Try asking “Why?”
Something has happened to turn people off against “organized religion” and cause them to choose to go it alone. Try to find out what that “something” is. It may be something that they do not feel comfortable sharing with you.
But there is a REASON why Christian people leave churches and don’t return.
After we were kicked out of our Protestant church, we didn’t trust ANY church. I actually said, “I will never attend “church” again unless I am wooed back as a lover would woo a woman.”
My younger daughter still does not trust any church. She has no memory of a good church where people love each other and work together to share the Gospel. She has no memory of a good pastor, other than a vague memory of the man who was her pastor when she was 3 yrs old. (We moved out of the state when she was 3.)
The first church she remembers was a church planting effort that failed miserably. It took a lot of our money, time, and talent, and when we appealed to the denomination for help, they basically gave us the back of their hand and told us, “Too bad, so sad.” They have NEVER followed up on this failure and tried to help us heal from it. It was an awful experience for our whole family and the few other families that were involved.
Her next church was a Reformed Church that we left in disgust when they hired a woman pastor (her husband was pastoring a church of a different denomination, BTW–nice family unity there!). This denomination is mired down in leadership fluffiness–they simply can’t decide whether abortion is wrong, homosexuality is a sin, etc. They say things like, “It’s a really difficult decision,” but they never give a straight answer. How can people follow when the leaders will not lead?
Her next church was my childhood church, which had definitely changed over the years. It had been taken over by “modernists” who replaced the choir with a rock band and instead of a worship service, we had “First Day!” The minister’s wife was the “stage mother of all stage mothers”–absolutely unreasonable and inflexible when it came to her “new music.”
Finally we ended up in the E Free Church, where I suspect, based on my daughter’s behavior, that some kind of abuse occurred. For the next seven years, my daughter kept begging us to leave that church–we were so blind not to listen to her.
And that was the church that kicked us out and accused us (falsely) of many heinous sins. I can still remember when we came home from the Tribunal that threw us out–I was hysterical, and when my daughter, who was 16, met us at our door, she cried out, “See? I TOLD YOU we should have left that church! I TOLD YOU it was evil! We should have left years ago!!!”
So you can understand why she doesn’t trust “church.” I believe firmly that the Blessed Mother feels very tenderly towards my daughter and pleads with her Son to have mercy on this young woman.
So ask your mother and your friends why they don’t trust organized religion. And listen really hard. There’s more to it than what they are telling. Ask the Blessed Mother to gently lead them home. And make sure that YOU give them no reason to continue to distrust the Church.
