There's a large and growing group of people who have left traditional church life (buildings, budgets, programs and pastors) but are decidedly
not walking away from their faith in Jesus. Or from their desire to follow him and bless the world. Or from their hunger to be in community with others. In fact, many of them have "left the church in order to
save their faith."
Sociologist
Josh Packard has coined the term "the Dones" to describe this group in his book
Church Refugees. He finds the term "refugees" particularly apt because it speaks about people who didn't really want to "leave home" but felt they had no other choice and often flee out of a sense of self-preservation.
I highly recommend the book. Below is my own summary, drawn largely from the book, about who the Dones are. If you would like to download a copy you can find it
here.
Key Research Findings on the Dones
Unless otherwise noted, observations presented here are
from Packard and Hope,
Church Refugees,
(Group Publishing, 2015); Joshua Packard,
Exodus
of the Religious Dones: Research Reveals the Size, Makeup, and Motivations of
the Formerly Churched Population (Group Publishing 2015); and “Meet the
‘Dones”” by Joshua Packard (Christianity Today,
http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2015/summer-2015/meet-dones.html)
1. They
were highly active in their churches.
Dones are not disgruntled consumerist Christians whose preferences were
not met, or controllers who stormed off in a huff when they couldn’t get their
way. Neither are they marginal members who drifted away over time. Rather, they were typically very active and
highly committed members in their congregations, frequently having served in
leadership roles.
2. They
didn’t want to leave. Dones often worked for years to reform the church
from within and address the challenges they were encountering. This is a key insight, and why Packard refers
to them as “Church Refugees,” evoking the plight of people who desperately
wanted to stay “home” yet felt compelled to leave as an act of
self-preservation, suffering a deep sense of loss as a result. One person interviewed described it this way;
“At first it was just survival, man. Spiritual survival. We had to get out.”
3. They
felt stifled by church structure. A key factor in why the Dones left is not
that the church was flawed, which they expect to be true for humans and their
institutions, but that the structures in place prevented them from helping to address the flaws. “I don’t think the
institutional church is filled with bad people. I think the church in America
is an inherently flawed structure that compels people to make poor decisions”
said one person interviewed. This distinction between the structures of the
institution as opposed to the people and the faith itself is what is expressed
by the saying; “They are done with the church but not with their faith.”
4. There
were four key desires that they found frustrated by life in the conventional
church:
a.
They wanted community in the form of an extended
spiritual family of care with shared life and substantial intimacy.
b.
They wanted to be able to affect the life of the
church.
c.
They wanted spiritual conversation that invited
exploration rather than doctrinal teaching that squelched it.
d.
They wanted meaningful engagement with the
world.
The Dones are a large and growing group. Barna and
Kinneman (Churchless, Tyndale
Momentum, 2014) argue that the “dechurched” comprise about 33% of the American
population and are the fastest growing segment as well. Packard estimates that
about half of the unchurched - roughly 30.5 Million people - would qualify as
Dones, no longer attending church services but retaining their faith in God and
Christian identity. An additional 7 Million still attending church report that
they are “on their way out the door” as Almost Dones. Beyond the sheer size of the group, it should
be stressed that the impact of these
people leaving congregational life is greatly multiplied by the fact that Dones
tend to come from among the most active and committed members in the church.
