Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 One of the sad realities of leading a church is that from time to time, people will leave. And nobody likes that. But often the reasons why people leave your church are not in your control. People leave because they're moving to a new state or they're going away to college. And there's not much we can do about it, but there are a few reasons that we can do something about. And in today's episode, we're going to tackle five reasons why people leave your church that you need to address. We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. This is the right podcast. You're listening to the read-write podcast. The show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow.
Speaker 2 00:01:03 I'm ready to get.
Speaker 0 00:01:08 Hey guys, welcome to the retreats podcast. Episode number 74. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian. Hi, what's up Thomas? Hey, not much, man. Looking forward to connecting today. I think we have a good conversation to be having, uh, we're gonna be talking about five reasons. Why people leave your church that you need to address? Yeah, I think it's going to be a good conversation because there's two kinds of reasons that people leave your church one's that you can't do anything about. And then there's the ones that you need to address. So we're going to spend most of our time talking today about the ones that can be addressed and things that can do about there's other reasons though, like I said, like, uh, someone's moving out of town or, um, they disagree with your theology and you know, those kinds of things that not much can be done about that.
Speaker 0 00:01:57 You just have to kind of take that. And yes, the thing is that you're always going to have people leaving your church and that's just part of, uh, of leading a church is that people will be leaving it. Now we've been long saying that for most churches, the bigger problem is that not enough people are coming through the front door, right? I think that there's a lot of evidence that backs that up. That it's more likely that you have a front door problem than a backdoor problem for most churches, because you're always going to have these kinds of people that are leaving your church. You can't solve all of these problems, but the best solution is to have a constant flow of new visitors and new people getting connected. Uh, and that usually mitigates the amount of people that you're losing. But today we have five, I think is what we were looking at five different reasons why people are leaving.
Speaker 0 00:02:45 Um, I don't know. Well, you and I have both been in ministry, we've pastored together at a church and we've had to leave the church. We pastored. We definitely have seen people leave the church. I, I don't know. Like I, I, I think that a lot of pastors out there like me, we struggle because it's hard to not take it personally when people leave your church, really, for any reason, like, I, I get sad even when people were leaving our church because they were moving out of town. It's like, it's still, you know, it's an end of relationship. But especially when it was, you know, somebody
Speaker 3 00:03:16 Take that new job, don't take that new job and forget the promotion.
Speaker 0 00:03:20 Wouldn't you rather stay here with us and reach our community and do the things that we're talking about. So I don't know. It's hard. I can you relate to that? You feel, have you felt that in your life?
Speaker 3 00:03:30 Yeah, absolutely. And if you have a connection with someone too, not just from a I've pastored and then I'm in a season now where I'm, I'm not on staff at a church or pastoring, but I'm still connected with, you know, have deep connections with people at the church and when they leave. Yeah. It's, it's definitely, you know, it makes you sad and, uh, sometimes angry depending on the reason. Uh, so there's a lot of emotions that come with it. But for, for pastors, I would say in ministry leaders, it's, um, you know, it could maybe be even a little bit more sad or emotional. So just because it's yeah. You know that, so,
Speaker 0 00:04:05 So I, I just, I mean, so I, I re I'm reminded of the way that we deal with that at, at retry, even like, so we have customers that, you know, once in a while, we'll have ones that are, uh, leave for reasons that we feel like we could do a better job with, but the vast majority of them are leaving because are things that are outside of our control, just, uh, the church closed down, you know, is there any way you guys could keep paying us and stay customers, even though you're not operating as a church anymore, you know, things
Speaker 3 00:04:35 Website, the website can be your church,
Speaker 0 00:04:38 That's it? You can keep going. So I think I feel it on that level too, but I don't know. I just think it's going to be a good conversation for us to talk through some of these things. So why don't you start us off with the first one today about the first thing that we need to address, if it's a reason why people are leaving the church, why don't you think that
Speaker 3 00:04:53 Yeah, the first thing to do, I think addresses that, you know, we got to understand, uh, this challenge that we have now, uh, hopefully come, I always like saying post COVID, uh, but you know, it's still lingering. So hopefully coming out of the pandemic, people got out of the habit of coming regularly. So I think, you know, there's many reasons for that. First of all, we were shut down for a long time and no one could attend any churches physically. Um, and then churches reopened, uh, some of them, not all of them. And then some that reopened like my church reopened and then shut back down for a season when a COVID outbreak happened. So when you get off of this regular schedule, um, of attending, um, it, you know, people can just get in the habit of not, uh, not coming on a regular basis. So that's a challenge. I think we have to definitely understand is, is still happening now, for sure. Even, even, even with most churches being reopened now, um, there are still some that are not, but most of them now are, and it's still a challenge of getting people to return, uh, because of that reason they got out of the habit or I'm sorry, not coming regularly, so not just returning. So yeah.
