Churchless Quotes

“Our studies consistently show a large majority of people leave their church’s service without feeling as though they have connected with God. If those who regularly attend depart with such disappointment and confusion, what must it be like for those who are new to the church adventure?”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“But a local body of believers is the only place they can meet God together with his people. What a privilege to facilitate encounters with God week after week! When it’s humble and sincere, it never gets old.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“All this data leads us to a direct examination of the reasons the unchurched avoid Christian churches. The biggest issue is a perceived lack of value.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Have we outsourced the role of being Jesus’ spokespeople?”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“In our experience, as believers practice loving attitudes and behavior toward others inside and outside their faith community, unchurched friends and family don’t have to be talked into church participation. They seek it out, drawn by the promise of love.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Most churchless people aren’t looking for a church. They’re seeking an encounter with God. And even if they’re not seeking him directly, the vast majority are seeking to experience the essence of who he is: love.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Whom should you pursue? That question can be answered only after your church has done the hard work of getting to know who the unchurched are in your community. Your approach will vary depending on whether you have a substantial born-again churchless segment in your neighborhood or more people who are purely unchurched—that is, those with no background of church involvement. Your goal in both cases is to connect with the unchurched around you, but the way you approach them will differ.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Despite all the opinions churchless (and churched) people offer about musical styles, architecture, sound systems, creativity, intellectualism, and the menu of programs provided by churches, none of these is the main attraction. These elements are nice sideshows, but people don’t come to church for the carnival rides. They come to meet God. People complain about the uncomfortable seats and stale popcorn when center stage is empty of the main event.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Mass advertising efforts tend to work with a small minority of adults, leaving the majority with deepening skepticism toward Christians and faith communities. The message of Jesus and the invitation to participate in a local community are turned into a mere marketing campaign. Are there times when marketing should be employed, particularly in relational ways, such as giving people in your church invitation cards for their churchless neighbors? Yes! But every method should be adopted with the knowledge that what’s at stake is much more than what kind of numbers we attract each Sunday. We are stewards of the truest story about humanity and God. We must take care not to cheapen the gospel by relying on marketing prowess to attract attenders.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“It is absolutely necessary to be effective in the digital space, though this effort alone will not spell outreach success.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“The following approaches are likely to fall flat, with less than 10 percent of the churchless reporting they might be attracted by such efforts: information about a church provided through the mail advertising for a church on TV, in a newspaper, or on the radio an unsolicited phone call from someone representing a church in the community to describe the church and offer an invitation to attend advertising for the church on a local billboard a website that describes the church and invites people to attend a sermon from the pastor on CD or podcast emphasizing that the church has multiple locations in the community providing entry to a “video church”—a ministry that has a real-time video feed of live teaching from the main location, with live music and leadership at the remote location a contemporary seeker service showing a Hollywood-quality movie at the church that deals with issues like marriage, faith, or parenting providing a book club that discusses books about faith and life offering an open-mic discussion group or online chat that focuses on questions related to faith and spirituality a celebrity guest speaker appearing at a church’s worship services”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Notice that the unchurched show little interest in attending a church known for the quality of its worship music or even the quality of its sermons. Millions of churchless adults are very sensitive to the balance between teaching and street-level ministry; they fear getting connected to a congregation that is all talk and no action.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Pastor Larry Reichardt of South Coast Fellowship in Ventura, California, emphasizes the importance of connecting with kids where they are, instead of trying to attract them to church first: “We share Christ with kids on the streets and then we visit the kids’ families at home and pray for them. We start small groups in their area in English or Spanish and minister to their needs. We also do physical things in the neighborhood to demonstrate we care, sharing the love of God where they are and how they are. Eventually, we ask them to church.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“The fact that young adults, in particular, are redefining family to include close friends, even though this is a regularly shifting group, points to the impermanence and unreliability associated with family in the minds of millions of people. Given these continuing shifts, churches may have a difficult time connecting with the unchurched if their ministries are tailored for traditional households. In particular, single and married-without-children adults have little reason to connect with a church if its resources are funneled toward children’s and family ministry.