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    Beyond Sundays: Why those who are done with the religious institutions can be a blessing for the Church
    Beyond Sundays: Why those who are done with the religious institutions can be a blessing for the Church
    Beyond Sundays: Why those who are done with the religious institutions can be a blessing for the Church
    Ebook177 pages3 hours

    Beyond Sundays: Why those who are done with the religious institutions can be a blessing for the Church

    By Wayne Jacobsen

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    About this ebook

    People are abandoning our religious institutions in droves. In the last few decades sixty-five million Americans who once attended a local church, no longer do. About half of those no longer self-identify as Christian, but over thirty-one million still do and are seeking a more relevant faith beyond Sunday-morning Christianity.

    What do we make of this exodus and how will it affect the future of the church? Does it portend the end of Western Christianity? Wayne Jacobsen doesn’t think so. Having met with thousands of people around the world who are done with religious institutions, he is more hopeful than ever that this phenomenon might help revitalize the church Jesus is building.

    Whether you attend a local church or you’re done with it, how we respond will have repercussions for generations to come. This is our opportunity to embrace God’s work in a wider way than any single institution can contain.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateFeb 1, 2018
    ISBN9780999810309
    Beyond Sundays: Why those who are done with the religious institutions can be a blessing for the Church
    Author

    Wayne Jacobsen

    Wayne Jacobsen lives in Oxnard, California, but travels internationally as director of Lifestream Ministries. He is a contributing editor to Leadership Journal and the author of The Naked Church, In My Father's Vineyard, and He Loves Me.

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      Book preview

      Beyond Sundays - Wayne Jacobsen

      Scattered…

      PREFACE

      In the last few decades, sixty-five million Americans who once regularly attended a local congregation no longer do. About thirty-five million of those no longer self-identify as Christian, but over thirty-one million still do. This last group has been tagged The Dones: those who still seek to follow Jesus and find real community, but who have given up hope that the local congregation is still relevant to their journey.

      What do we make of this phenomenon? Does it threaten the future of God’s work in our world, or does it create new opportunities for God to make himself known, even if it challenges our hopes or preconceptions?

      I have spent my life in both places. I grew up in a traditional congregation and pastored in two of them for over twenty years. For the past twenty-three, however, I’ve spent more time outside with those who no longer participate in a Sunday (or Saturday) morning institution. I see the animosity between the two camps, and I yearn for the day when we can have a healing dialog consistent with the prayer of Jesus that we would all be one. Nothing, he said, would demonstrate his reality better to the world than the love his people share together.

      It’s a conversation we desperately need, and not just between various factions of Christianity. I hope this book can seed that conversation between friends and families in communities throughout the world. Whether you attend a local church or whether you don’t, responding to this phenomenon will have repercussions for generations to come. We can continue to treat each other with suspicion and judgment that further fracture our Father’s family, or we can celebrate all the ways he works to bring people to himself and transform them in his love.

      Additionally, I hope this book encourages those who have lost their mooring in institutional Christianity and yet still hunger for a relationship with God and real community with others. The failures of organized religion do not discount God’s reality or your opportunity to get to know him. I want to help you navigate a life of growing faith and impact in the world beyond the institutional borders that may have harmed you.

      This is a propitious moment in Christian history, and all the more so as the world darkens around us. May we all respond in a way that allows the glory of the Lord to arise out of the love of his people, and by doing so, proclaim to the world that our God is real and worthy to be followed.

      CHAPTER 1

      The Secret Is Out!

      One of the best-kept secrets of the faith is that you don’t have to be committed to a local congregation to live out a transforming relationship with Jesus, to experience the wonder of Christian community, or to find meaningful ways to extend his kingdom in the world. But of course, our religious institutions have a vested interest in keeping that secret.

      We’ve known for some time that people are leaving traditional congregations in droves. The statistics are irrefutable. Popular wisdom, and no small number of sermons, told us that people who were not part of a congregation are not part of the church. Their salvation is suspect and they will wither away spiritually either because their spiritual passion would wane or they would get lost in the weeds of false teaching. And while that is true of some, researchers have now identified a large group of people who are thriving in their faith beyond the walls of any local congregation.

      Dr. Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope call them The Dones, in their book Church Refugees, published in 2015. The book is subtitled, Sociologists reveal why people are DONE with church but not their faith and helps us to understand this heretofore unidentified group of believers. They describe the Dones as high-capacity people, who were deeply involved in their local fellowships until they become stifling to their own journey. For years they sought to help reform it, only to find their efforts and their passion stifled by a bureaucracy that resisted change. Finally, seeing no other way for their faith to survive, they made a conscious decision to leave the congregational model and find growth, fellowship, and mission beyond it.

      While many will celebrate the discovery that the church of Jesus Christ is broader and more robust than our local institutions can contain, others find the news disturbing and prefer to reject or ignore the study. In a webinar with Dr. Packard shortly after the book was published, many of the chat messages to the moderator expressed displeasure that they were giving voice to this research. One denominational bookstore chain refused to carry the book, fearful of its influence on its congregations.

      They either don’t believe its conclusions or want to ignore them as a threat to their own future. Because they define the church institutionally they can cast aspersions on the faith of anyone who does not belong. That’s why many have responded to declining attendance by doubling-down on obligation to keep people attending. Some religious leaders have a lot invested in marginalizing those who no longer participate in a local fellowship, lest others follow them out the door.

      Interestingly, Dr. Packard is not encouraging people to leave their local congregations. In fact, he attends one and hopes that this study will help pastors to innovate ways to engage their most capable members so they won’t feel the need to look elsewhere. Traditional congregations serve a valuable purpose where they teach people to live out their faith and where they incubate authentic community. It’s just that there are not many who do that well anymore.

      Twenty-five years ago, I would have been shocked at this research myself. As a pastor, I thought our program essential to faith and saw people outside of it as bitter lone rangers who were just angry that they couldn’t get their way. One day, through the betrayal of a close friend, I found myself for the first time outside the congregation. Of course, I could have gone elsewhere, but found my heart hungering for a more authentic journey than any fellowship I’d been a part of was able to foster. And I soon discovered I was not alone.

      That’s why Dr. Packard’s research did not come as a surprise to me. For the past two decades, I’ve been living among those who have found a vibrant life in Jesus as well as community outside of any religious institution. They are passionate, caring, committed disciples who want to see the kingdom of God grow in the world. They have been scorned, condemned, and maligned by those who reject their faith simply because they stopped attending Sunday services.

      If you care about the future of the church in the Western world, you’ll want to avail yourself of Packard and Hope’s book. Whether you are one of the Dones, or concerned about people leaving your congregation, you’ll at least want to understand why. I appreciate those who have found a local congregation in which to live out their spiritual journey and share community with others. There are good reasons, however, why that environment doesn’t work for everyone.

      My hope in writing this book is to help people not condemn those who see church differently than they do, but that we will come to celebrate all the ways that Jesus is inviting people to himself and recognize his church in the many ways she takes shape in the world.

      CHAPTER 2

      Is Church Refugees

      a Game Changer?

      I had hoped it would be.

      But, alas, the powers that lead our religious institutions wouldn’t let it.

      In Church Refugees, Dr. Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope made a surprising and unexpected discovery. They identified a significant number of Christians who no longer attend church services and yet are thriving spiritually. To their surprise they discovered that most of them had not lost interest in their faith, faded out the back door, or preferred to watch football on Sundays. Instead they discovered them to be high-capacity Christians who were committed givers and deeply involved in leadership. They didn’t leave quickly or easily, having spent years trying to encourage change or simply find a way to get

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