Speaker 0 00:06:06 Yeah. I, I think, you know, the, the less regularly someone goes to a church service, the more likely they are to become disconnected and eventually not come back at all because they don't really have any kind of connection or something there. I kind of, I don't know if this will make sense or not, but I want to kind of try and flesh this out. I kind of think of it almost like, uh, the idea of Eve and the serpent. I gotta think about how like, uh, in churches we used to, I don't know if we said this directly, but like, we kind of would indicate that if you do not regularly come to church or come almost like as often as you can, you, your faith will surely die. Like, right. And then, so I kind of get this idea that like, I picture even the serpent where the serpent says to evil, you're not going to die.
Speaker 0 00:06:50 If you don't go to church anymore, you don't, you're not going to die. If you take the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, I feel like everybody's kind of got a taste of that knowledge of good and evil that, well, you know, I didn't go every single week for like a year and I didn't, I didn't die. You know, I, and I think that deep down, if we take a look at ourselves, I know that for me and my family, um, I think it's been harder to keep our family and our faith on track in some ways, especially the way I'm called to, uh, to be pastoring and leading my children. And, and I think just not having a regular scheduled, uh, worship service where we can get together, the kids, not having youth ministry that they can be going to.
Speaker 0 00:07:30 And some of those things it's made it extra, at least a certain level of challenge on our part to make sure our kids are growing spiritually. So I don't know. I kind of see that, um, in my experience, every single time, someone doesn't go to church or they make a decision to not go to a service, it makes it easier the next time to not go to service too. And the more you get disconnected, I just think that the more that, that grows there. So I don't know what, what is the church to do about this? What, what is the solution? How do we, if we need to address it, how do we, how do we address something like this?
Speaker 3 00:08:02 You know, I think it's, it's finding a way. First thing that comes to mind is finding a way to reconnect with some of these people, you know, think about, uh, think about, um, each person because everyone kind of falls, maybe someone was involved in a men's ministry. Okay. And then they are not coming regularly. Maybe someone was, uh, very active in small groups or chilled or serving with kids and they're gone, you know, maybe those ministry leaders are not, they can naturally obviously reach out to, they had connection with, and, and, and the people that were serving under them. Um, so I think that's just thing. Number one is okay. Think about how we can get re-engaged these people to, to find a way for them to see the benefit of, of returning regularly. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:08:47 Absolutely. No, that's good. I think just I'm with you. I think that, uh, having thought out processes to follow up with people you haven't seen in a week or two, uh, people that were around pre pandemic, you know what, like you need to get on the phone. I know sometimes we don't like to do that, to pick up the phone and call people and, you know, do visits and it can make us feel awkward to have that conversation with someone about how they don't want to come to your church, because some of them are going to tell you that. But like, you know, we're, we wound up going to this church instead now, or we're not really going to a church at all. And that's an awkward conversation, but you probably have to pick up the phone and at least talk to people about what's going on with them, let them know that they're cared for and you're reaching out to them. And I think,
Speaker 3 00:09:29 Yeah, see what they've replaced. Maybe, you know, what they, what they're doing instead. And, and, you know, feel that, that situation out. And it's funny when you're saying earlier, it's just made me think of going to the gym. If someone goes, if someone's working out regularly, and then you, you kinda decrease doing that and you go down, you maybe you're working out four days a week and then you go down to two and then from two, it's just, maybe I'll get in one. This it's the same kind of, it's, it's different, but it's similar. Uh, we're just, we're we're creatures of habit. Right. And we can, uh, fall out of good habits.
