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Church Hoppers

Oct 1, 2005 Print This Post

//MOOD: Arg

//ITUNES: Pop Song 89 from the album “Green” by R.E.M.

Todd from Monday Morning Insight Weblog says this:

1. 1 in 4 church attendees have switched churches in the past five years.

2. On average, just 7% of new attenders are formally unchurched.

So… I’m interested in what you think… what reasons do you think that this is the case?

I’ll start:

People are fickle. People leave over anything. People like to stir up controversy. People can’t get along. People can’t get past their own preferences and leave on a dime when something is cated to them.

I think an interesting study would be to see how many ‘repeat offenders’ there are in this group. How many church hoppers change every five years. I know a slew of them from my past. And how does this same group of people keep getting ticked off every five years or so.

I almost think that the church is divided into two groups… the ‘hoppers’ and the ‘lifers’. (The ‘lifer’s would never leave a church, even if there WAS a good reason).

I think Todd gave some good reasons for the first point (and I totally agree with him) and touched a bit on the second. The question he essentially answered was “why are 93% of new attenders jumping from another church?” As irritating as the concept of church-hoppers are, in my experience, they will eventually hop again. (I wish this wasn’t the case…but it seems to be).

This made me think of the flipside. I would ask why only 7% of new attenders are not from another church.

That is just as provocative of a question that is probably answered differently based on the church. Here would be a different way of asking the same question:

Why would a completely unchurched person come to your church? How would they find it?

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