What do you think?
Rate this book
Exit Interviews : Revealing Stories of Why People Are Leaving Church
53,000 people leave churches every week and never come back. Curious, William Hendricks interviewed many of these people and discovered that a craving for spirituality leads many outside the established churches.
305 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1993
40 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 5, 2025
I give this 4 stars for it's sensitivity to the candid experiences of individuals. It took a lot of guts to write this book, especially in the early nineties. I wish he would have included the more traumatic stories he chose to leave out. I would have liked to read them and perhaps they deserved to be read.
June 10, 2015
The book’s chapters are interviews of church “dropouts” across the country. I’ve listed what chapter and page number where they are located in case you want to further read the note in context to the interview. Upon reading this book, below are what I feel are insightful and relevant comments and observations.
Introduction: The Back Door
- The struggle of what it means to be spiritual
- The purpose of a church is people development
- People who stop attending church go into a holding pattern and may return
- Not doubts about basic Christianity but doubts about the various programs put forth for living out the gospel
Diana
P. 32 “I hated being herded along I don’t have any needs that anybody else doesn’t have . . . I don’t have to be herded along with other demographics (singles, married, etc.)
P. 37 Today, people resist virtually every claim to authority – not to be stubborn but to be safe
Elaine
P. 49 This issue of perception is important, not only in regard to Elaine, but for every other person interviewed in this book. For the truth is, none of us knows all the facts.
Robert
P. 55-56 Different traditions and perspectives. As a result, instead of the church speaking with a single, unified voice, the church speaks with countless voices that offer mixed and sometimes conflicting messages. The burden of sorting it all out falls to the individual.
P. 60 “it’s a common human instinct to want tot have success. But I think the promises of God are based more on needs than on lavishness. In our culture, a higher percentage of people have their needs met. So it becomes competing on a different level (compared to the Israelites with basic provisions)”.
P. 61 Robert’s family situation will probably determine how quickly he returns to a fellowship. “Our boy’s getting old enough where it’s about time he needs to have that exposure.”
Julia
P 84 Here was a remarkably bright, gifted person who, despite fifteen or more years in the faith, found herself grouped with the “misfits,” the people “who were trying to figure out where we all fit in.” That comment more than any other, neatly summarizes Julia’s life as a Christian: an intelligent, single woman – a professional musician from a Jewish background – comes into the church and wonders, where do I fit here? Is there a place for me?”
Chris
P. 106 I’ve been a believer all my life. I go to church, that kind of thing. But more often than not, even to this day, church bores me. There are exceptions. But I leave the average church wondering why I went.
P 108 The vast majority (of church staff) has signed on primarily for the sake of the cause – certainly not for the paycheck. Thus, one overriding quality that ministry staff workers seem to have in common is their tenacious loyalty. Christian ministry today depends as much on that loyalty as on any other factor. But that asset, if abused enough, can turn into a sever liability . . . Leaders that have blown off the rules as can devastate loyal workers.
Vince
P. 113 The statement “I’m too busy” may say as much about the church as it does about the person. In fact, Canadian sociologist Regionald Bibby argues that some churches today may be declining not because they offer too few choices, but too many. Churches “have responded to a cultural demand for a specialized contribution. By being so graciously compliant, the groups have essentially served up religion in whatever form consumers want. They have not provided a religion based on what religion is, but a religion based on what the market will bear.
P. 115 Churches that copy other church’s effective ways to put more people in the pew end up with varying degrees of success. There’s nothing wrong with learning from the successes of others. But who wants to attend a church that is nothing but a clone of some other congregation? How often we urge people not to compare themselves to others but to rejoice in their own special talents and abilities and personalities as God has designed them. Why not do the same with our churches?
P. 118 Vince could accept that people are sinful and that they fail. But he wanted to hear spiritual leaders call sin sin and failure failure. He wanted them to name sin first then talk about what od has done and is doing about it. . . Many churches and Christian leaders have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from the fire-and-brimstone extremism that characterizes some Christian groups. Is there such an exclusive emphasis on God’s love, on human worth and dignity, on emotional well-being, and on the positive that many churchgoers are left to wonder whatever became of sin?
The Baby Busters
P. 132 It reminded me of the research of Dr. John Savage of L.E.A.D Consultants. He found that most “dropouts” occur as a result of some crisis incident in the experience of a church member – a relationship that suddenly ends, a conflict that goes unresolved, or as in Scoot’s case, a conflict that is resolved in what seems like an unfair way.
