Welcome to Dwell on these Things, a podcast by Dwell Community Church in Columbus, Ohio, where we hear stories and examples of how God is moving in the church at Dwell and around the world. With what we might call like a movement away from mainstream Christianity, that could be deconversion, that could be deconstruction, or that could be detergent. So why don't we just go down the line, tell us a little bit about yourself, introduce yourself, your area of research, and to some extent, you know, there might have to be some discussion about how each of these domains is different and maybe, but also how they overlap. So start with Ian. My name is Ian Harper. I am the Director of Communications and Marketing for a Christian publication called Muir Orthodoxy, and I wrote a book called Walking Through Deconstruction, How to Be a Companion in a Crisis of Faith. And so yeah, my book, you know, my book comes a lot from personal experience. Deconstruction is a part of my story. Good, 10 plus years was sort of that journey, kind of going through it, deconstructing and reconstructing. And so a lot of it comes from me. It's wanting to kind of dive into the personal stories of people, of my own story, of getting to the personal existential aspect of it. I'm sure we'll talk about this. I think it's really easy to look at people who are deconstructing just sort of either as a large group of people and ignore the stories or to think about it in very intellectual registers when I think that's part of it, but it's more than that as well. And so what I really wanted to do was, honestly, in a lot of ways, write the book I wish everyone around me had when I was going through it, because I wasn't able to process what was happening to me in real time. It was just what was happening. And so kind of being on this side of things now, being able to step back and say, okay, I see this pattern in my life and other people's stories that I'm seeing and reading and know and kind of trace those patterns of what deconstruction is versus what it isn't also. And then the back half of my book is really, here's some helpful paradigm shifts really when you are walking with someone through deconstruction and you're having those conversations and you feel anxious and you feel like you don't know how to handle this. So how can we approach the people, how can we approach those conversations in ways that might be helpful, and frankly in ways that the conversations with me weren't being had. And then I kind of wish that they were. But it's so interesting, just last week I was having a conversation with a friend who has been deconstructed in the past few years. And I found myself having conversations from my own book with him. I was like, this is very meta, but I guess I'm using my own book with my friend now, so this is great. You know, so yeah, that's great. Thanks, Michael. Yeah. Hi, I'm Michael Graham, the program director for the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, which is a division of the gospel coalition. And so it's just a fancy way to say we're kind of like the research and development wing of TGC. And so we try to make resources that help people communicate the gospel more effectively to the people who know their lives. So I wrote a book entitled The Great Decharging. Decharging is a phenomenon that's defined as somebody who used to have a long term habit of going to church on a monthly or greater basis. And now they don't go at all each year. And so that's 40 million of adult Americans, so about one in six US adults fits that category. Now, as it pertains to the three D's of this conversation of deconversion, deconstruction, and decharging, there's kind of like a Venn diagram here of where you can be decharged and deconverted, or you can be decharged and going through deconstruction, you could be all three of those things at the same time, or you might only be one of those three things. So if you ever seen some of the trinity kind of Venn diagram or whatever, it's kind of like that. And so it's hard to say exactly what percentage of people who have decharged have deconstructed cherishes, deconverted of the 40 million people who stopped going to church, 15 million of those people left evangelical churches. Of the 15 million people who left evangelical churches, it looks about like about 10 million of them are not Christians, and about 5 million of them looks like they have kind of a nice, concrete, basic understanding of the gospel. But how many of those 10 million who aren't Christians today would have said that they had a conversion experience? We don't know. So as it pertains to those three D's, it might all sound like the same thing at face value, but in social science and sociology of religion, you have belief, behavior, and belonging. And it can be confusing when someone might have one or two of those three things intact, but maybe not some of the others. So that's why we have some different terms for some of those different things. No, that's very helpful. And that's part of why I wanted to get you guys on the same room. It's like I think some people hear one of these expressions, and then that just loads up all the other ones. And so it's like, no, they are interacting. There is overlap, but they're not identical, and you might encounter somebody still in some kind of Christian fellowship who considers themselves to be deconstructing. Or you might, like again, these can come apart. Absolutely. And you really do need to know something about all three. So that you can discern, yeah, what am I looking at here? And which of these three things are at play in this particular person's story? Right, and John's discussion this morning, like that's so essential about listening. Like where, you know, if I hear one of these things and I might just load up this whole package of ideas, and it's like, no, I need to listen long enough to figure out what's actually happening here. Yeah, John, what about you? Yeah, my name is John Marriott, and I teach in Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in Los Angeles, California. And I work with the Harvard Human Flourishing Program, specifically on Flourishing in the Church, which does that look like? And how does the Church contribute to flourishing communities and well-being? And I also teach one course for a Christian high school. I teach the seniors their worldview course. And out of all the three things that I do, that might be my favorite. That's awesome. That's great. Oh, and yeah, so my area of interest is the third D, which is deconversion. And when I think about deconversion, what I'm thinking about is that there's people who once identified as a Christian, they once belonged to a fellowship. And they once said, I really believe these claims about