Us and them

Every congregation sits inside a population it has quietly sorted into two categories: us, and them.

Nobody says it out loud. But listen to how people are described in a church hallway and the sorting is audible — the world, out there, lost people, they don’t want to hear it anymore. The words are not usually cruel. They are just categorical, and a category is much easier to give up on than a person.

Who is actually out there

Two overlapping groups, and they are not the same.

The non-religious. People who say they are spiritual but not religious, or who want nothing to do with organized faith at all. Many of them think about God more than we assume. Almost none of them are hostile; most simply have not been given a reason to take it further.

The dechurched. People who once belonged and left. This group is larger than most congregations realize, and it is the one we understand worst. They did not drift out of ignorance. They were pushed out by judgment, burned by hypocrisy or a scandal, exhausted by years of performance, or quietly unconvinced and too polite to make a scene.

The assumption that keeps us stuck

Most churchgoers assume the people outside are hostile, uninterested, or morally compromised — and having assumed it, never test it.

The assumption is comfortable, because it explains the absence of results without requiring anything of us. They’re just not interested anymore. And it is mostly false. The person you have written off as uninterested is frequently someone who has never once been asked a real question by a Christian who then sat still and listened to the answer.

The exercise that ends the abstraction

Take a piece of paper and write first names. Not categories.

Who do you actually know — by name — who is non-religious? Who do you know who used to go and does not anymore?

Almost everyone can fill both columns. That is exactly the point: these are not statistics. They are your brother, the woman two desks over, the neighbor whose dog you have fed, your own adult child.

Now write one more thing beside each name: how much of their story do you actually know?

For most of us the honest answer is almost none — and that answer, sitting there on paper, is the whole lesson of this chapter. We have known these people for years and never asked.

Recite this

Not a category. A name, and a story I have not asked for.

Try it this week

Make the two lists, by first name. Beside each, write one sentence about what you actually know of their spiritual story. Notice how short the sentences are.

I will write my two lists on ________________.