–Daniel S. Ferguson

As it turns out, stories about leaving church, or feeling like you don’t belong there, are ubiquitous to the point of being cliché. Practically everyone seems to have this story in some measure, even those who, like me, still go to church.

It is beyond the scope of this article, this blog, or really any venture I can dream up, to name one root cause of this phenomenon. If you’re a church leader who wants to know what exactly the problem is so you can fix it, I can’t help you. The variance in the stories is simply too dizzying, even after lengthy study. You can’t just point to [x] and try to fix it. There isn’t just one back door to your church.

That’s not to say there aren’t trends. There certainly are, at least among the people I’ve met. We may be a kaleidoscope, but most…