"We stopped going to church"

Points raised by people who have left church in middle age:

•Church makes you work too hard, for too many hours; only if you are knackered are you acceptable.We worked so hard for so little result.
•Life is difficult, more uncertain than Christian faith makes it seem.
•We wanted a social life, whereas church life was duty.
•Prayers are not answered, like healing.
•Homosexuals are discriminated against.
•Science has disproved Christianity.
•Church will not let you question, or hold things in tension.
•Questions get simplistic answers, the answers we had as children.
•We were brainwashed as children, young people.
•We were too idealistic trying to change the world when we were young.
•Happy clappy Spring Harvest songs are too superficial.
•I still believe in God but not church.
•Church is dying, out of date.
•Our kids do not believe and will not go to church.
•Christian language/assumptions appear weird to non-christians, and began to do so for us as well.
•We cared about the community/society, but the church did not and was not involved.
•We had kids and became busy ferrying them around.
•We got out of the habit as we got busy with work & social life.
•We don’t feel bad about not going to church.
•We don’t regret what we did in/for church, it was important at that time in our lives.
•Church leaders fail, fall into sin, are hypocrites.
•There’s no good church near us.
•Unintelligent teaching/preaching.
•It’s how middle aged people are in our stage of life.
•We’ve been through the wilderness and now have got used to it as normal.
•A parent died and made me reassess what I believe.
•Church leaders are too controlling, insecure, unwelcoming to new ideas/suggestions.
•Churches want people to fit into their narrow systems & programmes.

The questions in some ways are not the point. We must beware of thinking that we could answer these in detail or theoretically and people would somehow come back to church. It is much more personal & relational.