Jesus and about his death and his resurrection. But I don't anymore. I've come to the place now where I don't think that any of that is true. And so I have renounced my faith. I'm not part of a church. I don't associate with Christians anymore. And I interview folks and try and figure out why did that happen? And what are some of the factors that bring people to the beginning of that process? What does the process itself look like? Because is there a point of no return in the process for many people? Yeah. And what's the impact in the lives of people who have left the faith? And then now branching out into, and when some people return, why are they returning and what are they returning to? That's great. Yeah, actually, I thought it was very interesting when you mentioned this morning that like three years is a pretty, pretty good benchmark for, you know, if someone's going through a full-on deconversion process, that takes time. It's like very, very interesting. Good to have this kind of research out there to understand what's going on. I appreciate having all three of you here for that reason. I think a natural thought for pastors or churchgoers, just anyone who's working, you know, trying to follow Jesus, you know, they're wondering like, how can I prevent somebody from going down this path? Or should I prevent them? Like, you know, I think just a lot of times people are scared, you know. You know, they interact with these issues. They're just, you know, they become really nervous. That person's crisis becomes your crisis, you know. And so I guess I just, I wanted you guys, if you could comment a little bit about what do you say to somebody who's like, what would I do now? Do I want to prevent them? Should I prevent them? Just any thoughts on like, you know, if they're kind of moving away from, you know, if they're having a crisis of faith and, you know, they might be moving along a certain process or they're like, I might, I'm thinking about taking off from my church. Like, how do we help that person? What do we, should we even prevent them? And frankly, you know, we've talked some about like toxic churches. Like maybe they should leave that church. You know, anyway, so if I wonder if you guys could talk some about prevention or prophylaxis on this when it comes to these issues. Okay, I'll jump in. Take a swing. All right. I sometimes joke that kids raised in Christian homes need to get saved three times before it actually stays. And what I mean by that is they grew up in a Christian home and they make a profession at a young age. And then at 14, they go to a Bible camp and the preacher at the Bible camp says, you know, God has no grandchildren. That it can't be your parents' faith. It's got to be your own faith. You need to own your faith. And then in the 1980s, everyone was rededicating, right? Everyone rededicated their life because they said, I really want to make it mine. It's really got to be me. And then they got into their 20s. And then they said, is this even true? I accepted it because my parents told me I owned it because I came to the place where I realized that I needed to make that decision. But now I'm starting to ask the question because maybe I've gotten to the place where I'm intellectually mature enough that I can step outside of my worldview, look back on it with a critical eye. And I realize I've never asked the question before is what I actually believe true. So I do think that there is, when you ask, is this something we can prevent? I'm not sure that it's something that we can prevent. I think it's just a natural process of maturing as a person. If a person takes their faith seriously, they will kind of go through this process where they ask themselves critical questions. I think we need to be there with helpful answers and resources. But I'm not sure that it's something, especially since now we live in the age where I'm finding objections from people that I'm talking with are objections that nobody knew 20 years ago unless you were in a seminary. Sure. But the internet has allowed 1,000 atheist apologists to bloom. And there are challenges out there online that people are coming across in junior high and they have no idea how to handle them. And there are very few people in their Christian circles who know how to answer those questions. Right. I think that the best that we can do is to be there, to be present, to listen and to try and help as much as we can. But I don't think that we can ever prevent them from asking these questions. Right. There's like a shepherding involved, but you're not trying to just like put the shepherds crook in the way. You know, you're sort of like, okay, maybe not that direction, but more this way. That's right. Look, you had something in. Well, yeah, first of all, it's so interesting you say three times. I feel like there are actually three experiences I can point to that are kind of milestones. It's so fascinating. But for you. Yeah, for me. Yeah. You know, I don't know if I don't like using the word prevent because I think of one of the contentions that I'm trying to make is that there's an aspect of deconstruction, whether you use that word or not, that is a normal spiritual process that people go through. You know, Lewis in the Screwtape Letters has this bit, of course, it's from the demons perspective, but he's talking about how what we want to do is keep out of people's minds that the law of undulation, that there are peaks and valleys in our life and our faith and keep that out, keep that out of your patient's mind where I'm would because anytime they're at the peak, they're going to think that lasts forever and then they're going to find out it doesn't and they're going to fall down into the trough and they're going to think that lasts forever. And there's a way of talking about deconstruction. I think it's really helpful. We're basically in one of those troughs, it doesn't matter if it's early or late in someone's faith in one of those troughs, someone just hits a wall. And that wall is the dark night of the soul or, you know, something like that where everything about your faith just stops working. The presence of God becomes the absence of God. And that doesn't mean God has actually left you, but your felt experience of God has left you. And that is normal, but it freaks people out because nobody tells you that that's a thing. Our churches are set up to basically help people get saved, help people get in community and help people get into some sort of leadership position, like a home group leader or something like that. