Why So Many Exvangelicals?
There are many who wish they could reconnect with the God they thought they knew if only they could get past the false god that was forced upon them.
I spend a fair amount of time wondering why there are so many ex-Evangelicals (aka “Exvangelicals”). To be more precise, I hear the common elements in their stories and I wonder why we as Evangelicals, and especially we as Evangelical pastors, often make it so easy for people to leave the church and often the faith.
In their many stories, there is so much low-hanging fruit in the form of common and identifiable church dysfunctions that we know about but don’t do enough to correct.
Low-Hanging Fruit
In some notorious cases, pastors act foolishly as egomaniacs and create their kingdoms out of compliant followers happy to be part of the Christian celebrity industrial complex. On a smaller scale, lesser-known pastors act foolishly in treating people as strategic pieces and not as living beings with ideas and questions.
In many churches, the pastor is treated with such adoration and awe that he can do no wrong and isn’t held accountable when he does. And yet it is well-known that most Evangelical pastors (up to 70%) have no friends within their own congregations. It’s as if the intimacy of friendship is a threat to a ministry whose founder clearly had close friends.
Many pastors feel the need to maintain a facade that indicates there is no emotional or spiritual struggle in their lives. It’s as if the display of struggle could be a threat to a ministry whose founder openly grieved and pleaded for relief from his Father with drops of sweat as thick as blood. I can confirm from personal experience that many pastors do struggle but usually do so very privately. After all, how can you expect people to have it all together if you don’t? There is scarcely a more dangerous way to live.
After a few months at my current church, being a younger pastor and on my first go-around, a well-meaning older Christian man asked me in a very assuming way if I was at this church as a stepping stone to something bigger. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind at the time, but I suspect that kind of thinking is prevalent, accustomed as we have become to seeing the church in corporate business terms.
And why do I hear in story after Exvangelical story that in the churches they grew up in they weren’t allowed to ask questions? Not liking the answers to questions is one thing, not having a chance to ask them is another.
Exit Stories
Now, I am not naive. I grew up a pastor’s kid and I’ve been a pastor myself for a decade and a half now. I know that a certain number of these stories come from people who were disgruntled with churches or their leaders for reasons that can’t be rectified and whose theological explorations and discoveries were leading them out of the Evangelical church, but I’m telling you - that’s not everybody.
There are stories of painful exits, by no fault of their own. There are some, maybe even many, who wish they could reconnect with the God they thought they knew if only they could get past the false god that was forced upon them. And so while some jump out of Evangelicalism, others find they must drag themselves away necessarily but reluctantly.
We too easily discount Exvangelical stories and paint them all as the complaint lists of people who merely no longer wanted to follow God or abide by what God’s word says is good. But there is just so much more there to be explored and it isn’t explored for a variety of reasons including supposed time efficiency, fear, and a lack of required depth in our thinking to even engage their questions.
And these problems are so common in Evangelical churches that when people find themselves needing to exit one church, they often try at least one other church only to find the same dysfunctions and then abandon hope that any other type of Evangelical church exists!
Get in Touch
I am an Evangelical and I love the church but I lament so much of what the Evangelical church has become. I plan to use this space to explore these themes.
If you are someone who is an Exvangelical but never really wanted to be, contact me. I’d love to hear more of your story.
If you are a pastor who is frustrated in some of the same ways I am, get in touch and let’s see what we can do about it together.
We need a lot more Jesus in our pastoring and a lot less [insert always-strong pastor or CEO here].
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Below is a QR code to a WhatsApp group that you can join. Via this group, I will send links to my posts and you will also have an opportunity to send comments or messages or questions to me directly. To get started, simply click the graphic or scan the QR code below.
Michael.
I so respect you for writing these columns. They bring things to light, also things that have happened to me in spiritual. Things that almost brought me to not believe anymore.
This of course happened in a different church than you pastor, but I do appreciate your openness to others.
And in my case I wasn't able to ask or explain.
Being able to ask questions is so crucial.
And I'm so glad that you and our pastor Franz can work together in God's kingdom. I'm also so happy that past tensions between us and some other churches have lessened.
I pray blessings upon you Michael.
Jake knelsen
There’s an insurmountable chasm between exvangelicals and evangelicals in the form of Hebrews 6:4-8. This passage renders it impossible for a “believer” to ever hear an “exvangelical” and see them as anything more than insincere at best and a Devil’s pawn at worst.
I repeatedly saw in my time of church attendance and involvement a sentiment of desire for church growth in numbers yet a simultaneous declaration of desire for the chaff to be separated. In light of Hebrews 6:4-8, why do you care if one becomes an exvangelical? Or do you maybe have more of a concern for the fence sitters and not those who have forsaken Christianity?