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things Grace Church has done for me,” he said with excitement, “is to encourage me to spend time in the Bible myself. They tell us again and again that the church should only be a supplement to a personal time of prayer and Bible study. That message really sticks.” We were finally ready to return to the original reason we began talking with Max. How has all of this “content” made a difference in his decision to remain active in the church? The answer was expected. “The Word is so much a part of my life,” Max said, “that studying it has become a life priority for me. And when I am dealing with tough decisions or life-changing situations, I can always remember something I have studied in Scripture to help me know how to deal with anything.” Max smiled. “And none of my studies in the Bible have ever told me to take a break from church. To the contrary, I realize that I need the church more than ever.” The Old Hypocrisy Issue Most of the top ten reasons the dropouts left the church were related to life-change issues, but we cannot ignore one of the exceptions to that statement. In fact, it was the second most frequent response: “I left the church because the church members seemed judgmental or hypocritical.” More than one-fourth (26 percent) of the dechurched offered the age-old hypocrisy response. I (Thom) remember the first time I encountered such a response as a pastor. I cannot remember the woman’s name, but I can still see the smirk on her face when I asked her to return to church: “Jesus and I are getting along just fine without all the hypocrites in that church.” Man, did that statement steam me! This woman was in her early forties and had not been in church for twenty years. (Not surprisingly, she was still on the membership rolls.) She was a ChurchLeadershipBooks.com