A Churchless Faith

Some have expressed an interest in dialogging about a book, and I suggested A Churchless Faith by Alan Jamieson. The book has to be ordered used from amazon or can be gotten from abebooks.com as well. If you are interested, here is a little about the book:

At the time of writing his book, Dr Jamieson had been involved in evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic (”EPC”) churches for over 20 years, the last 12 in full-time ministry. He is currently co-pastor of Central Baptist Church in Wellington, New Zealand. His research was conducted over six years, based in the Sociology department at Canterbury University, and was centred on in-depth taped interviews with 104 church-leavers and 52 church leaders, mainly in New Zealand. It is therefore a qualitative study.

Unlike Richter and Francis, Dr. Jamieson chose to focus entirely on people leaving EPC churches, where the level of commitment is typically very high. In fact, all the church leavers he interviewed had been committed adult members of such churches, for an average of 15.8 years. Most had been in positions of significant responsibility in their churches; many had undertaken theological training and/or had been in full-time ministry.

What he found was that the reasons these church leavers gave for their decision to leave their churches was not the same as most church leaders assumed. Many of them were on a faith journey which they felt unable to pursue within the church. Dr. Jamieson now runs a weekly gathering, called Spirited Exchanges, at which people on such faith journeys can interact and support one another.