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. That's not where your faith ends. You have a long life ahead of you to walk with God through with all that. And a lot of that looks very boring, mundane, or maybe sometimes you just go through a decade of God, where are you? And nobody tells you that. And so some of this has to do with expectations, right? Of helping people understand what the Christian life actually is. And it's not this up until the right, I'm always on fire. I'm always experiencing more and more of the presence of God. It's not that. It's just simply not that. And so, you know, I don't like thinking in terms of prevent. What I like to think in terms of is intensity. I think there are people, we were talking about this right before we came out here. There are people, and I think I was one of them, who were handed Sunday school answers for academic questions, you know? And there has to become a point where your faith does grow up. And it's not that all of those answers are wrong. It's that they're deeper than you were ever told that they were. But nobody ever told you why they were those things. And so, the moment they're met with any sort of criticism, you were only given the statement, the axiom, the whatever. You were never given the things that actually support that. And so, it all falls apart because you just have the tagline. You don't have everything else. You don't have the book, right? And so, being able to, I do think you can lessen people's intensity by a few things. One, you know, actually handing people a robust faith. You know, Paul says in Colossians that, in Christ are hidden, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So, if you can open up Christ and dig down forever and never touch the bottom, that's the kind of faith we need to be giving people, right? And then there's also the relational bonds of being fit communities that actually care about each other. Don't judge people for having questions or going through these things or going through suffering and treating that person like in an asthma, like maybe something happened to them. Like they did something to bring this on their life. But to actually create those strong, thick social bonds that we are supposed to be as a church anyways. So, those are a couple things that it's not preventing. But it's, we understand what you're going through. And that is welcome here. And we're going to walk with you through it and understand and help you. Yeah, I mean, I'll admit, I definitely threw out the word prevent as a kind of a piece of bait. That I mean. I took it. Yeah, it's good. And one, I really like your point about also just the lived Christian experience. I mean, Jesus says, pick up your cross daily and follow me. I think if our portrait of Christianity is in your language up into the right, you know, it's like, that doesn't have a really, that has a very, you know, S&P 500 feel to it. You know, it's like, we're just really, it's just growing and growing. And that's just like Jesus's way is like this, you know, is we're looking at a bull market over and over. It's like, no, like actually, you know, like you need to pick up your cross, like there's going to be serious and hard decisions when it comes to like following Jesus and you may come under persecution, you may experience deep, dark suffering, you know, I think you mentioned the grief observed and, you know, I mean, everyone's talking about Lewis these days, but you know, yeah, you have this, this, this idea that, yeah, like, you know, that's a pretty, pretty frightening portrait. Like the first will be last, last will be first, you know, the one who tries to save the one who tries to save his life will lose it, the one who tries to, the one who loses his life for my sake will gain. I mean, this is very, what's counter to it, I think, frankly, the human experience at large, but I think especially sort of American Christianity has a very, as you say, up into the right sort of, let's go get him, you know, a raw, raw feel. So yeah, Michael, did you want to throw anything on this discussion? Yeah. So two things, there's two main types of decharging, people who do so very casually and unintentionally, and then people who are decharged casualties. Those are people who are more going through a crisis of faith. So how you treat either of them looks very different, but in terms of, you know, I'll bite on the preventable word, I would say for the casually decharged, there is a level of preventability that's there. The number one area of preventability on decharging surrounds when people move. So one in five people who de-church will de-church primarily because they moved. And so that's something that, you know, if you're here in this room or you're here and you're listening to this, everybody can play a role in that move is a four-letter word. And even if you love Jesus deeply and you love his church deeply, you still have to pack all the boxes, you still have to find all the new medical providers, you still have to maybe even buy and sell, you know, and go through all of those processes. So if you love somebody who's in your life, who's going through the four-letter word move, you know, you can do something to help them. And the thing that you can do to help them is begin to do due diligence and research for them on healthy local churches in the new community where it is that they're moving. And if you're listening to this in your pastor or you're a church leader, you know, don't, you know, the moment that somebody is going down that process, that's absolutely not the time to end the shepherding relationship. It's actually a time to increase the shepherding relationship so that you have a good clean handoff from, you know, from one shepherd, you know, into another healthy local church in that new community. So I would say that's probably the number one area where not, you know, every single single person has a role to play on, you know, from a prevention standpoint, with just simple, you know, just just being a good friend and it's like, oh, I can go and listen to, you know, three sermons from six different churches and I can talk about a summary, you know, for a friend and hey, I looked at these six, I think these three are the most promising if I were in your shoes, I would check, you know, you know, spend five weeks at each of these three and, you know, and is it okay if I, you know, follow up with you, you know, every two to three months and just see how that process is going? Yeah, that's an interesting point you mentioned about moving. I mean, I would imagine also just life transitions in general, becoming a parent, getting married, starting work, you know, seeing family members die, you know, just any, what does your research say on that? And actually, I'm curious about you guys as well, like, what is the role that life transitions play? You mentioned narrative injury this morning, but, you know, I just, have you got, have you