We Didn’t Lose Them Overnight
The dechurched didn’t leave because of one bad sermon or a single disagreement. Most of them left slowly. One unmet expectation at a time. One leadership failure at a time. One moment of hurt met with silence instead of grace. We didn’t lose them overnight—and we won’t win them back overnight either.
What we’re seeing now is the fruit of decades of misplaced priorities. For years, we measured success by attendance, giving, and programs. We built systems that could draw a crowd but rarely make disciples. Somewhere along the way, people became consumers instead of participants, and when the product stopped meeting their needs, they walked away.
Pastors and leaders are often tempted to fix this with surface solutions—new branding, better music, slicker graphics, or a fresh slogan. But hurt that was inflicted over decades can’t be healed with a rebrand. What’s broken isn’t our marketing; it’s our ministry culture. When trust has eroded, only consistency and humility can rebuild it.
So the question isn’t “How do we get them back?” but “How do we become a church worth coming back to?” That starts with repentance, not strategy. It looks like listening before defending, serving before promoting, and discipling before entertaining.
If we want to reach the dechurched, we have to slow down long enough to earn back credibility. That means leading with empathy instead of ego. It means creating smaller circles of real community where people are known by name, not counted by number. It means preaching with honesty about failure, asking for forgiveness when we’ve fallen short, and letting transparency replace polish. When a church becomes a place where people can wrestle with faith instead of pretending they have it all together, walls start to crumble.
The dechurched haven’t all abandoned faith. Many still believe in Jesus—they just stopped believing that His people would love them like He does. That’s not a marketing problem. It’s a discipleship problem. And that’s something we canfix, one faithful step at a time.