Speaker 0 00:10:01 That's right. I can attest to that, to the gym analogy that getting out of that habit is a, is a challenge there. So, all right. Let me go ahead and get the next one. I think the next reason why people are leaving your church, that you need to address is that you don't have clear next steps. Maybe people who are at your church, but they were never really a part of your church. They never were able to take those next steps to get in and become a part of what was going on there. And so that I think is something that you, you need to address because if you and I, I know we talk about this all the time. I think, especially with the churches that we're consulting, I know that this is like, this is ground zero, for things that churches are missing in their overall process.
Speaker 0 00:10:42 How often do we hear people say, oh yeah, we have a really great process for getting visitors in the door, but you know, well, our other kind of our, our S our, our assimilation process, our next steps process, what do we always hear? They always say, it's a bit of a work in progress, right? We're kind of working, we're working through that right now. Well, yeah, you need to, and I think every church, every, if you're hearing me and you're a church leader right now, you need to get this solved and not let it be a work in progress starting in 2022. Like you have, you have five weeks to get this thing nailed down, spend some time with your staff really nail down. What are those next steps? What do we want people to go to before they show up before we consider them members?
Speaker 0 00:11:25 What do we invite new visitors to all the time? And what is that kind of momentum building assimilation tool, and how are we clearly presenting that to people there? So I know this can be a real challenge for smaller churches, especially if you don't have a lot of new people coming in, because you're kind of stuck with that thing of like, well, we only, I can only think of four people that have come in the last six months, and that'd be awkward to have a class with four people. And only if half of them could come. So there's all kinds of challenges that come with it, but you need to get over those, right? Because getting people assimilated and into the life of the church, through a clear process that you can repeat and do over and over again, I think it is absolutely imperative there. What do you have to add?
Speaker 3 00:12:07 It's even more imperative now, uh, you know, with like going back to our first point, people getting out of the habit due to the pandemic, uh, it's even more important because, because people are out more out of the habit we even saw before, uh, pre COVID, the numbers for years have been that, you know, a regular attender wasn't necessarily someone that was coming every Sunday. Um, you know, so this trend has been happening of people not regularly attending even pre COVID, you know, to where, you know, maybe, uh, still you would consider a dedicated member, someone that came twice a month that was giving active in a small group. You know, that's someone who's still engaged technically, but because of COVID and because this was already a trend, you know, because of how busy it is, lifestyles, youth sports, there's all sorts of data out there as to why people aren't, you know, going attending churches regularly. So that's why assimilation getting back to your point in having a clear, next step, uh, process is even more important now, because now we have a double battle with this. So yeah,
Speaker 0 00:13:13 We did an episode of, uh, well, maybe a couple of months ago at this point now, but, uh, where we outlined, uh, what we would present as the exact right assimilation process. Like if we were to tailor one perfectly, I think it's a really good model that churches can jump off of. So we'll link to that. Uh, if you're watching this or you're listening just on your phone, there, this'll be in the show notes. If you go to, uh, retry studios.com and under podcasts, you'll find that on this here. So you can take a look and find a link to that episode on that. So, um, why don't you have the next one foreseen?