guys observed anything with that broadly, just life transitions and impacting people? That's the number three thing for decharging. Got it. Oh, very succinct. Thank you. Yeah, so I think that, you know, just as the, the age range when people leave their faith typically is somewhere between, it's getting earlier and earlier, but generally it's between 18 and 29. I think the Pew Research Center had stats that came out earlier this year or last year, and they said that about 30% of Christians leave their faith before they're 30 years old. That's, it's a significant number. And I think part of the reason why that is is just because the, that's a significant life change, right? So you, you really do move away from home and you're outside of a community, you're outside of a fellowship. You may go off to university and it's not just being at university and getting exposed to new ideas. Oh, that's, although that's part of it sometimes, but it's being a way and being free to think for yourself. It's the, the prodigal son didn't commit his sin, you know, in his hometown. He went a far away from home and when he was there, he had no restraints. And I think that that's part of it as well. And, and that period of life is also the period where you become intellectually and mentally mature enough to be able to look back critically on, on your faith. And that's why I think it happens. Deconversion. Anyway, typically happens at that point in life because you've been handed a faith, you've lived the faith. And then now you're saying, I'm not sure that this is true, couldn't have done it any earlier. For some people, it does happen later. And usually when that happens, because it's later, it's because something tragic or traumatic has happened. And they have had this narrative injury where the life that they've been living can't be difficult and so hard has happened. They can't reconcile that with their former Christian worldview, because if God is good and God is loving, then why would he have allowed X to happen? Right. But that would be the, probably the, the smaller percentage of people who leave the faith would be for those reasons as opposed to just the natural progression that we go through as we mature through the late adolescence early young adulthood. Got it. Got it. So what I'm taking from this is that Michael's saying that the de-churching process occurs more at these, these joints. That's the number three reasons, but yeah, these transitions, you're saying, well, it can happen when these life transitions, but it's, it's more often to happen within the certain age range of growing up and a specific, kind of a specific trend goes along with that. You're saying like that, that it's like you hit a certain life stage, you, you're, you're kind of reach a certain sort of intellectual maturity that you look back and that sort of a particular thing that impacts de-conversion in particular, right? Yes. And there might be one, maybe part of the difference between de-conversion and de-churching at this point would be the de-churching would, I would assume would be significantly social and the de-conversion would be a little bit more cognitive and intellectual where they say, hey, I don't believe this anymore. It's a clean break. It's a severing of identity where the de-churching would be, this community is, I'm not part of this community anymore. Right. That's helpful. Ian, do you want to throw anything on this? Yeah. You know, John, what you were just saying about it, I think that's a good distinction. I think the thing I would add to that is that even the intellectual process is probably in a lot of ways downstream from a more existential experience, right? So this is, you know, we're not brains on a stick. We move with our loves, you know? And so when suffering is certainly a part of my story and it is part of lots of people's stories, I mean, I think of two people in my mind right now, both of them deconstructed and left their faith after their parents got a divorce. And both of their sets of parents, in one case, the person's mom and the other case, both their parents were very involved in like leadership positions in the church or just in the community in general. And so there was sort of this projection of we are a serious Christian family and then both of their marriages fell apart and so did both of my friends' faiths. And so that's an aspect of it. And so I do think thinking in terms of suffering, both in terms of suffering that causes deconstruction or deconversion, and then that process itself as a suffering is really important because suffering is loss. We suffer because we lose something. And so going through that process of deconstruction and deconversion is an intellectual process, but it is also loss. If you think about, I mean, just at basic level, maybe the most fundamental level, but also the most basic level, you're losing God in that process. And if you primarily see, you know, you've been told and this is true that God is your father, then you're losing what you have been told is the best version of a parent that you could possibly have, someone who is supposed to have ultimate care for you. You no longer believe has that ultimate care for you, but you're not just, it's not just your belief in God, you're part of God's community, God's family, the church. And so if you lose God, you lose your community. So not only are you ostracized, separated from God, you're separated from your community, and if you're not a child of God, you're not finding your identity in Christ, then who are you? Who am I? Who even am I apart from this world that I was raised in or have become a part of? And if you lose that, then you started losing your moral sense of right and wrong. And so there's a series of losses that happen that are more fundamental than just like an identification that's part of it, but that identification brings with it this whole other series of losses that are intellectual for sure, but that intellectual has existential consequences that are terrifying when you're going through them. Very, very much so. Because if you convert to Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism, you convert to a community, you convert to a system of thought, you convert to a way of life, a bunch of rituals. When you lose your Christian faith, you don't gain anything, right? You lose your identity, you lose the purpose and meaning of life. Now, you might find that somewhere else, but for the most part, people who deconvert or leave their Christian faith aren't looking for faith somewhere else because they already think that there really is nothing else out there. And so I think that's a really important point that when people leave, they leave really to a vacuum or to avoid in their life and