John
P. 147 Every place that I have gone, virtually without exception, I find the same thing: active, busy, committed Christians who love the Lord and love each other, who are up to their necks in Christian activity. Elders, deacons, pastors, assistant pastors, youth directors, choir members, Sunday school teachers – you name it – people who are up to their necks in activity saying, ‘What I am experiencing is not enough. There’s got to be more to the Christian life. This is not meeting my deepest needs, and I don’t know where to turn, and I don’t know what to do”
Anthony
P. 158 What “broke the camel’s back” as Anthony put it, was a growing legalism in the church, especially over attendance . . . Anthony craved authenticity in his faith, a sense that he was dealing with “the real thing” as he put it. This situation lacked that kind of reality. “I think what was happening to me was what happens to a lot of people of my age group and who are in the business world. You’re out in the business world and you’re seeing how the world runs, and you come to the church and they want to make everything like this hunky-dory fairyland that doesn’t exist. You can’t relate to it. There’s no relevance there.”
P. 161 As a long-time churchgoer, I was evaluating church attendance on the basis of a subtle but extremely powerful expectation: that one should center one’s spiritual life and growth around a local body of believers. This follows from a less subtle bud equally powerful belief: that the local church has been ordained by God as the primary means of helping people grow spiritually. Therefore, it follows that if one is not committed to a local church, on cannot really row spiritually. And if there’s no commitment to a local fellowship, is there a genuine commitment to Christ?
Daniel
P. 164 It also seemed like a question that contained a significant answer for why at least some people – people like Anthony – are leaving churches today: most of their God-given passions is neither acknowledged nor utilized.
P. 175 I guess I anticipated that the community that I had committed myself to and seemed to be giving a lot to would come through for me. But you know what came out was whether it was work or church or family, it was the people who were just friends because they were friends or for whatever reason – they came through. And the church and community and all that seems to go with that didn’t know how to.
P. 178 To me it seemed that Daniel was back where he had started: on his own, lots of questions, few answers. I had to wonder what good his exposure to Christianity (and Christians) had done him. If any part of him needed salvation – and all of him did – it was the deep reservoir of loss buried in his soul. Yet as far as I could tell, nothing (and no one) in the Christian experience had quite touched that grief. As a result, what chances of long-term survival did the seedlings of his faith really have?
Peter and Sheila
P. 184 It was the kind of no-win situation that many Christians face today as they struggle to apply the ideals of Scripture – such as healthy respect for parental authority – in a fallen, dysfunctional world.
Norman and Judy
P. 223 I guess my problem with church is not that I’ve lost my faith or feel like it’s hopeless or that kind of thing. It’s more that I’m bored with it. I go to church and I hear the sermons and I think, ‘I just don’t want to hear this.’ I don’t know if that’s because I’m dodging something. I really haven’t sat down to figure out what it is.” “I feel like an outsider,” Judy said “and I realize for the first time what the rest of the world feels like, people who have been treated like outsiders. Nobody really knows I’m going through this, and I can’t talk about this with very many people.
P. 224 I was a four-year-old kid when I asked Jesus into my heart. It wasn’t like my mom, who was saved out of this horrible pagan background. But now, it’s like I’m being taken through that barren experience that a lot of people are saved out of. So you know, maybe this is what I’m going to be saved out of. And maybe that’s going to be valuable to somebody someday who can relate to what I’ve been through.”
Tom
P. 228 Church leaders are enthusiastically celebrating (the Baby Boomers returning to churches they left in the 60’s and 70’s). But there’s a dark side to it that I haven’t heard mentioned. If the main reason parents participate in a church is for the sake of their children, if they themselves derive little if any spiritual benefit from the program, then a time bomb is ticking. For as soon as those children grow up and leave home, the parents will have no more need of the church. Once again, they can be expected to leave the institution.
Seven and a Half Churches a Day
P. 253 In the same way, both the churched and the unchurched in this country seem to be holding onto some bedrock beliefs, such as the existence of God, the deity of Christ, the authority of Scripture, and the Golden Rule. If there is a growing doubt as to whether organized religion is the place to go if one wants to build on those beliefs. People crave spirituality, but for many, the search for it seems to lead them outside the programs and away from the structures . . . However, nothing in that promise obligates Christ to maintain “our” church. He has committed Himself only to building a church, His church.
What have we heard?
(Following summaries for the interviews in this book, starting on page 258).
