Sitting in my living room, I was visiting with a young couple after having a good meal and enjoying conversation centered on the last year or so of their life. Then the discussion drifted to the subject of the church. Having known this young couple and having ministered to them for years, they at this time were no longer under my shepherding or members of our church.

When an opening to pursue the subject presented itself, I asked what church they were attending. It did not surprise me when they said none. They had been hopping from congregation to congregation, but nothing was meeting their criteria, if they had some.

What did catch my attention was the assertion that they had matured as Christians after they stopped going to church. The wife was content with an occasional Bible study with a couple of friends, and the husband was just content, or maybe a better word would be apathetic. Sound theological teaching was not, it seemed, necessary for their walk with God, nor apparently was fellowship, ministry, or body life. “Who needs church?” was their attitude.

Losing Our Way

They are not alone. Both statistically and anecdotally, the church is rapidly becoming a throwaway, obsolete at best, a hindrance to everyday living, and even toxic for many.

Recent surveys are startling. Ryan Burge, a Christian sociologist and researcher, claims that studies reveal that in 1972, 35 percent of Americans attended church each week. By 2022, it was only 22 percent.¹ During the same time frame, those who identified as Nones, meaning no religious affiliation, had swelled from five percent to 28 percent.²

Numerically, forty million more Americans joined the Nones from 2004 to 2021, making the Nones the fastest-growing and largest “religious” body in America. The question cultural and religious researchers are wrestling with is why.

What has happened to institutional religion in general and the church in particular that has led to this lack of interest in religion? The consensus is that something took place in the 1990s, a perfect storm of factors and influences that radically changed the zeitgeist, a term researcher Christian Smith likes, of American religious culture.⁴

Smith, in his book Why Religion Went Obsolete, believes traditional religion was simply unable to deliver the goods it promised. When postmodern young people recognized this, they walked away. They did not turn to secularism, however. Instead, they turned to spirituality. Approximately 25 percent of American adults now consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.”³

They also turned inward, intensifying expressive individualism. Smith writes:

“This is the view that each individual possesses a unique inner self that needs to be discovered and authentically expressed. To realize authentically, individuals have to trust their subjective feelings and personal experiences as final authorities.”⁵

Brad Edwards, in his award-winning book The Reason for Church, agrees. Edwards sees individualism as the leading cause of church decline in America.⁷ He defines individualism as the perceived need to be the “author, hero, and narrator of our own redemption,” and it is “the leading cause for church decline in America.”⁶

“We shout our truth over and against each other because it’s the only way we can matter according to individualism’s script. And we are terrified of not mattering.”

Edwards believes individualism is the core value of Millennials and, since expressive individualism promotes focusing on the self, there is little room or interest in things larger than self and certainly no place for a competing authority such as the church or Scripture.

Other contributors to dechurching include the end of the Cold War, the rise of the religious right, and the influence of the internet and social media, according to Jim Davis and Michael Graham, authors of The Great Dechurching.⁸

Smith, Edwards, and Burge all agree, each adding other observations and factors, such as the influence of the seeker-sensitive movement. The long-term concern is that we now have a generation raised outside the church.

Those who grew up in the 1970s in religious homes did not raise their children that way, and we now have a whole generation that has never gone to church and has no concept of the importance of a local body of Christ.

One other issue, one more germane to the subject of this article, is the issue of truth and theology, coupled with authority. Not only have the post-Boomer generations grown up in a postmodern world, in which no absolute, universal truth is recognized and any who claim to know the truth are seen as ones on a power grab, but they also have lived in a thoroughly psychologically saturated culture.

With the embrace of psychological and therapeutic ideology, the message everywhere is that we no longer need God, Scripture, or salvation.⁹ Psychology and therapy have stepped into the gap once occupied by the church and the Bible, and they now claim to have the answers to the problems of society and the means of curing our troubled souls.

