One of the tragic things that I witness as a pastor is people slowing walking away from God.  To be clear, most people don’t just abruptly decide to stop following the Lord.  No, the vast majority of the time it’s a slow fade.  It’s all too predictable too.

First, they stop interacting with God directly.  Prayer time and Bible reading drops dramatically.  Whatever level it was once at is now long gone.  The relationship with the Lord begins to cool as a consequence.  At first they are just coasting a bit through “this busy season” but soon coasting becomes a downward spiral.

Second, they stop attending church.  Attending a good church is God’s plan for all our lives.  He designed it that way for many, many reasons.  One big reason is that being around other people that are seeking and loving the Lord can help jump start our faith and spark a resurgence of devotion in our lives even when we’ve been coasting.  If, however, we remove ourselves from church we are far more likely to continue to slide off the edge.

As with walking away from God, few people just quit church one Sunday.  Most start skipping church here and there and then, suddenly, they’re skipping more than they’re attending.  Slowly, they start to feel like outsiders at the church and disconnected from the group.  This in turn becomes a barrier to attending and they fade away.

Some start this process by just attending when they’re scheduled to serve.  They don’t take advantage of multiple services or serving rotations.  They just come to serve and they too begin to feel disconnected from the church.  Ultimately, the church becomes a chore to them and they begin to resent it.  They will eventually either stop showing up or become bitter.

Once prayer, Bible reading and church involvement are firmly out of the picture, the fires and passions of faith smolder away leaving only ashes of what once was.