Let’s Not All Go to Church
Many, many years ago I worked a short wstint right out of graduate school at a denominational entity known as the Baptist Sunday School Board. It has since become known as Lifeway.
The department I was assigned to had developed a promotional program titled “Let’s All Go to Church.” It was hoped to stimulate attendance. It was hokey, as the name of the program would suggest, and built on the false premise that an entire culture just needed to be reminded that going to church is what they really should do. Yet even then, the number was growing of unchurched who had no interest or desire to have anything to do with church, and so it was doomed to failure and, of course, did.
That old experience came to mind in light of a recent study that found that now, even Christians don’t want to go to church. According to the State of the Bible, released by the American Bible Society, nearly half of American Christians (45%) have not attended church in the past six months. Nor, it could be assumed, do they particularly want to. Their answer to “Let’s All Go to Church” seems to be “Let’s Not.”
When I planted Mecklenburg Community Church (Meck) in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1992, I commissioned a survey through Barna Research Group to do a study of our area in terms of the attitudes of the unchurched toward the church. I was tired of conventional wisdom—if we were going to truly reach the unchurched, we needed to know why they were unchurched. Here were the results:
There is no value in attending. The number one reason why people didn’t go to church was their perception that there was no value in attending. There is a “been there, done that” mentality, resulting in the feeling that they can connect with God as easily, if not better, on the golf course as they can through a weekend church service.
Churches have too many problems. A second reason they gave for choosing to remain outside of the church was the conviction that churches have too many problems. The assessment of the unchurched is that the typical church is inflexible, hypocritical, judgmental, and just plain mean. Why would anyone want to become involved with something that, in their mind, is so obviously dysfunctional? As one man quipped: “I’ve got enough problems in my life. Why would I go to church and get more?”
I don’t have the time. Few would argue that time has replaced money as the new currency in contemporary American society. As a result, many people claim to be unchurched because they simply don't have the time to attend. We also know that people make time for those things that matter to them, so this response is a direct reflection of the benefit they believe they will receive by attending.
I’m simply not interested. A fourth reason that was given for being unchurched is a lack of interest. Yet then, as now, people are interested in spiritual things, and they often are asking spiritual questions—yet they have no interest in the church. This is similar to having a country full of people interested in finding and experiencing a cheeseburger but driving right past McDonald’s on a daily basis with nothing but indifference.
Churches ask for money too much. A fifth reason people gave for not wanting to go to church is that churches seem more interested in their wallets than in them as people.
Church services are usually boring. The sixth reason the unchurched gave for being unchurched was that church services are usually boring, predictable and lifeless. There is little within the service that captures and holds their attention.
Christian churches are irrelevant to the way I live. The seventh reason the unchurched gave for rejecting church was that Christian churches are irrelevant to the way they live—simply out of touch with life as it’s lived in the real world. The topics, music and language make them feel that God is buried somewhere in the past or is removed from the world in which we live.
I don’t believe in God, or I am unsure that God exists. The eighth and final answer was surprising: disbelief in God. Only a very small percentage said that they didn’t attend church because they had rejected God.
I determined then, now more than 30 years ago, that there wasn’t a single “reason” the unchurched gave for being unchurched that the church couldn’t – no, shouldn’t – take seriously. They weren’t rejecting God or asking anyone to airbrush “sin” or “Jesus” out of things—they were rejecting church. And more specifically, how we were doing church.
Since then, we’ve grown to more than 20,000 online and in-person active attenders, with more than 70% of our total growth continually coming from those who were previously unchurched.
Yes, the dynamics of reaching the unchurched in 2025 are different from those in 1992,
... but why people don’t go to church hasn’t changed that much.
James Emery White
Sources
James Emery White, Rethinking the Church: A Challenge to Creative Redesign in an Age of Transition (Baker).
Diana Chandler, “Nearly Half of U.S. Christians Don’t Attend Church, State of the Bible Finds,” Baptist Press, August 15, 2025, read online.
Photo Courtesy: ©Getty Images/ Marcia Straub
Published Date: September 4, 2025
James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook, and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.
Originally published September 04, 2025.
