{"id":22048,"date":"1996-10-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1996-10-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/1996\/10\/01\/ministry-to-missing-members-4\/"},"modified":"1996-10-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1996-10-01T00:00:00","slug":"ministry-to-missing-members-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/ministry-to-missing-members-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Ministry to Missing Members"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n When this article appeared in LEADERSHIP\n nearly a decade ago, readers appreciated its insights into a difficult task:\n working with people who are leaving the church or becoming inactive.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nS<\/strong>everal years ago while looking through slides I had used in an every-member\ncanvass in my church, I was shocked.<\/p>\n\n

\nPictured in the first three slides were three couples who had held key offices\nduring my first year. Now, four years later, those couples were totally inactive.\nThey no longer attended worship, except maybe on Christmas or Easter, made\nno financial contribution, and had a negative attitude about the congregation.<\/p>\n\n

\nHow could people move from active involvement to total inactivity in just\nfour years? <\/em>I wondered.<\/p>\n\n

\nI thought of times I had visited inactive members and seen absolutely nothing\nhappen. In fact, often they were more convinced to stay away after<\/em>\nI made the call. I needed to figure out how to keep current members active\nand enable inactive ones to return.<\/p>\n\n

\nI went to work on these questions as I pursued a doctorate and have continued\nto search for answers over the last decade. With a psychologist and a theologian,\nI designed a research project. Thirteen trained pastors and I interviewed\ninactive members from four United Methodist congregations to find out what\ncaused them to disappear from church life.<\/p>\n\n

Meeting an APE<\/h2>

\nWe found 95 percent of the people had experienced what we now call\nan “anxiety-provoking event”-an ape. Subsequent research showed these events\nusually come in clusters, several apes compounding within six months to a\nyear.<\/p>\n\n

\nAnxiety is the emotional alarm system triggered by disequilibrium, hurt,\nor anticipated hurt. The inactive members we visited revealed high levels\nof anxiety, which drove them from church membership because they were never\nresolved. Their anxiety fell into four categories.<\/p>\n\n\n

Reality anxiety.<\/h2>

This anxiety is based on some\nreal, historical event; you could have videotaped what caused it. Normally\nthe event is a snub or an utter lack of church care when a member needed\nit.<\/p>\n\n

\nA while back I preached in a church in Vancouver. Two days prior, a family\nfrom the church had their home burn to the ground, and their 2- and 4-year-old\nchildren died in the fire. How many people went to visit him and his wife?\nMaybe the pastor, but probably not many parishioners. Most would confess,\n“I wouldn’t know what to say,” as if they had to say something.<\/p>\n\n

\nThat event causes reality anxiety. A family experiencing this kind of tragedy\nwould have a hard time returning to a church they felt let them down when\nthey needed them.<\/p>\n\n

Moral anxiety.<\/h2>

Moral anxiety arises when people experience\nin themselves or others behaviors they believe aren’t right.<\/p>\n\n

\nA lay person called me and said, “I understand you work with churches where\npeople are leaving.”<\/p>\n\n

\n“That’s true.”<\/p>\n\n

\n“Our senior pastor has admitted having an affair with a woman in the\ncongregation,” he said. “Our associate pastor confessed a homosexual affair\nwith our organist, and we have four choir members involved in affairs.”<\/p>\n\n

\nThat large church lost more members over moral anxiety than most churches\never will.<\/p>\n\n

\nMoral anxiety can also be private yet still drive people from the church.\nIn Meetings at the Edge,<\/em> Steven Levine tells the story of a devout\nChristian nurse who cared for Evie, a woman who was given permission by her\nfamily to end her life because of the extreme pain caused by cancer.<\/p>\n\n

\nHelen, the nurse, refused to participate in such an act. Yet Evie persisted.\nShe planned to take the barbiturate-laced applesauce at 9 a.m. Helen reluctantly\nagreed to arrive at 10 and do whatever she could if Evie were not yet dead.<\/p>\n\n

\nAs Helen entered the house, Evie was crying. She was frightened and could\nnot take the applesauce alone. She asked Helen to feed it to her. Helen said,\n“I cannot,” and walked out to sit in her car.<\/p>\n\n

\nTen minutes later Evie hobbled to the door using a chair like a walker. She\nwas vomiting. “Please come help me!” she begged. “I don’t want to be trapped\nin a coma and only partially die. Please<\/em> come!” Helen walked into\nthe house, fed her the rest of the applesauce, and held Evie until she died.<\/p>\n\n

\nThere’s a good chance Helen was not in church the following Sunday, and no\none would know why. Her moral anxiety-provoking event was private.<\/p>\n\n\n

Neurotic anxiety.<\/h2>

Neurotic anxiety is pain caused\nby the imagination. Someone may claim, “I don’t go to church because the\npastor doesn’t like me.” The feeling might be based on reality, but the chances\nare it’s neurotic. It’s only in the person’s head.<\/p>\n\n