then they have to try and fill it with something else. Well, that's what's interesting. So they don't find anything except for maybe a perceived sense of freedom, right? And that's why there's such a paradox with these conversations is you talk to the person and they feel both fear and freedom at the same time. It's like, how do you navigate that? Because there is fear from all of the loss that you've experienced, but there is sort of this feeling of freedom that comes from, oh, these chains that have been put on me for my whole life are all of a sudden thrown off, you know, and it's really scary in some regards, but there's a kind of a wide open blue ocean in front of you at the same time, which for a lot of people is very freeing and very thrilling. But I think that's the whole bunch of different conversations around their freedom, what kind of freedom, freedom from something or freedom for something, you know, these are what are you free to do, anything you want. So you're just a slave to yourself now. That's great. But I so I think that's definitely part of it, but yeah. So it's this, yeah, I kind of lost a lot of the trail I was going down, but that perceived sense of freedom. The title of my dissertation was the cost of freedom. And that's because of all the people who I interviewed who once identified as Christians and the left of faith, almost every single one of them said, it's been hard. I've lost meaning in life. I've lost purpose in life. My relationships with my family have been severed. I've lost a couple of them said that they've lost jobs, but then they would always add, but it's worth it for the perceived for the freedom that they felt, the liberation that they felt. And that says something about the kind of Christianity in a way that they were also raised in because although Jesus is counterintuitive and Jesus is counter cultural and he calls us to a lot of hard things, he also says that his burden is like light and his yoke is easy. And so it makes me wonder when I hear people who have left their faith talk about how much freedom that they have now, it makes me wonder the kind of Christianity that they came out of, because there should certainly be some kind of a balance of, yes, Jesus calls you to deny yourself, but in denying yourself is where you actually find joy and happiness and true freedom. And so many people who leave their faith find exactly the opposite in their Christian experience. Yeah. That really matches what you said last night too about the age of authenticity. It's like, what are people grasping for is something where I essentially become at the center of this whole thing, I'm authentic to me, I'm now the determiner of my identity, the soul determiner of my identity, which of course, as you mentioned, brings with it all manner of fears and anxieties, but at least that's the story that has to, frequently that's the story that fills the void. There's kind of this, well, as you put it, social imaginary, there's a kind of worldview in there, but it's like it also fits in with all these technologies and stories and other things that buttress this. Ian, did you have something you wanted to throw in? Well, I was going to say you picked up the trail where I lost it. Thank you. But, you know, basically, I think that person sees a sense of freedom comes from the perceived sense of slavery that they felt growing up, right, you know? And so I think this has a lot to do with how we, both the kinds of churches that we create and the kinds of parents that we are, of what are we handing down to these people in our churches, you know? And so there's this quote from Taylor Swift, like a NYU commencement address to bring- That's great American philosophy for us. That's right. She's speaking at the NYU commencement address a few years ago, and I'm summarizing, but she basically says, I have some good news for you. Your future and who you are is entirely up to you. And I know it could be overwhelming, and I know it could be terrifying, but it's completely up to you. And I wanted to say, did you hear yourself? This is good news. It's so overwhelming, and it's so terrifying that who you are is completely up to you. And I just wanted to say, we want to talk about anxiety. That sounds overwhelming and terrifying. Maybe it's not completely up to me. And so we have to- We can't just send people from one form of slavery to another. Let's talk about, yes, we're slaves to Christ, but what does that do for it actually frees us up? And so, yeah. I actually want to ask, and, you know, of course, you guys have written entire books on this stuff, but like, okay, there's a preventive thing, you know, you know, caught you on some of those. But then there's also like, okay, once they're going through it or they're on their way through, you know, they're maybe on the other side, they've de-church, they've deconverted, like, do you have a couple of ideas or advice for, you know, Christian believers, followers, whose family members, whose loved ones are really want to love and to minister to someone that's entered this space? You know, again, you've written books. I know. I'm not like, hey, summarize your whole book. It's like, you know, maybe 30 seconds. But like, brief thoughts, I'm going to throw it to Michael real quick on this. Do you have brief thoughts? I'm like, how can we love? What are some, just key basic thoughts, like just checkpoints to work with? The first thing I want to say is it's important that we do take some relational risk, the second thing I want to say is become collectors of good questions. Great. So for me, every question that I ask, whether it's evangelism or discipleship, is really boils down at its essence to these two questions. What do you want and what are you afraid of? Wants and fears are what drive, from my vantage point, most human behaviors. And so you can't just ask the question, though, what do you want and what are you afraid of? You have to be in very deep relationship with somebody to ask those things that bluntly. But, and I mentioned this in my talk, and if you grab lunch with me, one of the things, or if you talk, you know, if we talk on the phone, every conversation I ever have, I'll ask this question in that conversation. What are you looking forward to? And that's just a way to repackage the, you know, what do you want question? Sure. And so, so for me, I think the first thing is getting over our fear of man. And, and by moving towards somebody and taking a relational risk and having some spiritual conversation. And then the second thing is asking good questions. And if you need to have some basic categories of what kinds of questions to ask, ask about people's wants and ask about people's fears, and they'll begin to tell you some of the things