- What are the most common reasons that cause Christians to lose their faith and turn to atheism, agnosticism or skepticism?
Greetings TruthSeek3r,
I can only speak from within my own limited experience and my fellow congregants and ministers, and my understanding of this is largely based in the context of mission work, mainly in Europe in our case with observations of deconversion among those we've converted or newly re-invigorated into the Church. But as a simple answer, again in the context of mission work, I would say the main cause of deconversion is lack of commitment by those involved in ministry, or at least the perception of that by the congregants. Particularly for the newly converted or for new members of the church, they need to feel that they're joining a community that's vigorous and where the missionaries and ministers above all, are themselves committed to the ministry and the improvement of the Church and its broader efforts.
Now the nature of "lack of commitment" can vary depending on where the ministries are being conducted, but in our main focus--as a group of (mainly) American, Canadian and Australian missionaries active in European countries supporting the locals, building or renovating churches and converting ex. Turkish, Algerian or Syrian migrant workers to the faith--by far the most common error made by some ministry efforts is a failure by the missionaries to fully settle down, with their families, in their adopted home in Europe, and stay there (including raising their kids there) for the long term. In Europe in particular, since it consists of first-world countries trying to improve worship in a secular environment (and where the missionaries themselves have ancestry), a failure to settle down and ex. "become French", "become German", "become Dutch (or Belgian, or Finnish...)"--that is to adopt citizenship and raise one's children as full citizens and cultural members of the country--appears to the locals to be at best a tepid commitment, and such ministry efforts are almost always unsuccessful, unfortunately squandering a large amount of human and financial resources. This has gotten a lot of discussion on threads I think exactly because it was such a common errors among missionaries in the 1990's and 2000's, most of whom had done missions in developing countries where expectations and the nature of commitment is different. I myself did mission work as a youth in several developing countries, including in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), and for those, the standard model of ministry work is to stay for a few months to years, help the locals to build churches and win converts in their villages, and then basically hand off the reigns to local ministers and return back to the US (or Canada), and it's often successful.
But this missionary model
does not work in a first-world country or continent like Europe, especially when the missionaries themselves clearly have ancestry in the countries they're ministering in. That is, if the ministers from the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand come to a European country like Belgium, France, Italy or Sweden, and even if they achieve some significant accomplishments--building churches or distributing language-specific Bibles for example--the mission almost always fails longer-term if the missionaries then just go back to North America or Oceania, and there is widespread deconversion and an erosion of the restored or new church in the region. The locals and the newly converted in Europe perceive this as being a half-hearted commitment to the ministry, with suspicions of self-doubt about the importance of the mission or the value and significance of the new converts (or secular locals with newfound devotion)
We did an inter-ministry study a few years ago with help of a professional surveying firm, and the results confirmed that this "go back home" error was the single most common reason for failed ministries and deconversion in Europe, and this had a devastating effect on every element of the ministry. The source churches for the missionaries in our group are based mainly in a band from Texas through the US Southwest (with a few branches in Alabama, Florida and South Carolina and abroad from Canada, Australia and a couple in NZ). And we make clear to our potential missionaries that for those interested in Europe, they should make every effort to stay there long-term and raise their families there, fully adopting the culture and growing up speaking French, German, Dutch or whatever the local language, and in fact we encourage our ministers to research their ancestry to look for ways to get permanent settlement visas (one of the easiest ways to facilitate getting citizenship in the European Union, since all EU countries have some form of "citizenship by descent" option).
To show this a bit further with a specific and striking example, a number of my closest friends are Mormons going back to childhood, in fact our church network has done a lot of missionary and charity efforts teaming with the LDS church. One of my best friends was involved in an extended Mormon missionary effort in Europe in the early 1990's, he dedicated almost 5 years to it and a lot of resources from his branches and Latter-Day Saints temples. At the time, however, the Mormon church was still mainly following an old-fashioned model of "minister and return" that they'd used elsewhere in the world, not realizing this didn't work in Europe. In the 2000's the LDS elders and officials did a review of retention of converts and deconversion in Europe, and the results were dismal--more than 85 percent of the converts in my friend's temples and chapters in Europe had deconverted, and for most temples it was over 90 percent. (For many of our own newly built or restored churches and other evangelical churches in Europe and their missions, there were points where close to a quarter of our flock were ex-Mormons who had initially converted to the LDS, but left when the American Mormon missionaries went back to the United States.)
The LDS church has since apparently made a change in the focus of its missionary efforts in Europe, expecting that missionaries in the EU this time will move and stay there permanently with their families. From my old friends and contacts within the LDS branches, the latest surveys are showing much greater long-term success, with a solid majority of the new converts staying within the faith when they see that the the US Mormons have themselves made the commitments to stay in Europe and raise their own kids there. My friend needless to say was deeply depressed upon hearing the initial results on deconversion and made another attempt later, after the change in LDS recommendations for ministries in Europe, selling his home in Utah and moving his wife and four children to France, but this time to stay, with his kids growing up fully French. His second effort in Europe has since had much greater success, with a large majority of the new converts and congregants in the temples remaining with it longer term, in major part because they see that he and his family are fully committed as well. We've no doubt seen the same thing with our Lutheran and generally evangelical churches everywhere in Europe, whether in new churches or refurbished historic churches stretching back to Middle Ages. Our ministers in Europe move there to stay permanently and raise their families there, with most as a rule having ancestry in those countries that further reinforces their connections there, and this in turn been perceived as a demonstration of commitment that's encouraged their new flocks and converts to remain with the faith and stay active with it.