1. They are not saying they want to leave the faith
2. They are not saying they WANT to leave the church
3. They are not saying the church is full of hypocrites
4. They are not saying that all clergy are dishonest
5. They have said very little about the social implications of the gospel
6. There is no one overriding reason why people are leaving the church today
7. Interviewees brought an initial trust in churches and ministries
8. Longing for community
9. Became bored with church services
10. Craved “truth” and “reality”
11. Importance of psychology as a resource
12. Growing resentment among women
13. No easy path to spirituality
14. False advertising of Christian institutions
15. Red herring of being too busy
16. A desire to express spiritual gifts
17. Wholesale rejection of prosperity theology
18. Who is the enemy? Who is the friend?
19. Mixed attitudes about growing up in Christian homes
20. Warnings about “full-time ministry”
21. Teaching about theology made a profound difference in thinking, attitudes, and behavior.
22. Spirituality is a process
23. Two-story church; gap between ideals taught and reality people face day-to-day
24. Where is God in their lives?
25. Respect for their feelings
26. Disillusionment is a process
What can we do?
P. 276 On the theological side, I believe the church is seriously in need of work on four issues:
1. A theology of spirituality and spiritual growth
2. A theology of persons, as the church is in the people-development business
3. A theology of spiritual gifts
4. A theology of grace
P. 280 People who had left the church were never debriefed on why the left . . . I suggest that you put into a place a system for listening to your people – not just the people who are pleased with the program, and not just the potential recruits, but the people on the fringe who are making up their minds whether to stay or leave.
P. 282 One of the most disturbing patterns that Dr. Savage’s research shows is that the inner core group (of the church body) is unlikely to care much about people who are dropping out. IN one study, he says, the actives “felt that they were ‘in’ (active) group was not sensitive to the nee of those persons who were aching and leaving the church.
P. 285 Teach people theology. But don’t teach theology, teach people. Teach them how to think theologically. That way you develop people rather than just dumping theological information on them.
P. 286 Do whatever it takes to promote emotionally healthy families. There’s an important message for Christian parents from the stores in this book: Pay at least as much attention to the emotional climate of your home as to the spiritual.
You’ll Never Find the Perfect Church
P. 293 (Author’s note to those who identify and left the church) My assumption is that you have walked about the back door. You have not necessarily left the faith, but you have backed off from the community of faith. Now you are nurturing your spiritual life more or less on your own. Here are some things I think worth keeping in mind:
1. You are responsible for your spiritual life
2. You have a unique relationship with God
3. Christ is the center, don’t focus on something else
4. Before you can be disillusioned you must have an illusion
5. Don’t give up on the church
Introduction: The Back Door
- The struggle of what it means to be spiritual
- The purpose of a church is people development
- People who stop attending church go into a holding pattern and may return
- Not doubts about basic Christianity but doubts about the various programs put forth for living out the gospel
Diana
P. 32 “I hated being herded along I don’t have any needs that anybody else doesn’t have . . . I don’t have to be herded along with other demographics (singles, married, etc.)
P. 37 Today, people resist virtually every claim to authority – not to be stubborn but to be safe
Elaine
P. 49 This issue of perception is important, not only in regard to Elaine, but for every other person interviewed in this book. For the truth is, none of us knows all the facts.
Robert
P. 55-56 Different traditions and perspectives. As a result, instead of the church speaking with a single, unified voice, the church speaks with countless voices that offer mixed and sometimes conflicting messages. The burden of sorting it all out falls to the individual.
P. 60 “it’s a common human instinct to want tot have success. But I think the promises of God are based more on needs than on lavishness. In our culture, a higher percentage of people have their needs met. So it becomes competing on a different level (compared to the Israelites with basic provisions)”.
P. 61 Robert’s family situation will probably determine how quickly he returns to a fellowship. “Our boy’s getting old enough where it’s about time he needs to have that exposure.”
Julia
P 84 Here was a remarkably bright, gifted person who, despite fifteen or more years in the faith, found herself grouped with the “misfits,” the people “who were trying to figure out where we all fit in.” That comment more than any other, neatly summarizes Julia’s life as a Christian: an intelligent, single woman – a professional musician from a Jewish background – comes into the church and wonders, where do I fit here? Is there a place for me?”
Chris
P. 106 I’ve been a believer all my life. I go to church, that kind of thing. But more often than not, even to this day, church bores me. There are exceptions. But I leave the average church wondering why I went.