Sin has been recast as disorders that can be cured by psychotherapy and, if that fails, by chemicals. Yet even those steeped in the theories of secular psychology recognize that it is largely ineffective.

In his popular book The Body Keeps the Score, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk openly admits that talk therapy and psychiatric medications are ineffective.¹⁰ He asks his readers to consider the case for depression.

“If therapy or chemicals were as effective as we have been led to believe, depression should be a minor issue in our society. Instead, even as antidepressant use continues to increase, it has not made a dent in hospital admissions for depression. The number of people treated for depression has tripled over the past two decades, and one in ten Americans now takes antidepressants.”¹¹

This is not to say that van der Kolk has found the solution to all these issues. He has not. But it is to say that as people have turned from the church to psychology for their source of truth and help, they are coming up empty. Their cisterns are broken and leak (Jeremiah 2:13).

Yet the majority, even those who claim to be Christians, are not turning back to the church or sound biblical doctrine. Edwards suggests that “the implications of a churchless Christianity are legion” and have resulted in “the widespread erosion of mental health, a worldwide loneliness epidemic, and unending political turmoil.”¹²

In Search of a Way Forward

Maybe a better way of phrasing this is to ask: Is there a way forward in such a broken culture?

Christian Smith does not think so and summarizes his thesis with these words:

“Religion is obsolete, redundant and unnecessary at best, outdated, discredited, and damaging at worst.”¹³

Paraphrasing a quip drawn from another context, the Christian needs the church like a fish needs a bicycle, or so Smith thinks.

Burge believes the future of religion will be working together, even with Muslims, to solve social ills and avoid extremists.¹⁴ Davis and Graham propose that if we are to draw people back to the church, we cannot do so with truth because fewer people are asking whether Jesus is true. We must show them instead that Jesus is good and beautiful.¹⁵ After all, people are looking for a better life.

But in rebuttal, do we not show people that Jesus is good and beautiful by showing that He is the embodiment of truth as He proclaimed?

This is the unrecognized mistake of Burge in his book The Vanishing Church. Burge is lamenting the disappearance of the mainline, liberal church, which he calls moderate. In 1972, 31 percent of the population was aligned with mainline churches. Today it is only nine percent, and the numbers are rapidly shrinking.¹⁶

As the “Seven Sisters” representing mainline denominations turned their attention to social issues and politics and increasingly ignored theology and the Scriptures, it became obvious to Americans that church was not doing anything that government agencies and charities were not already doing, and doing better.¹⁷

Mainline churches forgot that one of the cornerstones of the church, that which sets it apart from all other institutions, is that it is the pillar and support of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15).

While many organizations can run soup kitchens, tutor children, hand out clothing, and dig wells in Africa, only the church of the living God is given the task of maintaining and proclaiming sound doctrine.

Leave that piece out and church cannot be distinguished from other benevolent entities. The mainline churches are in decline because they did not take seriously Paul’s charge to Timothy to preach the Word (2 Timothy 4:2) and protect and spread the cardinal truths handed down to the saints (2 Timothy 2:2; 4:3).

The conservative wing of the American church has fared much better. In fact, according to Burge, 57 percent of those who self-identify as evangelicals attended church weekly in 2022.¹⁸

However, as a percentage of the overall population, evangelicals peaked in 1993 at 30 percent and had dropped to 19 percent by 2020. By comparison, 28 percent of the population self-identify as Nones.¹⁹

Evangelicals are not as healthy as they might appear, for it is one thing to self-identify as an evangelical, and something altogether different to be one.

For example, when Ligonier conducts its State of Theology surveys, it labels one as an evangelical only if he can respond correctly to four theological statements that include the importance of the Bible and the salvific nature of Jesus’ death on the cross.

Sadly, even among those who meet Ligonier’s criteria, 56 percent agree that God accepts the worship of Muslims and Jews, and 43 percent apparently believe that Jesus is not God in the 2022 survey. At best, it would seem that many evangelicals are seriously deficient in their understanding of basic and essential points of doctrine.

