When I saw pay the wonders close,

listen to the best of the Church's music

for the season of Lent at at lutheran public radio

dot org

sacred music for the season of l, Lutheran Public Radio.org. There's no doubt about it. The short lived age of the church growing in the United States has come to an end.

At least for now, at least for the foreseeable future, if the demographics tell us anything we simply

can't support the growth of the church with the population made up the way it is

anymore and in addition to that there are people who are leaving the church. They call it D.

Churching. Welcome back to issues, cetera. I'm Todd Wilkin. Joining us to talk about

D. Churching in America, Michael Graham, he's program director for the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, co-author of the new book,

The Great DeChchurching, who's leaving, why are they going, and what will it take to bring them back?

Michael, welcome back.

Thank you, it's good to be here. Your study in a

previous conversation, you indicated that many D-church people are open to the

idea of coming back to church. Is it simply as easy as just saying you're invited back to church?

It depends on the person. The answer to that is complicated.

We saw probably three different levels of the kind of interaction that people need.

So one of the profiles in particular, yeah, it is as simple as just inviting them back to church.

So in chapter 4 in the book, we talk about this group, the mainstream

de-church evangelicals. These folks left around the time of early COVID on average.

They have seemingly very orthodox views of the gospel. The Holy Spirit

definitely seems to still be working in their lives. They have very sound

...