that are on their, on their mind and on their heart and just sit and listen, they'll tell you which facets of the gospel will speak most powerfully to them. Yeah. Yeah. I, Randy Newman, R.I.P. when, you know, he actually visited here and spoke on his idea about questioning. And part of his ideas were, you know, I think very challenging and thoughtful, but it was also, he pointed out, like, this is what Jesus did. He's always asking questions, you know, and sometimes instead of answering a question, he asks another question. You know, it's like someone asked him a question. He can, he like flips around and ask another one. I'm like, there is some exceptional, and now on some level, I think that's a, you know, he Bray, he, he, he's Brayism or whatever. You know, like that's kind of a verbal style. But I also think it's like some brilliant relational ability, you know, is just knowing how to have good questions and get people talking. Okay. Can I tell you a secret? Yes. Okay. Okay, if you run into a conversation where you hit a relational stop sign, or you run into, you know, basically the fall, you know, somebody, you ask a question, and they say, I don't know. Here's what you do in response. You say, if you did know, what would you say? If you did know, what would you say? Because here's what happens. Because when you ask somebody a question, it will access a certain part of their brain, okay? But if they tell you, is that part of that brain when it's queried, comes back with, I don't know? When you come back with, if you did know, what would you say? You end up accessing a different part of their brain. The part of the brain that deals with problem solving. Creativity? Yes. And so that little follow up there of, if you did know, what would you say? Will help extend spiritual conversations a lot longer. And it will force them to go from one plane of thinking to a different plane of thinking. That's cool. Yeah, I think that's my secret. Oh, that's good. And I think, were you mentioning Daniel Kahneman? I just, yeah, I feel like I've been, you know, bumping into him over and over again. But yeah, just this, you know, kind of getting people to shift out of these different, you know, cognitive zones or whatever, you know. But I have to say, I have asked my high school students, what do you think about that? And they say, I don't know. I follow up with the question, if you did know, what would you say? And that's the response I get. So you may need to do it with somebody who's older than high school. I was just going to say that might just be really a question to ask. It is a brilliant question to ask. That's good. That's good. Yeah, unfortunately, some people are just ignorant. So they might be, I don't know, lands also on another, I don't know. I'm just kidding. No, that's great. Any thoughts, Ian? It's going to sound like the opposite of my first second, but it's not. It's related. One of my favorite stories is from, in my mind, the patron saint of deconstructors, Augustine. And there's a story that he writes in Confessions where basically he leaves the faith and he goes to the mannequies and his mom, Monica, is freaking out about it. And so she goes to her priest and basically is like, hey, you need to go talk to Augustine and set him right. And he says, no, I'm not going to go talk to him. And she says, why not? And he goes, he has to go through what some doctors call the crisis, which is just incredible that he actually used that, that he knew, that priest knew what was going on. And that's not to say we shouldn't sit down and have conversations and ask those questions. I think we should be doing that. I think the lesson to learn from that is patience. Is patience. And being able to, Monica approached initially, the crisis her son was going through with anxiety. And when she went to the priest with her anxiety, he met her with calm and said, I'm not going to try to control the situation. I'm not going to try to control what Augustine does or doesn't do. I'm not going to try to, you know, go convert him or whatever, get him to stop, prevent him, you know. He was able to be patient with him. In fact, I think he even said he's like, you know, Augustine's a smart dude, obviously. Like he's going to read his way out of this eventually. And so I don't think that means we separate and like don't intervene at all. But I do think that those lessons of being patience and taking the long-term view, it took Augustine 10, 12 years before he came out of it. And just being able to say, whatever the response to this situation needs to be, I need to be calm about it. And like maybe we do harbor some fears and some anxieties about it, but expressing those to that person and trying to control them. That's what their go back to the perceived sense of freedom. That's what they're trying to get away from is that control. And so being able to just be patient with them, not cast all of our anxieties on them in their situation, but actually just continue to love them and just be there for them. What Augustine needed for Monica in that moment was just for Monica to be his mom, you know. And sure enough, that's what, I mean, you go read chapters later, books later in Confessions. And it's like, I cried for you every night. And he said, he comes back to her and he, you know, tells her, hey, I think I'm Christian again. And she like doesn't react at all. Like she's already spent 10 years processing this with God. She's just like, great, you know. And so there's something about that patient, non-anxious presence in somebody's life that I think is really, really important. And in fact, if you don't have that patience, then you can push people further and further away. If you read Deacon version narratives online or talk to anybody, the biggest strain in the relationship that they have with their parents is that their parents are continually trying to reconvert them. They invite them to conferences like this one. And they say, have you watched this YouTube video? And they lead Bible tracks around the house when they come over for dinner to the point where people say, I have to cut ties or I can't be around you. We can't have these conversations. I think one thing that might be helpful though is when you do have the conversation and someone says, this is where I'm at. This is what I'm struggling with is maybe to be able to say, hey, this is not about me. It for sure is about you. But you know this does affect your mother and I, or it affects me as your spouse. Can you give me some time to process this? And would you be willing to meet me again in a month and for me to ask you important questions that I need some answers for, not to attack you, not to try and persuade you, but so that I can have some sense of peace