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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4 Responses to “Church Hoppers”

  1. Tish Says:

    October 2nd, 2005 at 7:17 pm

    I am person that attended one church for over 20 years, and now attend Riverview. Being lumped into a group called “church hoppers” is disappointing. I can tell you from the get- together that was held just last week that several of the couples that met that night had similar stories to ours- a growing dissatisfaction with the lack of outreach to the community and the situation where the leaders of the church were not interested in reaching out to the unsaved or in mentoring the new believer.

    Riverview was not my first choice when our family began visiting other churches, but we believe that this is God’s choice for our family at this time. We felt compelled to leave a place that was very comfortable but not challenging, in order to follow the leading of the Spirit. I still have not figured out where I “fit in”, but I know that the decision that our family reached 2 years ago was the right one.


  2. JR Says:

    October 3rd, 2005 at 10:04 pm

    you think this has any correlation w/the average stay in a local church by a senior/lead pastor???


  3. Noel Says:

    October 4th, 2005 at 8:11 am

    For sure. Even in the meetings I am in this week, I am with pastors who have been with their churches for 10 or 20 years or more. It’s awesome, but they are not the average in America. Here are the pastor stats.


  4. yellow toenail fungus Says:

    October 6th, 2006 at 11:12 pm

    thank


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