Second post on leaving church

Bradley Wright recently uploaded his first post about why people leave church.   The second is available today.  

If the first seemed obvious, in some ways, the second is the same.   The first related to people who had intellectual problems with their faith, and were asking questions that in fact have been asked for ever - and often answered reasonably adequately. 

The second group are those who say because God hasn't answered their prayers therefore He either doesn't exist or isn't what He says he is, or doesn't keep His promises.   Wright has an interesting comment on this:

I am struck by how much these accounts resonate with sociological theories of human relationships, especially those coming from social exchange theory. This theory describes humans as judging the value of relationships in terms of costs and benefits. One variation of social exchange theory, termed equity theory, holds that people are satisfied with their relationships when they get the rewards that they feel are proportional to the costs that they bear. An inequitable is unstable, and it usually occurs because a person thinks they receive too little for how much they give.

These blog posts are worth keeping in mind; they may explain many of the issues that people in your congregation have with God, and/or church. 

Willow Creek and the Reveal Survey

I went to check up on a post I'd written on Willow Creek's Reveal survey and discovered it wasn't there. Because I hadn't written it.

I first came across the Reveal survey where it was discussed as part of the Shift Conference, about which I have previously written (!) The writer seemed to indicate that Willow Creek had made major shifts of emphasis as a result of the survey, but it seems as though the responses to the survey (a) may not have been well-interpreted, and (b) have been responses to a survey that had some flaws.

Of course there's always someone on the Net who's prepared to write at length about such issues, and a friend has pointed me to an eleven-part series on the positives and negatives of the survey. It was written late last year, so is still fairly up to date. Furthermore, the writer, Bradley Wright, is a professor at the University of Connecticut, where he studies the sociology of Christianity. You may not want to read all he has to say (some of it's a little technical), so you can skip to the summary
However, those with an interest in seeing how better to view church/Christian behaviour and response, can start at the beginning (the posts are fairly short.)