcast, truth over tribe book. We’re really thankful for the work that you’re doing for the kingdom here. And I look forward to seeing what all the Lord has in your future.

Patrick Miller
Thanks so much for having me. And I can only reciprocate the thankfulness because I think the project that you guys are on right now and the data that you’re giving us is really giving ministry leaders like me and ministry leaders across the country, the tools they need to respond appropriately to the moment, which I would have never done had I not known this. So what you’re doing is so important for the church reaching people in America.

Jim Davis
Well, thanks. We’ll stick with us everybody as we continue to develop the great deed churching as we call it, the largest and fastest shift religious shift in the history of our country. Look forward to more time together. Blessings