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Nearly half of churchless people (46 percent) say family is their highest priority. But what does that mean? Something different, perhaps, than what you might expect. A majority of the unchurched (56 percent) are single, whereas a majority of churched people are married (55 percent). In fact, the unchurched are nearly twice as likely as the churched to never have been married, and twice as likely to cohabit. Most of the nation’s unchurched adults are not only churchless but also spouseless. So why and how is family such a big priority for so many of them? Like most other Americans, the unchurched see family as a network of relationships that provides personal support, security, belonging, purpose, comfort, and the opportunity to receive and give love. They look upon family as a natural part of a normal life, and these relationships represent a vital part of their identity. They know who they are because of their family connections and shared experiences. But that does not mean the families of the churchless mirror those of churched adults. Three out of every ten unchurched adults have children under the age of eighteen living with them. Most of these young people are in homes with two married parents, but one-fifth are in homes with a single parent who has never been married. One-seventh are in homes with cohabiting adults and a similar number are in homes with parents who are separated or divorced. Less than one out of every five unchurched households (18 percent) is a “traditional family”—that is, a married husband and wife with one or more children under eighteen.[12] Thirteen percent are “nontraditional families” that include children. One-quarter (26 percent) are married adults without children in the home, while the remaining 43 percent are single adults living without children under eighteen. Understanding these demographics can help to explain why many of the common approaches to attracting the unchurched—many of which revolve around children—fail to produce the hoped-for results.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“One thing we hear from churchless and churched people alike is that they intensely desire the local church to provide what no other group can offer: an experience of the presence of God.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Likewise, effectively incorporating a diversity of people into congregational life will demand greater flexibility and creativity on the part of faith communities. Ministry strategies and discipleship programs that were successful in the past may need to be reimagined or even scrapped for something new. Rather than spawning ever-more-segmented ministries that further silo various demographics, what would it look like if churches started with the premise that godly relationships nurtured over the long haul can transcend the science of demography? What if churches prioritized seeking and finding God together over activities and events designed to appeal to ever-shrinking slices of their constituency?”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“These new times require new strategies for making faith real in people’s lives. Nothing drives home the need for such innovation as attempting to connect (or reconnect) with the de-churched. Their dismissal of Christian churches is not mean-spirited; it simply reflects the firsthand experiences that led them to conclude churches are ill-equipped to support the flourishing life they hope for.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“1. Churches seem restrictive and overprotective. Self-expression has become one of the foundations of our postmodern culture. There is less concern about truth than about freedom to express feelings, ideas, and experiences. The demand for expressive liberty has certainly threaded its way into the realm of spirituality, as well—which poses a problem for many churches, since many young adults say their experience of church feels stifling, fear-based, and risk-averse.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Churchless born agains are not interested in being pressured into immediate engagement. They left the fold before, and they will do it again if they feel they are being manipulated to participate in programs or activities merely to help an organization reach its quantitative goals. If they return, it will be for spiritual and relational reasons; they do not want to be numbers on the bottom line or cogs in the machine.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Relatively few of the unchurched express interest in returning to a church or even investigating available churches. One-third say they are “completely open to carrying out and pursuing their faith in an environment or structure that differs from the typical church.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Asked to identify what churches could do to contribute to the community’s common good, few mention the activities most churches major on: teaching, worship, and evangelizing. Almost all the activities they describe focus on service: feeding the needy (30 percent), providing housing for the homeless (18 percent), keeping kids off the streets (11 percent), providing counseling and support groups (11 percent), and clothing the poor (11 percent). More unchurched people recommend accepting non-Christian beliefs as legitimate (11 percent) and accepting others instead of judging them (7 percent) than recommend the activities most churches regularly engage in.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Churchless adults tend to be independent and self-reliant, more skeptical than the churched about the motivations of people and institutions, and ready to stonewall those entities until they prove trustworthy and beneficial.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“We’ve by far had the most success inviting people into our community life by inviting them to serve alongside us. As a matter of fact, that’s about the only thing that’s worked consistently as far as “official” church activities go. The other thing that has worked is parties—birthday parties, Super Bowl parties—where we invite churched friends and unchurched friends just to connect.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“The key, of course, is loving the churchless for who they are rather than for what they can offer our church,”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“But it does mean we should be wary about “using” our relationships with churchless friends as means to the end of getting them to church.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“While the churchless continue to show some openness to high-touch, relational connections—pastoral home visits (27 percent), a phone call from a church (24 percent), a survey conducted with them about their interests (21 percent)—they are also increasingly resistant to other forms of outreach.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Today’s unchurched are more likely to say they are simply not sure, reflecting their disinterest in churches generally, or are more likely to say they would prefer attending some activity other than the Sunday service.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“Today’s churchless adults are not remarkably less favorable toward churches in their community; if anything, there is simply a growing “yawn,”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them

“The group most likely to see themselves as lonely, stressed out, and concerned about the future is the unmarried, whether divorced or never headed to the altar.”
― George Barna, Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them