P 108 The vast majority (of church staff) has signed on primarily for the sake of the cause – certainly not for the paycheck. Thus, one overriding quality that ministry staff workers seem to have in common is their tenacious loyalty. Christian ministry today depends as much on that loyalty as on any other factor. But that asset, if abused enough, can turn into a sever liability . . . Leaders that have blown off the rules as can devastate loyal workers.
Vince
P. 113 The statement “I’m too busy” may say as much about the church as it does about the person. In fact, Canadian sociologist Regionald Bibby argues that some churches today may be declining not because they offer too few choices, but too many. Churches “have responded to a cultural demand for a specialized contribution. By being so graciously compliant, the groups have essentially served up religion in whatever form consumers want. They have not provided a religion based on what religion is, but a religion based on what the market will bear.
P. 115 Churches that copy other church’s effective ways to put more people in the pew end up with varying degrees of success. There’s nothing wrong with learning from the successes of others. But who wants to attend a church that is nothing but a clone of some other congregation? How often we urge people not to compare themselves to others but to rejoice in their own special talents and abilities and personalities as God has designed them. Why not do the same with our churches?
P. 118 Vince could accept that people are sinful and that they fail. But he wanted to hear spiritual leaders call sin sin and failure failure. He wanted them to name sin first then talk about what od has done and is doing about it. . . Many churches and Christian leaders have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from the fire-and-brimstone extremism that characterizes some Christian groups. Is there such an exclusive emphasis on God’s love, on human worth and dignity, on emotional well-being, and on the positive that many churchgoers are left to wonder whatever became of sin?
The Baby Busters
P. 132 It reminded me of the research of Dr. John Savage of L.E.A.D Consultants. He found that most “dropouts” occur as a result of some crisis incident in the experience of a church member – a relationship that suddenly ends, a conflict that goes unresolved, or as in Scoot’s case, a conflict that is resolved in what seems like an unfair way.
John
P. 147 Every place that I have gone, virtually without exception, I find the same thing: active, busy, committed Christians who love the Lord and love each other, who are up to their necks in Christian activity. Elders, deacons, pastors, assistant pastors, youth directors, choir members, Sunday school teachers – you name it – people who are up to their necks in activity saying, ‘What I am experiencing is not enough. There’s got to be more to the Christian life. This is not meeting my deepest needs, and I don’t know where to turn, and I don’t know what to do”
Anthony
P. 158 What “broke the camel’s back” as Anthony put it, was a growing legalism in the church, especially over attendance . . . Anthony craved authenticity in his faith, a sense that he was dealing with “the real thing” as he put it. This situation lacked that kind of reality. “I think what was happening to me was what happens to a lot of people of my age group and who are in the business world. You’re out in the business world and you’re seeing how the world runs, and you come to the church and they want to make everything like this hunky-dory fairyland that doesn’t exist. You can’t relate to it. There’s no relevance there.”
P. 161 As a long-time churchgoer, I was evaluating church attendance on the basis of a subtle but extremely powerful expectation: that one should center one’s spiritual life and growth around a local body of believers. This follows from a less subtle bud equally powerful belief: that the local church has been ordained by God as the primary means of helping people grow spiritually. Therefore, it follows that if one is not committed to a local church, on cannot really row spiritually. And if there’s no commitment to a local fellowship, is there a genuine commitment to Christ?
Daniel
P. 164 It also seemed like a question that contained a significant answer for why at least some people – people like Anthony – are leaving churches today: most of their God-given passions is neither acknowledged nor utilized.
P. 175 I guess I anticipated that the community that I had committed myself to and seemed to be giving a lot to would come through for me. But you know what came out was whether it was work or church or family, it was the people who were just friends because they were friends or for whatever reason – they came through. And the church and community and all that seems to go with that didn’t know how to.
P. 178 To me it seemed that Daniel was back where he had started: on his own, lots of questions, few answers. I had to wonder what good his exposure to Christianity (and Christians) had done him. If any part of him needed salvation – and all of him did – it was the deep reservoir of loss buried in his soul. Yet as far as I could tell, nothing (and no one) in the Christian experience had quite touched that grief. As a result, what chances of long-term survival did the seedlings of his faith really have?
Peter and Sheila
P. 184 It was the kind of no-win situation that many Christians face today as they struggle to apply the ideals of Scripture – such as healthy respect for parental authority – in a fallen, dysfunctional world.
Norman and Judy
P. 223 I guess my problem with church is not that I’ve lost my faith or feel like it’s hopeless or that kind of thing. It’s more that I’m bored with it. I go to church and I hear the sermons and I think, ‘I just don’t want to hear this.’ I don’t know if that’s because I’m dodging something. I really haven’t sat down to figure out what it is.” “I feel like an outsider,” Judy said “and I realize for the first time what the rest of the world feels like, people who have been treated like outsiders. Nobody really knows I’m going through this, and I can’t talk about this with very many people.