in my mind that was it something that I did? Was, you know, is there some catalyst that I missed? And would you be willing to meet me because I have some issues that I would like to have some resolution for? And then number two, what are the ground rules that you would be willing to abide by? I'll let you set them for our relationship. Can I ask you every six months? Hey, where are you on this issue? Or is that too often? Can we get together for coffee once a year and have a state of the union address? And you can tell me, no, I'm still not a Christian anymore. But what would be the ground rules that you would be willing to set that I would be willing to abide by it for the sake of maintaining and continuing on a relationship with you? Yeah, that fits what you're saying. Well, I can't remember him this morning or maybe last night. Keeping, I know. What time is it? What is it? You were talking just about like keeping the relationship going, keeping communication lines open. So Ross Douthit, commentator, you know, op-ed writer for The New York Times is like talked recently about there being kind of a vibe shift in the culture. And Americans seem more open to old ideas. And actually, I think, John, you got a question about this last night, but I'm gonna ask it again. But that people are open to Christianity it seems in ways that they haven't in a while. And some headlines from the last several months in New York Times, it says Christianity is declined and the U.S. appears to have halted. In Vanity Fair in March, it says Christianity was borderline illegal in Silicon Valley. Now it's the new religion. That's a little sensationalist, I'll admit. But the point is we have secular sources publishing these things. This isn't Christianity today, like, you know, spinning noise makers and, you know, and an economist just last month, it says God is back in the West or one of the other forms was the West has stopped losing a religion. That one's a little bit more muted. But these articles keep coming out. And again, these are coming from secular sources, not from Christians just trying to like get the pep rally started up again. What are your thoughts on this movement? Especially in the Economist article, it's very explicit that these are Gen Z adult conversions, people that were not in Christian homes. So I'm wondering if you could comment on this movement towards Christianity and its relationship to what you've studied and if you have any thoughts on that. I think late modernity, this period of time in the West that we're living in is very unlivable. So when I think about the, if you're over 40, you know, the big idols, you know, if you're millennial Gen X or boomer, you know, our greatest generation, sex money power and then more recently technology. But if you're in Gen Z, let's look at each of those, how each of those different idols is working. You know, sex is a mess. The sexual marketplace is a mess. You know, most people find relationships through apps, but those apps aren't working for people. Because it's only like the top 15% of men who are matching with the top 50% of women, people are afraid of having sex with other people because of, you know, all of the consent issues and what they've seen in, you know, the broader media, you know, that will get you in trouble. And in addition, you know, on that front, people are just finding, I'll just be addicted to pornography and that's what I'll do on that. With respect to money, you know, if you're a Gen Z, you were born into the great financial crisis, Zaccotti Park, you know, Occupy Wall Street, your dad's 201K became a 401K, became a 201K, you know, when you were in elementary school and now you're graduating into jobs that don't exist. You were told to just go to college, but now all the jobs are being taken by generative AI. And then with respect, so that kind of covers money and tech. And then from a political standpoint, from a power standpoint, you know, the only two, you know, kind of presidential figures that you've known and or have been able to vote for were either Donald Trump or Joe Biden. And so those were probably not very inspiring figures, you know, for you in terms of, You don't say. You know, putting, you know, putting hope in that kind of thing. And so when you think about, okay, well, if I'm, you know, in the 18 to 25 year old timeframe right now, well, I look at the the idols of my parents and grandparents and they're not really working. And so what else really do I have left besides? And I already know that there's more than the five senses. I know that there's something that's transcendent that's there. So I'm either going to find that in kind of remixed religion or I'm going to find that in Jesus. And so I think that things like the asbury revivals and other kind of tangential things related to that or the the report about the quiet revival in the UK. I think those are very natural and logical conclusions to a Western world that really isn't working for young people the way that it has in the past. Yeah, very well put. You guys have any other thoughts on that? I'll just say, I mean, I agree with everything that Mike just said. I'll just say, you know, my book came out in January and then immediately after there were all these headlines about everyone's becoming Christian again. I thought that's going to be great for book sales. But, you know, what I do, what is encouraging to me about that is, you know, for the past five, four, five years before the vibe shift happened, it really felt like deconstruction, deconversion was the headline over the church. And so it just felt like we were dealing with this mass kind of cultural phenomenon. I was so thankful for Mike's study on the detourching because it helped me realize, oh, deconstruction and decon, like, this is a sliver of a bigger thing that's going on, not the whole thing, which it felt like for a really long time, basically until your research came out. And so what I'm thankful about this now is it's not that deconstruction is going away. Like, people are still going to deconstruct their faith. This is a normal part of the life of faith. This is still going to happen. What we can kind of stop doing is treating this at a meta-cultural level and start focusing on the people who are going through it. And unless so, how do we stop this from happening? How do we prevent deconstruction? It's like, that's helpful, it's to some degree, but like, I want to have a conversation with you and not you as a cultural avatar for all of these things going on, but you as a person, as a friend, as a pastor, as a kid, you know, like, and be able to actually walk with you through that. And so to me, I'm obviously encouraged by hearing about Gen Z in particular, wanting to become Christian, I