Pilgrim Soldier

I’ve said in a couple of posts that last week we had Christian Schwarz here in Latvia doing an NCD conference. At the time I made a couple of notes and since then have been thinking quite a bit about one particular statistic that he used. According to their research between 85% to 99.7% of new Christians leave the church within the first 12 months! Now that is a scary number!

I firmly believe that fellowship with the saints is one the most essential needs for any Christian. In the light of this statistic though we have to take a look at ourselves and ask what it is about church that causes such a high percentage of new converts leave.

Is it relevancy? Does church actually meet the needs of new Christians, or is the transition from their unchurched state simply too difficult to do? Is it lack of community? I know that in my life some of my loneliest times have been in the midst of church life, so is this a problem that we need to deal with?

Is it that the Christian life is too difficult? All too often the message that seekers get is that if you become a Christian all your troubles will be solved, but that simply isn’t true. The Christian life is not an easy option. Yes we get to share our troubles with the Creator of the universe, but life still has problems. Do we, in our outreach, give out the wrong message?

Or is it simply that new Christians are disappointed by what they see in the more ‘mature’ Christians who inhabit our churches? Do they see our bickering and unChristian attitudes and simply leave the church disappointed?

I suspect that its a combination of all the above, but it is only us who are church that can make sure that these things don’t become a way of turning people away from our communities of faith just when they need it the most!