\nA man goes into the hospital, doesn’t let you know he’s there, but expects\nyou to visit. Then he gets angry when you don’t. Months later when you do\ncall, you may trace his problem to that hospital stay. The man is convinced\nyou don’t care about him. That’s neurotic anxiety.<\/p>\n\n

\nWe can inadvertently foster neurotic anxiety. For example, a pastor regularly\ncalls on a couple who are potential members. He spends time with them and\nmakes them feel important. All the time they’re thinking, Look at all\nthe personal attention you get from the pastor around here!<\/em> Then they\njoin the church, and the attention they receive drops almost to zero. They\nwonder what happened. The pastor has accidentally encouraged unrealistic\nexpectations, which give rise to neurotic anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n

Existential anxiety.<\/h2>

Existential anxiety is\nthe feeling brought about by the thought that some day you may not exist,\nor that even if you do, your life may be meaningless. We hear the refrains,\n“The church has lost its meaning for me,” “The sermons don’t mean anything\nanymore, Pastor,” “My kids are bored stiff in church school.”<\/p>\n\n

\nI visited a family that had been active church members but had dropped out.\nI learned that when they were preparing for marriage, the pastor said to\nthe bride, “I believe you’re a born-again Christian, but I’m not convinced\nyour fiance is. If you marry him, your first child will die.” I was\ntalking with them six months after their 3-year-old boy had died.<\/p>\n\n

\nThey experienced existential anxiety at its height. Twenty minutes into that\nconversation, the couple cried as hard as two adults could cry. These tears\nsay something about the nature of the pain encountered when visiting an inactive\nmember.<\/p>\n\n\n

Beyond event to cluster<\/h2>

The four types of anxiety often affect people in clusters. A man\nin my congregation lost his job, and the family income plummeted to nothing.\nHis wife, under stress, ended up depressed and in a mental hospital for two\nweeks. Soon after, this couple-active leaders in our church-were told they\nwere doing an inadequate job as youth leaders and were dismissed. They became\nangry and quit coming to church.<\/p>\n\n

\nWhen a layperson and I visited them some weeks later, the woman was reading\na newspaper. She put it down, said hello, and put it right back up. We talked\nwith her husband, and in about five minutes she slammed the paper into her\nlap. We had before us a red-faced, angry woman.<\/p>\n\n

\nInactive people usually mention the last event in the anxiety-provoking cluster\nfirst. “We’re just as good of youth leaders as anybody else up at that church!”\nshe informed us. “If we aren’t good enough for that, we aren’t good enough\nfor anything.”<\/p>\n\n

\nIt’s easy to assume that’s the sole or primary issue, but it’s not. The\nunresolved anxiety of the cluster<\/em> of events made this final event\nintolerable. Until we uncover and deal with the original pain of the cluster,\neven if it happened twenty years ago, people will likely remain outside the\nchurch.<\/p>\n\n

\nWe talked for some time with these people. I’m happy to report they did come\nback to church and eventually accepted new leadership responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n

Main conflict areas<\/h2>

All anxiety arises from some problem. The most common is\nintra-family conflict.<\/em> Husband and wife square off on some issue;\nparents and kids squabble. This kind of conflict is the most consistent\ncharacteristic of people who have left the church.<\/p>\n\n

\nConflict with pastors<\/em> is the second most common problem. When pastors\navoid dealing with people’s anxiety, the people simply avoid the pastors\nand their churches.<\/p>\n\n

\nFamily against family, inter-family conflict,<\/em> is the third arena.\nIt’s the Hatfields against the McCoys; people don’t get along with one another.<\/p>\n\n

\nOverwork,<\/em> or at least the feeling of it, presents a fourth problem\narea. With volunteer church service, too much too soon or too long, with\nno reward, will drive people from the church.<\/p>\n\n

\nSuppose you discover a family is having troubles at home, seems to be avoiding\nyou, is feeling disappointed about the way other church members have treated\nthem, and thinks they’re overworked and unrewarded. You will usually find\nthey are experiencing reality, moral, neurotic, or existential anxiety-often\nsimultaneously. Then you can predict the next stage: they cry for help.<\/p>\n\n\n

The cry<\/h2>

If we learn to hear and respond to people’s cries for help, we\ncan usually prevent their dropping out. Those still crying will respond to\nour efforts to reach them. But cries don’t last forever. Some cry longer\nthan others, depending on their bond to the congregation, but when the cry\ngoes unanswered, eventually members leave. Then the damage is much greater\nand more difficult to repair.<\/p>\n\n

\nA verbal cry for help may sound like this: “I don’t know if I want to continue\ncoming to this church. If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s hypocrites!”<\/p>\n\n