P. 224 I was a four-year-old kid when I asked Jesus into my heart. It wasn’t like my mom, who was saved out of this horrible pagan background. But now, it’s like I’m being taken through that barren experience that a lot of people are saved out of. So you know, maybe this is what I’m going to be saved out of. And maybe that’s going to be valuable to somebody someday who can relate to what I’ve been through.”
Tom
P. 228 Church leaders are enthusiastically celebrating (the Baby Boomers returning to churches they left in the 60’s and 70’s). But there’s a dark side to it that I haven’t heard mentioned. If the main reason parents participate in a church is for the sake of their children, if they themselves derive little if any spiritual benefit from the program, then a time bomb is ticking. For as soon as those children grow up and leave home, the parents will have no more need of the church. Once again, they can be expected to leave the institution.
Seven and a Half Churches a Day
P. 253 In the same way, both the churched and the unchurched in this country seem to be holding onto some bedrock beliefs, such as the existence of God, the deity of Christ, the authority of Scripture, and the Golden Rule. If there is a growing doubt as to whether organized religion is the place to go if one wants to build on those beliefs. People crave spirituality, but for many, the search for it seems to lead them outside the programs and away from the structures . . . However, nothing in that promise obligates Christ to maintain “our” church. He has committed Himself only to building a church, His church.
What have we heard?
(Following summaries for the interviews in this book, starting on page 258).
1. They are not saying they want to leave the faith
2. They are not saying they WANT to leave the church
3. They are not saying the church is full of hypocrites
4. They are not saying that all clergy are dishonest
5. They have said very little about the social implications of the gospel
6. There is no one overriding reason why people are leaving the church today
7. Interviewees brought an initial trust in churches and ministries
8. Longing for community
9. Became bored with church services
10. Craved “truth” and “reality”
11. Importance of psychology as a resource
12. Growing resentment among women
13. No easy path to spirituality
14. False advertising of Christian institutions
15. Red herring of being too busy
16. A desire to express spiritual gifts
17. Wholesale rejection of prosperity theology
18. Who is the enemy? Who is the friend?
19. Mixed attitudes about growing up in Christian homes
20. Warnings about “full-time ministry”
21. Teaching about theology made a profound difference in thinking, attitudes, and behavior.
22. Spirituality is a process
23. Two-story church; gap between ideals taught and reality people face day-to-day
24. Where is God in their lives?
25. Respect for their feelings
26. Disillusionment is a process
What can we do?
P. 276 On the theological side, I believe the church is seriously in need of work on four issues:
1. A theology of spirituality and spiritual growth
2. A theology of persons, as the church is in the people-development business
3. A theology of spiritual gifts
4. A theology of grace
P. 280 People who had left the church were never debriefed on why the left . . . I suggest that you put into a place a system for listening to your people – not just the people who are pleased with the program, and not just the potential recruits, but the people on the fringe who are making up their minds whether to stay or leave.
P. 282 One of the most disturbing patterns that Dr. Savage’s research shows is that the inner core group (of the church body) is unlikely to care much about people who are dropping out. IN one study, he says, the actives “felt that they were ‘in’ (active) group was not sensitive to the nee of those persons who were aching and leaving the church.
P. 285 Teach people theology. But don’t teach theology, teach people. Teach them how to think theologically. That way you develop people rather than just dumping theological information on them.
P. 286 Do whatever it takes to promote emotionally healthy families. There’s an important message for Christian parents from the stores in this book: Pay at least as much attention to the emotional climate of your home as to the spiritual.
You’ll Never Find the Perfect Church
P. 293 (Author’s note to those who identify and left the church) My assumption is that you have walked about the back door. You have not necessarily left the faith, but you have backed off from the community of faith. Now you are nurturing your spiritual life more or less on your own. Here are some things I think worth keeping in mind:
1. You are responsible for your spiritual life
2. You have a unique relationship with God
3. Christ is the center, don’t focus on something else
4. Before you can be disillusioned you must have an illusion
5. Don’t give up on the church
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
April 17, 2009Exit Interviews by William D. Hendricks (?)
September 12, 2024
I am very disappointed in this book. In Exit Interviews, the subject is more about when church officials left (e.g. preachers, missionaries, etc) rather than why church members left.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews