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Jesus sent the 12 out to find the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He was specific about that, so specific he told them to NOT go to the Gentiles or to the Samaritans. At this time, Jesus was sending these disciples out to be with the people who were, as we might call them in the Christian church, “lapsed” members. People who might have wandered away from their parents’ way of worship or were too busy with all the responsibilities that come with growing up or dating or working or raising a young family.
People, perhaps, in the next generation, who just could not “get” what going to synagogue was all about or why it was important.
Sound familiar?
In the mainline denominations, this is a very familiar story. We hear questions like these: Where are our young people? Why don’t they come to church? Or the worst questions of all: what did we do wrong? And how did we fail?
I get it. We look around the congregation on any given Sunday, and we see how we are aging, how there seem to be fewer and fewer young people finding church a place that provides, what, exactly?
There are many people researching and studying why it feels like the start of the death-knell of the church. Attendance is falling. Costs are rising. People becoming ordained are dwindling. They are asking good questions as they interview some of those “nones” (N-O-N-E-S) and “dones” (D-O-N-E-S) to try to understand what happened and what they need to feed their spirituality.
They are asking: Where will the (big “C”) Church be in 18 months, 3 years, 7 years, 15 years? Is there anything we can do to change what looks like the end of Christianity?
The vestry here at St. James’ is reading the book Church Tomorrow? What the “nones’ and dones’ teach us about the future of faith, written by Episcopal priest, Rev. Stephanie Spellers.
Stephanie spent the winter of 2025 interviewing dozens of people around the country who identify as “nones:” people who identify themselves as having no religious affiliation, or might be “spiritual, but not religious.” Or “dones:” those who have decided that they are simply done with organized religion for any number of reasons. These were people between the ages of 18 & 44.[1]
Jeff and I raised two of those people. Our children were brought up in the church, active in Sunday school, then youth group, pageants, bells, children’s choir, they were acolytes, and they helped out when they were asked. They made friends, had trusted adults in their lives, and had a community around them who loved them.
We did the right thing. At least that’s what we thought. It was a few years later when we learned that they didn’t really want to be confirmed or be so active in church—that they felt like they would be letting us down if they didn’t get confirmed. As a result, when it was time to go out on their own, to make decisions for themselves about how they wanted to spend their time, church was no longer on the list.
But Ray will still go over to the church to help with setting up A/V and sound equipment if they need it. Erin will come here to worship when she is in town.
They completely support their mom and their parents’ strong commitment to the Holy Trinity. They recognize that even though it might not be for them, our relationship and responsibility to the Church runs deep.
It’s not that they don’t have a foundation or that they were significantly harmed by the church—at least I don’t think they were. It’s that the church didn’t seem to them like it paid attention to what was happening in the world. They’ve said that the world is so broken, so full of pain, and they wonder why God would let that happen. If God is love, why don’t people act like it? Why don’t they follow in the footsteps of the Jesus they worship or practice what is preached?
The thing that I think matters the most, in their understanding of how the world works, is that they have chosen, apart from a faith community, to look for ways to make a difference in the world. How to be kind, how to stand up for those whose voices are silenced, how to build community with people who see beauty in diversity of thought, beliefs, attitudes, cultures, and life experiences.
In many ways, they live the way they understand Jesus to have lived. Looking for ways to make the world better.
They have a foundational understanding that God created the world—and it IS good, but we humans don’t always recognize that goodness, and we have made it hard to live in love. Hard to love one another. Hard to respect the dignity of every human being. Hard to practice what is preached and what we promise to do.
They might be better Christians than some Christians, even though they do not find church to be a helpful place at this time in their lives to live out that faith.
Our kids are not all that much different than others who are “done” with organized religion. They are tired of the hypocrisy that they have seen in the ways some people practice their faith within the walls of the church but then go out and live in ways that look like they’ve forgotten who God is to them or what they believe Jesus teaches them during the rest of the week.
And those are broad brushes that unfortunately represent many people’s attitude toward Christians. We can think we don’t fit that mold, but I suspect most of us can be a little hypocritical at times. We are human, after all.
The point is, Jesus sent the 12 out to find these people. Individuals and families who have any number of reasons have lapsed in their participation in the community of faith. To remind them of God’s goodness, to feed, heal, and lead them back into a community that will accept them, doubts, questions, discomfort and all, rejoicing in their return.