\nOr it could be more subtle: “You know, all the men but me in our Sunday school\nclass have had promotions at work.”<\/p>\n\n

\nI worked with a woman in Christian education for two years and never once\nheard a complaint. Then one day in the midst of a long paragraph she let\nslip just one sentence: “I’m not sure I can do this job much longer.”<\/p>\n

\nI didn’t say anything right then, but when I saw her the next Sunday morning\nin the hallway, I said, “Sally, I have a feeling you might be upset about\nsome things in church, particularly in the Christian education area.”<\/p>\n\n

\n“Can I talk with you this week?” she said.<\/p>\n\n

\nShe came in the following Thursday with all her teaching materials-and\nunmistakable body language. Even before she sat down, she said, “You’re not\ngoing to like what I’m about to tell you, but I’m going to resign.” I listened\nto her story for an hour and a half, and I heard from her the classic phrase\nof one who is thinking of leaving: “I don’t want to leave the church. I love\nthe church, but I’m tired.” She was overworked-reality anxiety-so we renegotiated\nher workload, and she stayed. The key is hearing the story first.<\/p>\n\n

\nPastors can respond to cries in one of three ways: First, they can listen\nand respond to the pain the cry represents. That can be amazingly beneficial.<\/p>\n\n

\nSecond, they can ignore the cry, not realizing how serious it is, until the\ncry moves into anger. The person gets more agitated and says, “Hey, what\ndo I have to do to get you to hear me? Somebody help me. Can’t you see I’m\nabout to leave the church?”<\/p>\n\n

\nThird, they can shoot the person with the gospel gun: “What’s the matter\nwith you? Are you losing your faith or something?” That’s a mistake of confusing\nthe symptom for the disease, the behavior for the cause.<\/p>\n\n

\nBut surprisingly, even if we react to the immediate anger rather than the\nanxiety behind it, we’ll still recover about 80 percent of the people. Even\nhesitating steps in the right direction can help.<\/p>\n\n

\nIf we miss the verbal cries for help, we at least have a whole string of\nnonverbal cries to alert us to the problem. The cries for help become behavioral.\nThe person either leaves or begins the process of leaving.<\/p>\n\n

\nThe first behavior change is the leaving of worship. Second, people leave\nmajor committees and boards. They either don’t show up or they begin to show\nup sporadically. Both of these indicators can be seen on an attendance graph.\nThe one who was always there four Sundays a month drops to three to two to\nonly rare appearances. Or the board member makes one or two meetings a year\nafter nearly perfect attendance in past years.<\/p>\n\n

\nThird, people begin to leave Sunday school. This may vary from denomination\nto denomination, but most adults have their closest friends in their Sunday\nschool classes. Backing away from friends is a major change. Fourth, the\nkids are pulled out of Sunday school. The parents decide they don’t even\nwant to bring them, let alone come themselves.<\/p>\n\n

\nFifth comes the letter of resignation, and finally, interestingly enough,\nthe pledge is dropped. That’s the final gasp for help, the last commitment\nto be given up in most denominations.<\/p>\n\n

\nThe sad thing is, these dropouts are hurting. They’ve not only experienced\na cluster of anxiety-provoking events, but also are grieving the loss of\ntheir church.<\/p>\n\n

Skunks and turtles<\/h2>

In my research, a third of the inactive people we called on had\ntears running down their cheeks once we dug out the original cluster of pain.\nUncovering that hurt caused them to cry before perfect strangers.<\/p>\n\n

\nBut people respond to their pain in different ways. Some begin to blame something\nexternal<\/em>-the church, the pastor. We’ve nicknamed them skunks<\/em>.\nWhen you call on these people, you get sprayed on. It’s what happened to\nme when the woman slammed the paper into her lap and lashed out at me.<\/p>\n\n

\nWhen these people drop out, they wait six to eight weeks and then psychologically\nseal off the pain and anxiety produced by the original cluster. They back\naway and by all appearances become apathetic. But the pain of the cluster\nremains and acts as the block to returning to church. In order to get the\nperson to come back, we must deal with that pain.<\/p>\n\n

\nAfter they seal off the pain, people reinvest their time, energy, and money\nin other pursuits. Half reinvest themselves in the family; they buy tents,\ntrailers, and snowmobiles and go away on the weekend. You visit them and\nhear, “Our family is just as close to God fishing on the lake as we were\nback at church with that bunch of snobs.”<\/p>\n\n

\nThe other 50 percent reinvest themselves in other institutions: hospitals,\nPTA, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Rotary. So if we call on them,\nthey’ll point their finger at us and say, “I’ve gotten involved with that\nvolunteer ambulance crew. I’m a dispatcher on Sunday mornings. You know,\nwe really<\/em> help people now.” That’s a skunk speaking.<\/p>\n\n

