This guide is for anyone who wants to stop debating church attendance and start doing something about the people who have drifted out of sight. Its question is practical: how do you actually be the church for someone who may never sit in a Sunday service again? The answer it builds toward is simple. You start by noticing where your own attention goes. Then you spend one week going toward one person instead of waiting for them to come back.
You can work through it alone over seven days. You can also do it with a small group that meets twice, once before the week begins and once after. The material draws on a Jude 3 Project podcast conversation between Lisa Fields and Rev. Dr. Brianna Parker, CEO of Black Millennial Cafe and lead researcher for Barna’s State of the Black Church study. Nothing in here requires you to share anything personal. Where a prompt asks for honesty, the honesty can stay on your own page.
Start with your own screen
It is easy to talk about “people who stopped coming” as if they were a separate group. Parker’s description of how church is now consumed suggests most of us are closer to that group than we think. She noted that “people watch seven services in a day,” and she was candid about her own habits: she said she does not watch church on Sunday, but later in the week, when she needs it.
Lisa Fields added an observation about younger adults that many working people will recognize. She pointed out that “millennials are on Zoom meetings all day for work,” so a streamed service on Sunday “can seem like another Zoom meeting.” Parker’s verdict on passive viewing was blunt: “But just sitting there watching you, I mean, that’s, that ain’t it.” What she said does draw younger adults is the chance to take part, when churches “create opportunities for fellowship engagement.”
Notice what this does and does not say. Neither speaker is condemning online worship. Parker’s own polling found seniors valued it. The point is that a screen makes church something you receive on your own terms. That habit shapes how you think about other people too. If church is content you consume, then the people who stopped consuming it simply look like lost viewers.
First exercise: a one-day attention audit
Pick an ordinary day. Keep a running note on your phone or on paper. Each time you pick up a screen, write the time and what you opened. When the day is over, look at the list and answer these privately:
- How much of my time went to watching other people, and how much to talking with them?
- When I engaged with anything about faith today, was I receiving it or offering something to someone?
- Whose name came to mind during the day that I did nothing about?
Psalm 90:12 makes a fitting companion for this day: “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” The psalmist is not asking for a productivity system. He is asking God for the kind of attention that leads to wisdom. Counting is a way of seeing clearly.
Read the shepherd texts before applying them
Christians often reach for shepherd passages when they talk about people leaving church. Those passages are powerful, but read them first for what they meant in their own setting. Then decide carefully what carries over.
Ezekiel 34:1-6
This is prophetic speech addressed to “the shepherds of Israel,” the rulers responsible for God’s people. God’s charge against them is specific. They fed themselves and not the flock. Verse 4 lists what they failed to do, ending with “neither have ye sought that which was lost.” Verse 6 describes the result: the flock was scattered, “and none did search or seek after them.”
Observe the order of the accusation. The scattering is not blamed on the sheep. It is blamed on the people charged with caring for them. Applying this to modern church leaders is an extension of the text, not its original target, but the principle is hard to miss. Responsibility for the scattered falls first on those who were supposed to be looking.
Luke 15:1-7
Start with verses 1-2, which people often skip. Jesus tells this parable because religious leaders were complaining that he received sinners and ate with them. Then comes the question in verse 4: “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?” Verse 7 gives the point. Heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents.
So the parable’s first meaning concerns God’s pursuit of sinners and the joy that follows. Using it for church members who quietly stopped attending is application, and it should be labeled that way. The application still holds weight, because the posture is the same. The shepherd goes. He does not send a notice.
Hebrews 10:24-25
Verse 25 is the familiar one about not forsaking assembling together. Verse 24 tells you what the assembling is for: “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.” The verb is “consider.” Before anyone can stir someone else toward love, they have to pay attention to that person.
Read the three passages side by side and write one sentence describing what they share. Then write one sentence about where they differ. A group should compare sentences before moving on.
Two sentences worth reading twice
When Parker described what the pandemic revealed, she did not start with attendance numbers. She said, “But I realize discipleship is the issue now,” because “most people don’t even know where their members are.” Then she said this:
Pastoral care is like not a thing if you’re not willing to beat down the door, you know? And that’s not pastoral care.
Spoken quickly, the sentence can be heard two ways. In one reading, care only reaches the people willing to beat down the church’s door to ask for it, and that is not real care. In the other, care does not exist unless the church is willing to go and knock hard on someone’s door. Talk through both readings. Notice that they arrive at the same practice from opposite sides. If you wait for people to demand care, the quiet ones go without. So someone has to go to them.
The second sentence comes from another part of the conversation. Parker was describing a generational pull toward standing apart from everyone else, the desire to be distinct. She summed it up as “leaving the 99 and not going off to the one, but being the one.” Lisa Fields picked up on the phrase immediately.
That reversal is worth sitting with. Parker was not commenting on Luke 15 directly. Her twist still names a real temptation. It is possible to admire the parable while living as the sheep who wants special attention rather than the shepherd who gives it. Your attention audit may have shown you which one your habits lean toward.
A week of going to the one
This is the center of the guide. Keep it small. One person, seven days.
- Day one. Do the attention audit above.
- Day two. Read the three passages and write your two comparison sentences.
- Day three. Picture the row or section where you usually sit, or used to. Parker warned that returning worshipers would find “the person who usually sits on the row in front of them does not exist.” Who is missing from your row? Write one name. If no name comes, that is information too. Pick someone from a group you once belonged to, a former classmate who used to attend, or a neighbor you know only by face.
- Day four. Contact that person directly. A call is better than a text, and a text is better than nothing. Do not invite them to a service. Ask how they are and what their week has been like. Then listen more than you talk.
- Day five. Do one concrete thing in response to what you heard. That might mean a meal, a ride, a follow-up message on a date they mentioned, or simply remembering to ask about it.
- Day six. Take one hour you would normally spend watching something, including church content, and give it to presence instead. That could be a second conversation, a visit, or praying for the person by name.
- Day seven. Review the week. What did the contact cost you? What surprised you? Did you catch yourself wanting the conversation to end with them coming back?
That last question matters. Parker noted that young adults in one congregation she polled were “hanging in there because they still believe in their church,” even though they disliked the format. Loyalty like that survives because someone is still connected to people. If your call becomes a quiet recruitment pitch, the person will feel it. The goal this week is care, whether or not they ever sit in a pew again.
For groups, the first meeting should cover the passages and help each person settle on a name, without anyone saying the name aloud unless they choose to. Some members will struggle to think of anyone. Do not rush to fix that. It reveals the same gap Parker described in churches that cannot locate their members. The second meeting is for debriefing. Let people report as much or as little as they want, and protect the privacy of the person who was contacted.
Some of the people you reach may be grieving, isolated, or struggling more than you expected. You are not their counselor, and you do not have to solve anything. If someone tells you they are thinking about ending their life, stay with them and call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, together.
Questions for discussion
- Looking at your attention audit, what does the way you consume church content suggest about how you think of people who have stopped attending?
- Ezekiel 34 blames the shepherds rather than the sheep. Where does that change how you talk about people who left, and where would you push back on applying it to your church?
- Which reading of Parker’s “beat down the door” sentence fits your church’s actual habits better, and why?
- Parker said passive watching “ain’t it” for many younger adults. What would genuine participation look like for someone who may only ever connect online?
- Where in your life are you more comfortable being the one who receives attention than the one who goes looking?
- After your week, what would you change about how your church keeps track of people, and what would you leave alone?
Before you close the week
Go back to the note you made on day one and reread it. You began with a list of what held your attention. You end with one name, one conversation, and one concrete act of care. Compare the two. Then decide what one habit from this week you will keep for the next month, and write down the second name.