Speaker 3 00:13:45 Yeah. Next one is a that they never found their people. They're not a regular attendant cause they never connected with the, uh, the, there are people, the people, their close relationships were not developed. And I think, uh, it's funny, I think of my church. This is a challenge at a, at a being a part of a larger church, you know, technically a mega sized church. And I think, uh, well, mega size churches have already had that stigma that, oh yeah. Someone just gonna know, you know, hear a great message and then they're out the door that does happen. Uh, and I know our church is also very great at getting people connected in small groups. We drive that all the time. We know that it's not just about Sunday morning and everything, but it's about people connecting men, getting together with men, women, getting together women. And, and more than that. Um, but I think that that's, it's a challenge for it that can happen in smaller churches too. Uh, but at larger churches, you know, uh, I think of our church, I've, we've seen a lot of people go out the back door, um, because great preaching alone. Couldn't, you know, couldn't keep them there. Um, so I think the people you need to make sure you're fostering and encouraging relationships and making sure you have a pro a plan for that and a process. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:14:57 I think that's exactly right. And there's all kinds of ways that you can do this. I think the obvious one is probably small groups for most churches, or maybe at your church, you call it Sunday school and that's your version of small groups, or maybe you do some kind of a win, but you need to have some kind of a smaller group because these relationships are very hard to form just on Sunday morning. Um, just if it's just for that hour right there, especially for newer people, they're not going to be the ones that stick around and chat for 45 minutes. Like my mom always did when I was a kid and I would beg her to leave church every Sunday. Uh, you know, it's, it's hard to build those kinds of life-giving relationships. And so small groups are away. Honestly. I think that finding places where people can serve that is another great way to build relationships.
Speaker 0 00:15:44 I think about, I mean, you and I it's through work is how we've built relationships over the years. I became much more than that in our relationship and think about the people that you're closest to in this earth. A lot of times it's people that you've worked with over time, or you've been through times of service at church. So finding groups for people to serve it is another great way to make connection. But yeah, you just have to realize that if people don't have some of their closest friends within your church, their relationship or guests there, their membership or their partnership with your church is very tenuous at best, right? So if, if they find another church where they're best friends in the world where they all go to that church, they will not be part of your church. At that point. They're, they're going to be winded up being where their people are.
Speaker 0 00:16:29 So doing everything we can to facilitate that. Now I know a lot of times we do small groups and we think that the main focus is discipleship or Bible teaching or worship time or prayer. And those are all really important, but I think that you need to bake in some time into those for really just organic relationship building. It doesn't always have to be just about business and about teaching and learning all the time. I think just sharing life together, make meals a part of your small groups do do those kinds of things where people can really do life together and build, build real life-giving relationship. And I'm glad that
Speaker 3 00:17:04 I'm glad you're focusing on groups and small groups specifically, and there's other ways too, for people to connect. But I think it's good that we're focusing on that because I think there's a lot of churches that are very event driven and, and, and with, and that's fine, but we don't, we believe church events are a great thing. Uh, but I think when we forget the on-ramps are the ways for people to connect and like in a small group setting. And if it's just events, those are also an easy thing to come to and just be a part of, for an experience and then not form form those connections.
Speaker 0 00:17:37 And so, yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. So number four, uh, it's you need to address this if you're getting too political. Um, if you're, I, I would guess that most churches, maybe, maybe there's some that haven't had this happen, but most churches in the last couple of years, uh, have lost people due to political differences. Uh, and this is a constant battle. I think people will leave your church, uh, because of their politics or your politics, or, uh, some combination of the two. I know our church, uh, has had people leave it. And the sad thing is that we've had people leave it from both ends of the political spectrum. People are upset because we won't go and organize mass protests in our city. And at the same time, we won't go and support mass mandates and vaccine mandates in our community there. And we, we have this middle ground where we just, and, you know, really, I think that is there are churches on the exact right path with that. I would be positive that your church has lost people because of politics. And it, it might be vaccine politics or mass politics or COVID politics. It might be Biden politics, or Trump politics or local politics
Speaker 3 00:18:52 Or
Speaker 0 00:18:53 Whatever. Every political
Speaker 3 00:18:56 The list goes on, which we found a lot in the last, uh, year and a half to get a that we found plenty of those issues. Yes,
Speaker 0 00:19:03 Absolutely. So here's the thing is that there are some political things that are going to be outside of your control. There will be people that will leave because you are not political enough, but I think that we'll always be better than people leaving because you're becoming too political because we have to remember that in the church, our primary objective is not the people's freedom to wear a mask or not. That's not, that's not in, in at least as, as I view the gospel, that's not a gospel issue, uh, whether or not people wear masks, you know? So, um, I, I truly believe that we probably ought to be very cautious with any of these kinds of political stances that churches have. Now, there are some that I think do fall into that. I think when it comes to, uh, you know, um, right to life issues and some of those kinds of things to deal with abortion, I think the church does have an important voice in those kinds of areas. But yeah, I, I really think that this is something that you need to tread very lightly, very carefully when it comes to anything political, because people are already very tense and I wish it wasn't this way. I didn't, you know, there were politics in church, I think that were, that was going on a decade ago, but it's not like it is right now. I don't know.