Some might ask, along with Christian Smith, what is the point of trying to teach doctrine in our postmodern culture? Yet he admits that traditional religion’s view of making people morally good while neglecting timeless truths, divine worship, eternal salvation, and theological doctrines proved monumentally important to religion’s obsolescence.²⁰

Sadly, he believes it is too late. People no longer desire truth or sound teaching.²¹ Besides, people can be good without God, the church, or doctrine.²²

Our Response

How do we respond to such challenges? We could start with Paul’s final inspired words to Timothy:

“Preach the Word… for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers according to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth.”

Our mandate is to entrust sound words to faithful men who will be able to teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2). Why is obedience to this instruction important, even in an environment where many do not care? There are many answers, but here are three.

Believers Must Be Protected from Error

Believers must not be tricked by deceptive fads and false teachings that are epidemic in our world. If the saints are not equipped with the Word of God (Ephesians 4:12; 2 Timothy 3:16–17), they will be easy prey for “every wind of doctrine” and carried away “by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4:14).

The only remedy to this spiral into a life of falsehood is speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). After stating that his goal was to present every man complete in Christ (Colossians 1:28), Paul spends all of Colossians 2 warning about false philosophy and empty deception. The urgent need of the hour is the wisdom of God (Colossians 1:28).

Believers Must Have Their Minds Transformed

On the positive side, it is necessary for believers to have their minds transformed so that they live out the will of God (Romans 12:1–2). It is the burden of Scripture to teach us, reprove us, correct us, and train us for righteousness.

Only when the Word does its work in our lives will we “be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Those who believe they can simply follow their gut, listen to their heart, or hop on board with the latest trends and fads will find themselves radically ill-equipped to understand God, life, or themselves.

Sound Doctrine Produces Godly Living

Contrary to popular notions, there is no dichotomy between the head and the heart, between knowing truth and living godly lives.

It is instructive to note that in Paul’s final inspired epistles, known often as the Pastoral Epistles, the concept of doctrine is central to the message Paul was communicating.

If my count is correct, in these three small letters Paul directly references “doctrine” twelve times; teach, teaching, or instruction nineteen times; trustworthy statements six times; truth twelve times; faith twenty-eight times; and “the faith” fourteen times.

Obviously, doctrine, by whatever name it is referenced, is of extreme importance. In addition, Paul’s letter to Titus couples sound doctrine with “good deeds” in the church (Titus 1:9), in the home (Titus 2:1–10), and in society (Titus 3:1–2). The message is that correct theology is absolutely essential to godly living.

What Should Be Our Methodology?

If we are going to effectively battle the numerous forces at war against the church and return to its biblical mandate to be the supporter and proclaimer of theological truth, we need a shift both in mindset and in intentionality.

Our minds today are so cluttered that they can only be cleared by an allegiance to Christ, Scripture, and the church. We have to firmly believe in the transforming power of the Word of God.

Then we must intentionally structure ministries around biblical exposition and sound doctrine. It is worthy of note that the Bible did not come to us in the form of a systematic theology, as useful as such works are. God’s truth is handed out in the crucibles of life and must be taught in that manner.

Formal courses in systematic theology have their place, but carefully and consistently working through the Bible and key doctrinal themes is essential for every local church.

In addition to expository preaching and teaching in the church that I pastor, we take our congregation through studies that we have developed, such as What Every Christian Needs to Know, Bible Survey, What We Believe, Growing in Christ, Bible study methods and hermeneutics, systematic theology, and church history.

Of course, there are other subjects that we cover, but we want to make certain that we regularly teach biblical content and essential doctrines.

Some might wonder whether Christians in the average church could handle such teaching. What I have discovered is that appetites can be developed.

Once people begin to get a taste of the Word of God, they begin to hunger for more. But until they have had some good biblical meals, they do not know what they are missing.