\nAnother set of dropouts experiences a different emotion: hopelessness.<\/em>\nIt’s the antithesis of helplessness. It’s the sense of being incapable of\ngenerating any inner motivation. As a result, these people withdraw and become\ninactive. We call them turtles.<\/em><\/p>\n

\nTurtles have incredible power to hook other people’s guilt. A turtle’s cry\nfor help might sound like this: “I’m sure you could get Mrs. Green to teach\nthe class. She would do a much better job than I could.” The turtle drops\nout, waits six to eight weeks, and seals off the pain, much like the skunk.\nBut turtles point the blame internally,<\/em> toward themselves.<\/p>\n\n

\nWhether it’s the skunks’ spray or the turtles’ timidity, the various cries\nfor help can be addressed.<\/p>\n\n

Pain listening<\/h2>

So what do we do for these people? We need to teach ourselves and\nour lay people to hear the pain of inactive people. It helps, too, if we\nlearn how to intervene in the stages leading to inactivity, before the people\ndisappear.<\/p>\n\n

\nIn one church I served we took fifteen minutes at the end of every board\nmeeting for board members to report who, in their estimation, was crying\nfor help. We gave the names to a team of twenty-four trained callers.<\/p>\n\n

\nI also extended my secretary’s hours so she could stand near me at the door\non Sunday mornings to listen for cries for help. She was good at picking\nthem up, and I could inconspicuously indicate others for her to note while\nI managed the flurry of smiles and handshakes and small talk. By the afternoon,\nshe would alert the calling teams, who would reach out to these people\nbefore<\/em> their cries turned to the silence of absence. Prior to that,\nI’d often hear several cries on a Sunday morning but fail to remember them\nor follow up.<\/p>\n\n

\nWhen we call on an inactive family, or one heading that direction, chances\nare strong we’re going to have to deal with anger. The turtles’ anger will\nmake us feel guilty, and the skunks’ anger will make us mad. Since calling\non an inactive member is often painful, it’s easy to enter a cycle: People\nleave because they’re angry; I’m angry because they left; I punish them by\nletting them sit in their pain; they punish me by not coming back.<\/p>\n\n

\nThat’s where reconciliation must enter. Active members of the church go to\nan inactive member on behalf of the community in an act of reconciliation.\nIf we are willing to hear some pain with the inactive person, reconciliation\nwill often occur.<\/p>\n\n

\nLook at what God did. We wouldn’t listen to him, so he made a pastoral call\non us and suffered on the cross for us. That kind of self-giving love enabled\nus to be reconciled to him.<\/p>\n\n

\nWe will not get inactive members back by avoiding pain. We have to take the\ninitiative, go to them, uncover the anxiety-provoking cluster, hear and often\nbear their pain, then pave the road for them to return.<\/p>\n\n

\nUltimately, though, we call, not to get people to come back to church. We\ncall because people are in pain. If they come back as a result of our ministering\nto their pain, that is good. But if they don’t, we have still reached out\nto them in the name of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

John S. Savage is president of L.E.A.D. Consultants, Inc., in Reynoldsburg,\nOhio.<\/p>\n\n

1996 by Christianity Today\/LEADERSHIP, journal.<\/p>\n

Last Updated: October 8, 1996<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When this article appeared in LEADERSHIP nearly a decade ago, readers appreciated its insights into a difficult task: working with people who are leaving the church or becoming inactive. Several years ago while looking through slides I had used in an every-member canvass in my church, I was shocked. Pictured in the first three slides Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"tax_ctp_authors":[2047],"tax_ctp_books":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[142,154],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[131],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[648,649,156],"tax_ctp_tags":[3604,3609,3615,3666,4101,4584,4777,4792,5103],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-22048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-john-s-savage","tax_publications-1996-leadership-journal","tax_publications-fall_1996-leadership-journal","tax_publications-leadership-journal","tax_ctp_tags-church-attendance","tax_ctp_tags-church-growth","tax_ctp_tags-church-membership","tax_ctp_tags-conflict","tax_ctp_tags-grief","tax_ctp_tags-pain","tax_ctp_tags-reconciliation","tax_ctp_tags-relationship","tax_ctp_tags-suffering"],"acf":{"scripture_references":null},"yoast_head":"\nMinistry to Missing Members - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When this article appeared in LEADERSHIP nearly a decade ago, readers appreciated its insights into a difficult task: working with people who are leaving\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/ministry-to-missing-members-4\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ministry to Missing Members - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When this article appeared in LEADERSHIP nearly a decade ago, readers appreciated its insights into a difficult task: working with people who are leaving\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/ministry-to-missing-members-4\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CTPastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"1996-10-01T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2025\/12\/ogimage.png?resize=1200,628\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"628\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John S. 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