Speaker 3 00:20:16 Yeah. Yep. I agree with you. Tensions are much higher. Uh, you can feel it, you can see, see it in the way people react. Uh, and so I totally agree. And I think, you know, you hit on the, you hit the nail on the head that the church's number one mission is to advance the gospel. Right. So I think that if we always go back to that, that will naturally deal with these things. If you always take it to that, that's been, that should be the default. I think when any sort of challenging thing comes back, just steer it back to what scripture teaches and let, let God work it out that way. Um, so I think it's a good reminder. Do you,
Speaker 0 00:20:52 Do you feel like you, I mean, have you seen some of that? I know you're, uh, I know you're not involved in staff at your church, right. I know you're involved with small groups and those things, and I know you have a relationship with, do you see politics being a, I mean, in your, I know you're in a, I know you're near Austin, but you're in a very conservative suburb of Austin right. Where you are. And so do you, do you see those kinds of wedges happening in small groups that you're a part of and everything too? Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:21:18 Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, and, and I think to you, you kind of recognize it, well, maybe, maybe you recognize it more at a larger church compared to a smaller church, but maybe also on the flip side, you don't, because if you're a small church, you'll probably know the reason why someone left, uh, you know, it's going to be a lot more front face, but I will say at a larger church, I think that the challenge, uh, is that because it is, there's such a massive audience, a pastor might feel compelled that he has to speak on something politically and there's been times. And I think our pastor has done a very good job of, of just steering these types of things towards what the Bible teaches about these topics and issues. Uh, but there's been times where I think he's felt the need, or we as a church have felt the need to, uh, address some of these things.
Speaker 3 00:22:08 And, oh, you can, you can feel it and kind of cut the, uh, uh, tension in the atmosphere with a knife sometimes when this happens. So definitely has been a challenge at our church. And, uh, but, uh, but I think we, I think that, you know, again, steering it back to what scripture has to say, just kind of, uh, it makes God the bad guy. If I can even say that he's not a bad guy, we know that, but you know what I mean? It makes, it makes it, it takes it away from her political opinion and agenda and just makes it all about,
Speaker 0 00:22:37 Yeah. I, I hate that. You know, I saw some of that footage of, you know, a, there was a church this week. I don't know much about this church, but it's a famous, uh, pastor from the, like the eighties, his son was leading a service and in the service, they organized a let's go Brandon chant, which is just kind of, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's a good way to alienate. Half of people, I think at least half of people are doing those kinds of things. And you, you can, you can, I think that the challenges that we are not saying don't have a political opinion as a person or as a church leader have your own opinion, but just know that the gospel will be effected in your, and people will make a decision about what, about who Jesus is based on the opinions that you hold with this. So be very cautious with how you put those things out there publicly. So I think it's just really important that way. So why don't you bring us home with the last one?