According to Stephanie Spellers, there just might be a bit more to it than that. Our people who have no experience with faith communities, the “nones” and those who have had “enough” and need to step away, the “dones,” are not without faith. They simply are not finding what they need to support their faith in ways we might. They are looking for a different kind of community, or maybe a different denomination or a different way of worshipping that is more accessible to where they are at: emotionally, physically, socially, culturally, and faithfully.
We are a part of a denomination that can seem a bit rigid. We use words that are ancient to describe things like napkins and placemats. We have a liturgy that is centuries old. And while all this is beautiful, it might not meet the needs of people who are unfamiliar with or who are tired of traditional worship.
On the other hand, there are some who hunger for the mystical that can be found here, but they don’t know where or who we are.
What Spellers found in all her interviews is that these “nones and dones” are looking for communities to build the body of the faithful, to change the world in ways that resemble Christ’s teaching, whether they identify it that way or not, and are looking forward to find how to live in this creation with care and concern for it and all who live in it.
Here at St. James’ we are taking our own journey, discovering what it means to be community, looking back at the past to see where we have come from, looking at us now, to see how we are living out our faith, and looking at the future to find ways to fulfill our calls to ministry, our calls to live out our tagline: Loving People. Serving People.
We are calling it FORWARD St. James’, and many of you have already started the journey by responding to the online survey. Hopefully you will be here this coming Saturday morning at 8:30 when Canon Jason Lewis will be here with us to facilitate conversations about our life together and what we, together, hope is to come.
I suspect that some of what we will be discovering together or rediscovering will be the depth of our belief and the actions we take to live out our baptismal covenant. We might do some mirror gazing to acknowledge what we could do better. And we can dream out loud about what we might want to look like in as few as 18 months or as many as 10 years.
This process might be one way Jesus is sending US out into the world, looking for people who are seeking what we have, who we are, and to learn that we will welcome them in for the first time, or invite them back to know, either way, they have always been a part of us.
We count as more than those 12 people who left everything, even sandals and food, to go out and talk to people about who Jesus is to us and what we have seen and experienced by knowing him, encouraging others to walk through our red doors and become a part of this community of faith. Invited. Welcomed. Included. Connected.
This Saturday, we will explore what it might look like if we took some of those steps, those risks of faith, and shared what following Jesus looks and feels like for ourselves, and how St. James’ is an integral part of our personal journey of faith.
Consider your participation in FORWARD St. James’ as your deep dive into being like the 12 disciples who were sent out, trusting that their needs will be attended to while they invited people to return to or to come for the first time to get to know the power of God through a relationship with Jesus.
Because when we work together to find our “why” we are here in this place and our “what” it is we do to make a difference in our own lives and in the life of the communities where we live and breathe and have our being, we can boldly take the risk of faith it is to live out “who” we are as Jesus Followers.
“When” we have what we need, we can go to “where” people need our invitation to be welcomed into a place that may change the way they understand their place in the world of faith. They may find that they are no longer a “none” or a “done,” but that they are truly in a community that considers their presence a gift, and their contributions valuable.
I wonder what our faith community would become if we did what the 12 disciples were sent out to do, and we talked with the people who have left any church for any reason, asking the questions and deeply listening to the answers about why they no longer attend, what they might be looking for, and then, giving them examples of who we are, inviting them to come and see if we might be just what they are looking for at this time in their lives.
As you think about this, I invite you to take notes about why St. James’ is your church home, what keeps you here, what you hope for. You just might need those notes on Saturday. But ultimately, I hope they help you intentionally think about what this place with these people means to you.
Jesus trusted his disciples to go out and have conversations of faith. We can do the same in the places we go, with the people we know and those we might meet. Not to coerce or to judge or to make anyone feel uncomfortable or shamed, but to learn how they understand God in their lives and what they might want to grow in their faith.
And with that information, I wonder if we can be bold enough to talk about how God works in our lives and how and why St. James’ is a place that feeds our souls. So that we can invite others to come and see what we mean when we say Loving People. Serving People.
Amen.
[1] Spellers, Stephanie, 2025, Morehouse Publishing, New York, NY, Church Tomorrow?
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