Church leavers give their reasons ...

There are a great many ex-churchgoers out there. When I was in parish ministry and even in chaplaincy, I kept being surprised by how many people I met who seemed to have some kind of Christian faith but simply could not abide church as they had experienced it. I also went through a period myself where I could well understand how that could be. Here's what the research said.

One in three said that their loss of faith was a key reason for leaving. Other reasons given were:
• Excluded by cliques (about half)
• Churchgoing was part of growing up (two out of five)
• Moving to a new area and family commitments (main reason for one in three)
• Tensions with work (one in four)
• Church was too feminine for some men, and too difficult for those sexually active outside marriage
• Inadequate return for time and money (two out of five)
• Disillusionment
• Hurt by pastoral failure (14 per cent)
• Church irrelevant (high proportion)
• Disliked change, e.g. of hymns (one in five)
• Worship too formal/informal and teaching too high/low (one third)
• Church leader was too authoritarian (RCs) or too unclear (Anglicans) (one in four)
• Church was too conservative (one fifth to one third)
• Lack of boundaries between the Church and the world (one in four)

Of course some of those things are contradictory, so there is no one 'answer'. Some are things that could be dealt with by existing churches 'raising their game' (in relation to people moving and having family commitments for example). I'm interested that in a time when a number of conservative churches are growing, that up to a third of leavers cited that as a reason for leaving. Now, there's a whole other discussion to be had about that, but I'm wondering about it more and more. Most importantly is the high proportion of leavers who reckoned that church was irrelevant. This we kind of already know. Isn't it about time we addressed it? Do we know what that means, though? Irrelevant in what way? Is it the same 'irrelevancy' for all the leavers or are there different kinds of irrelevancy?
I'd be interested in any ideas readers might have about what constitutes irrelevancy.
More than ever I find myself haunted by a Mike Yaconelli phrase; he used to say he was involved in a church for people who didn't like church. I thought, and still think; "yeah".