Speaker 3 00:23:36 Yeah, I will, after that point, we sh we quantum quickly get away from that one as fast as we can kind of, but, uh, uh, the last one is connection to a particular staff member. Um, so staff, turnover's going to be a reality that happens, but, uh, I think that what we need to be careful about doing is not never make, um, anything about connection to one particular ministry leader that it's all about, you know, and that ministry leader needs to also make sure that, uh, and I've seen this happen in my years of being in, in ministry pastoring, and also just being a church member where if it becomes too much about someone's personality and how people connect to that one staff leader, wouldn't that person goes, uh, or it gets affected. So goes all these people that were too connected to that one staff leader. So
Speaker 0 00:24:25 Yeah, I think this is most common with people that have the most platform time, right? So it's, you have the lead pastor, obviously, right? And it's a fine line cause you want in pre good preaching. You're always going to build a connection with your audience. You want to be relatable and be able to have people make a connection, but we want to make sure that the connection is bigger than just you, because the, the, the, the fact is that you will not be pastoring your church forever. That's the, if you're a church leader, you may pastor it until the day you retire until the day you die. That might be the case. But I don't know when I, as a church leader, I want whatever we do to outlive me. I want it to be bigger than me. I want it to last for generations, and I want it to be something that makes an impact for a long, long time.
Speaker 0 00:25:10 And so we need to just have that in mind. So it's usually lead pastors, the people that do the primary teaching worship leaders, when they leave a lot of time, people just, how often do you hear that? We really love the music at this church, and that was so important to us. And we want that. We want people to love the music. We want people to love the teaching. We want people to love youth ministry and children's ministry and all those things, but we want them to love the heart behind it within the organization. Not necessarily we want them to love the person too, but not make that their primary goal is honoring that person, celebrating that person or treating them like they are. Uh, they are their, um, their own personal relationship to the church. We want people to make that individual connection. So what do people do about this? I think this is a hard challenge. I think this is something that we've dealt with for a long time, because people really do love pur people's personalities within churches. But I think continuing to put it back towards what the church's vision, what the church's mission is, keeping people on task with that I think is really what's most important. So when you have that,
Speaker 3 00:26:14 Not much, I agree. I think that's, uh, just kinda like we said, with the previous point, I always keeping it a key, staying on mission. I think staying on mission and driving things to that. Uh, uh, one of the things that even though, uh, I'll say this about our church, where we do have a pastor who's known for the preaching people, there is a lot of people that have go to the church based on the preaching. But one of the things that he does a good job of from the pulpit during his teaching is makes it about what the next generation is going to be doing. It's celebration makes it clear that, uh, and he is getting older now and he makes it clear, Hey, I'm not going to be here for all that much longer. I'm not going to be, you know, we're building our leadership and w you know, and, and we want everyone to use their gifts here and, and, and just, you know, making it more about the, the big picture, uh, of the church and the next generations, the legacy that we leave. So
Speaker 0 00:27:07 I think that's it just talking about it, you know, getting it out there and say like, you know, I know that, you know, a lot of you, a lot of you people really enjoy these messages. I know you love our worship team, but it's about something bigger than that. This is not about what we like and our own preferences and people that we feel attached to it's about this mission of reaching people with the gospel in Honolulu or Georgetown or wherever you are in the world out there. So, yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think, uh, making sure that it's about people it's about more than just us. I think that's what it, what really matters there. So, yeah, I think that's a good, uh, a good way to us, for us to stop here today. I hope this has been helpful to our audience here.
Speaker 0 00:27:43 I know a lot of times this has really painful stuff. When people leave your church, I think if you've been a part of a leading churches for any length of time, I'm sure you've experienced all five of these reasons that people leave churches, because I know I have on multiple occasions for each one of them. Uh, so, uh, these are things that we can do something about there's some things, so we have some level of control over. Uh, so we hope it's been helpful to you today. If it has been, it would mean so much to us. If you would rate, review, subscribe, and don't leave us, don't leave our podcasts remain a part of our retread family. And they're not do that. Unsubscribe listen every week. Thank you guys so
Speaker 3 00:28:21 Much. We can do to keep you regular.
Speaker 0 00:28:23 That's exactly right. Yeah. We're happy to, so, yeah. So thank you guys for being a part of our retried family do let us know in the comments, if you have anything to add, we also do look for recommendations and topic ideas in those comments there. I know we've done several episodes based on that. So if you have something you'd like us to discuss here, and we think it's appropriate, we'd love to tackle it. So leave that in the comments. Thanks guys for watching or listening, and we'll catch you next week. Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out online and reach right studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 00:29:18 Yes, <inaudible>.
