The Church is Seen as More Relevant by the Unchurched Than the Churched?

I saw a statistic this morning that spoke volumes about the current state of the American church. A recent survey revealed that 40% of regular churchgoers believe the church is largely irrelevant, while only 27% of the unchurched hold the same view. While the researchers may have been surprised by this, I wasn’t. Here’s why.

According to the Church Answers Research team, which surveyed 604 people from various backgrounds, there’s an “unexpected” gap in how the churched and unchurched perceive the church. The findings reveal that both groups generally agree that churches are good for their communities—almost 6 out of 10 unchurched people think so.

Yet the dichotomy arises in other areas. Regular churchgoers say they trust their churches and pastors but find them largely irrelevant, while the unchurched view the church as relevant but lack trust in the institution and its leaders.

The researchers explain this as a result of two main issues: insularity and scandals. With so few churches focused on genuine evangelism, they’ve become closed-off social circles filled with long-time believers rather than new converts. Churches aren’t reaching the unchurched, who instead form opinions based on the scandal-ridden headlines they see.

This, the researchers conclude, leaves churches with a self-imposed perception problem—the sense of irrelevance felt by regular churchgoers—and a self-inflicted trust issue in the eyes of the unchurched.

And while there is certainly a lot of truth to that, these issues actually reveal something far more obvious to me. The unchurched may view the church as relevant, but that’s only because they have no idea how far these mainline churches have apostatized and made themselves irrelevant. They hold an abstract, idealized view of what “church” should be—a home of truth and morality.

The reality, however, is that the vast majority of these institutions are empty shells, mere shadows of their former selves, more focused on appeasing culture than preaching the gospel. These so called “churches” have essentially fully embraced secular ideologies, often wearing them proudly as they march alongside the world, affirming sin rather than proclaiming the truth.

The unchurched see an idea of “relevance” in these churches because they can’t perceive the theological rot inside while the ones who attend these churches see themselves as irrelevant because they’ve made themselves indistinguishable from the world.