Gone for good? Church-leaving and returning in the 21st century
Leslie J. Francis and Philip Richter (Epworth, 2007)
Book available from Amazon.

As the title suggests, Francis and Richter’s new book is a sequel to their 1998 study Gone but not forgotten. In that work the authors, noting the downward trend in church attendance figures, suggested that an investigation into the reasons for church-leaving should be of foremost concern to all churches.

Whilst there have been major developments and initiatives in mission across the churches since 1998, many successful in getting people through the front door, evidence still suggests that just as many are leaving through the back door. The question ‘why?’ continues to be important for all those concerned about the Church, although most leavers find that no-one bothers to ask.

Francis and Richter have the laudable aim of redressing this omission by listening to church leavers. They do so not only for good pastoral reasons, but also to learn lessons:
‘We take the view that programmes and invitations to welcome new members to enter by the front door into church life remain unproductive and inadequate unless attempts are also made to review what is happening at the back door through which church-leavers exit’ (p. 300). Such an exercise also enables us to leave the door open for a return: ‘Their story of disengagement offers clear insight into their potential for re-engagement’ (p. 303)

It is worth taking note of this book for several reasons.

Firstly, this work draws on a much wider pool of empirical data than Gone but not forgotten. Since 1998 the authors have doubled their database of church leavers, and extended its geographical spread. Their findings are based on a relatively small sample of qualitiative interviews and a much larger quantitative survey, involving response to a 200-part questionnaire by about 800 participants in York, Exeter and London.

Individuals recruited for the survey had once attended a church of any denomination at least six times a year (not including Christmas and Easter) and subsequently lapsed to less than six times a year. Three-fifths of these respondents had once attended an Anglican church; one-fifth a Roman Catholic church and one-fifth a Methodist church.  

Secondly, Richter and Francis have greatly expanded their original typology of broad reasons for church-leaving to 15 overarching ‘themes’ (themes can encompass a variety of reasons). This reflects the greater breadth and depth of their empirical data, and the fact that church-leaving is a complex phenomenon: there are a whole host of reasons for walking out of the door.

Each of the fifteen themes are discussed in separate chapters and range from matters of belief and unbelief, life transitions, issues of general dissatisfaction with church leadership, styles of worship or theological differences, through to a sense that the church was becoming irrelevant to the person’s lifestyle and/or was not sufficiently rewarding.

Within each chapter, the data is further analysed according to gender, age and denominational differences. These allows the authors to investigate whether women are more likely to leave than men and whether churches are losing more young people than old. The authors also analyse whether the leaving was sudden or more gradual and whether there is a likelihood of the person ever returning to church.

This extensive analysis of the data, while impressive, can be a little overwhelming for the reader with a less academic interest in the subject, or those easily bored by percentages. In the view of this reader, the chapters really come alive when the authors allow church leavers themselves to speak of their experiences (using excerpts from the qualitative interviews) and one wished for more of these to be included.  

So what are their conclusions? Which reasons for leaving were the most important? While the authors note that ‘there are identifiable patterns and trends underpinning motivation for church-leaving’ (p. 302), you really need to trawl through the book to find out (although a handy summary appeared in a news report in the 25 January edition of the Church Times, stating that one in three of the respondents had given loss of faith as a key reason for leaving). Quite rightly, the authors note that there is unlikely to be any one reason for an individual leaving church and insist on the importance of looking at an individual’s whole story. However, they note that it may be worth identifying what was the ‘tipping point’ which finally made the individual walk out of the door and not come back.

The authors do identify those most likely to return to church – those ‘whose church-leaving was associated with life transitions and life changes, and alternative lives and alternative meanings’ (a term the authors use to describe tensions between the demands of everyday life and church attendance). (pp. 302-3).

On the other hand, those least likely to return included ‘Those whose church-leaving was associated with matters of belief and unbelief, growing up and changing, incompatible lifestyles, costs and benefits, disillusionment with the church, problems with relevance, and problems with conservatism’ (p. 303)

Given the wide range of reasons given for church leaving, and basing their theory on the theology of individual differences propounded by Francis in recent works, the authors go on to suggest that ‘church switching’ is infinitely preferable to church-leaving and argue that this be encouraged. They propose a  ‘multiplex church’ which like the mega-cinemas familiar to us all have many points of entry and departure and a number of different styles to choose from, according to personal taste. The term encompasses both a multiplicity of separate congregations within the same premises as well as a multiplicity of different styles of church in a given locality.

In conclusion, this is an important piece of work which deserves to be noted, debated and taken further.

Tracey Messenger, 2008