think that's great. Doesn't put it into deconstruction, but I'm kind of glad the meta-level conversation is sort of moved on and we can just focus on the people now. Yeah, I think that's nice. It would be wonderful if there really is a return to faith. It really would. It would be great. It would be great on a lot of different levels. I can't help but be just a tad skeptical though. And here's why, because in the internet age, every news agency needs to write about something every day. And number two is that if you look at the numbers of the percentage of people who identified as Christians, not evangelicals, not Catholics, not Orthodox, just Christians in general, it has been consistently high since the 1970s, it's been upwards of 88 to 90% until you get to the 1990s, in the 1990s there is a massive drop and it's hovering right now about 64% of Americans identify as Christians. In the 1990s, about 5% of people identified as secular or none or no religion. That today is upwards of around 29 or 30%. So we see this massive drop off. Ryan Burge, your co-author, talks about how none, so those people who have no religion, in that massive drop off were made, they were not born. What he means by that is they once had a faith and then they left the faith and now they identify as a nun. This plateau that we have is a plateau that we've only seen. So the drop off has now plateaued around 64%. But we don't have anywhere near enough information to determine whether that's an actual plateau or whether it's the bottom of the curve and it's gonna head up or whether it's going to continue to go down. So I called Ryan and I asked him, hey, what's the deal with this? And he said, it's great that we have reports of Gen Z turning to faith, but as it stands right now, 46% of people who identify in Gen Z identify as a nun or as a secular faith, sorry, a secular and no faith, which is a pretty substantial number of people. Those folks have been born not made and they're producing as generational replacement takes place as boomers pass off the scene. What you're having is you're having younger generations come up who are actually being born into their secularity and being a nun. For example, the Springdale, I think it's, I think it's, is it Springdale who does the research? Yeah, Springdale Research Institute came out with a study on generation alpha, which is now up to about 15 years old. They say 22% of generation alpha is secular and a nun. When you compare baby boomers at the same age up to about 13 to 15, 88% of those people were identified as Christian. It's only about 12% identified as a nun. So it would be great if that's actually what's happening. But I suspect what's going to happen is that we're not going to be making a whole lot of more nuns. That the deconversion deconstruction tsunami has probably slowed, but there will be a slower pace of attrition as older generations pass off the scene and younger generations continue to make more nuns. What John is saying here is absolutely correct. The leveling off that we're seeing in terms of disaffiliation of Christianity and the basically plateauing of the rise of the nuns will be a temporary phenomenon unless we see revival or massive renewal in this country. Here's why, it's just simply generational replacement. Because as Gen Z and Gen alpha become adults and the greatest generation and the boomers pass away, there's just massive differences in the levels of religiosity, belief behavior and belonging between those two generations. And so I do think a lot of the headlines on some of these things, at least in the United States are overblown. However, the quiet revival report in the UK is very, very, very interesting. And the data there is very, very good. We will know more about this very soon. Brian and I are doing 100,000 person general population survey that literally finishes this week. So we will know a lot more about what's going on among Gen Z in a matter of weeks. Right, this is very helpful. And I wanted to just say just one thing I've thought about when I've looked at this stuff is the internet is full of fashion. It was unfashionable to be a Christian. And now there is a certain fashion to it. Show yourself buying a Bible on TikTok at Barnes and Noble. And this kind of thing, it's like there's a virality a trend to it. That's not going to make disciples. And I think that kind of comes back to your point. We have a responsibility to interact with individuals to help teach them about Jesus Christ and go deep with them in scripture not just show somebody, you know, or TikTok is the sort of the new thing, but you know, like, I don't know, five to 10 years ago it seemed like you'd always see these people with their Bible open and like the steaming coffee photo. And you're like, you know, it's like, did that, is that person like a serious walking Christian? I mean, obviously you can take a photo and follow God, but I'm like showing yourself on Instagram reading the Bible does not mean you're actually reading your Bible. And so I think we need discipleship in this country. We need serious teaching of the word and we can pray for revival. But yeah, I think we should be at least somewhat reluctant to assume that this is just going to like crack open and run up in the other direction. Why don't we draw a line there? Thanks for coming audience, our live audience. Thanks for joining us guys. Just a brief comment as we kind of wrap up. I think sometimes people get anxious or well, as we've mentioned and nervous when they interact with this kind of stuff, I think they feel it is kind of a pessimistic picture. And I think it's worth note that our founders in this church were essentially could have been described as de-church, de-converted. Well, we didn't use the term deconstruction. You know, Derrida hadn't hit the scene too much here in the US yet, but the point is that they would fit that description and they all came to faith. They started a church on Ohio State's campus. And so I think we need to remember, pray for, have those thoughtful, slower conversations with people because you know, today's de-converted Christian could be tomorrow's church planter. You know, as Christians we believe that Jesus died in the most gruesome and disgusting way known to man, he was crucified and he rose from the dead. So I think we need to remember that when we approach this, that we follow a God of hope and not a God of despair. None of you guys have communicated that, but I think when people hear this data, they get anxious like, what are you saying? What are you saying? And I think we need to remember that Jesus rose from the dead. And no matter what we're seeing here, I'm like, he is gonna come back and we can have hope. Let's draw a line there, thanks guys.