Dechurched Christians in Hong Kong: A Study

Abstract

Though many Christian churches exist in Hong Kong, some who claim to be Christians are not members of churches, nor do they attend a Sunday service regularly. They identify as faithful but not religious. Some might even be pursuing advanced degrees in Christian studies. Why do they not join an institutional church then? Have they experienced trauma in institutional churches, and how do they process such issues? What do they hope for spiritually? Is there something in Christianity that cannot be replaced by secular spirituality which leads them to still claim to be Christians? In this article, I explore the experiences of dechurched Hong Kong Christians through archival and qualitative study, a method that foregrounds the often contradictory, complicated lived experience of faith, and ask questions about their earnestness and commitment to Christianity outside of the institutional church. I aim to understand the theological and religious perspectives of dechurched Christians and question the role of institutional churches in Hong Kong, discussing the following: (1) mundane trauma as a cause for leaving church, (2) the tendency of contemplative believers to leave church, and (3) the fragility of religious identity. I conclude that the institutional church in Hong Kong, as it is now, needs radical reimagination.

1. Introduction

In surveys of 10,390 adults in East Asia, including Hong Kong, conducted between June and September 2023, more than a third of adults in Hong Kong say they no longer identify with any religion (Ong 2024). Additionally, according to a 2019 survey of Hong Kong Christians, the number of young congregants, who are 15–24 years of age, has been dropping since 2009. From 2014 to 2019, church attendance in Hong Kong declined by over 35.9% (Lau 2021). Despite the alarming figures demonstrating a decline in institutional church communities in Hong Kong, this does not mean Hong Kong Christians are in decline; many continue to identify as Christ believers despite no longer attending church. Spirituality is fundamental to humanity and manifests in the worldview of individuals, revealed through their own moral understanding—why they think certain things are right/wrong or good/bad and how they make meaning of their own lives and actions. Every person yearns for a sense of meaning in their life, something greater than themselves. This sense of spirituality can be seen in China, where, instead of superhero movies that reflect American individualism, popular films often feature ordinary people selflessly sacrificing themselves, ultimately leading to the success of their community. In this way, popular culture demonstrates the need for a “greater good” that is bigger than oneself, for which one would sacrifice personal satisfaction. As such, spirituality can be understood as the ways people ground their well-being and interpret the meaning of life. Those who are dechurched describe their spirituality as their meaning in life, moral compass, experienced emotions, sense of belonging, and more. Statistics, therefore, do not clearly indicate Christianity’s pervasive influences on many Hong Kongers’ lives, because answering survey questions is a notoriously difficult task for those who no longer attend church but continue to hold faith convictions.

Hong Kong theologian and online community key opinion leader Steven Ng finds that, of those who are “exiled” in Hong Kong Christian communities, there are those who are dechurched, i.e., those who have left the church but still hold Christian faith; multi-churched, i.e., those who fell away from their previous church community and now attend multiple churches; and church-hopping, i.e., those attending different church gatherings to access more faith resources (Mai 2024). I use “dechurched” as a term to describe those who self-identify as Christians and were previously affiliated with an institutional church community in Hong Kong but have intentionally dropped their membership and involvement with the church for over twelve months or longer. I am particularly discussing those who still consider themselves Christians or at least continue to search for Christian faith, but are no longer a part of an institutional church. I chose not to use lapsed Christians to define this group of people, as this project is not about those who no longer see Christianity as a viable option of faith.

The vast majority of those who leave the church did not leave suddenly, usually undergoing a gradual process of reflection, questioning, and withdrawal which lasted many months or years prior to their decision to leave (Jamieson 2002, pp. 32–33). When they do leave the church, they continue to carry on their faith in different ways (Church Transitions Cannot Retain 2025). Hong Kong theologian Caroline Yih (2023), in her article “Rediscovering Home: An Autoethnography of Leaving Church,” encountered the trauma of “being orphaned, and shame, as well as the related notions of ‘home’ and ‘unity in diversity’” in her dechurched experiences. Therefore, the choice to no longer be part of an institutional church is not a decision dechurched Christians make lightly.

There is an implicit link between spirituality and church attendance among Evangelical Christians. Stemming from their understanding of biblical scriptures, they may find that those who serve more in institutional churches and maintain regular attendance tend to be more spiritual; thus, those who no longer attend institutional churches regularly experience levels of shame and guilt. Spirituality is related to well-being, happiness, and flourishing, as knowing what one is striving for leads to a sense of purpose and fulfillment and helps shape life’s meaning. Spirituality, when not met, may lead to questioning one’s purpose in life. Of the Hong Kongers surveyed, around 20.4–29.3% considered themselves Christians in 2018, but only 5% of the Hong Kong population attended Sunday service regularly, meaning many who claim to be Christians are not attending church activities. Additionally, Hong Kong society has been facing decentralization, and that has extended to churches, where institutional churches represent an authority that needs to be removed (Ben Wong 2022, pp. 29–30). As such, how are individuals’ purposes in life related to their spirituality? How do dechurched Christians continue to find their meaning in life? Do they have alternative support communities or practices that sustain their spirituality? Are institutional churches still needed in Hong Kong? Through my research, I hope to explore how people who are no longer served by traditional religion craft a flourishing and meaningful life and experience the grief of leaving an organized religion (Van Tongeren 2024, p. 11). I aim to discover where dechurched Christians continue to find spiritual life and what the alternative to institutional church can look like. While I understand there are other religious motivations, such as inherited belief passed down from parents and grandparents, and divine revelations that lead to believers converting to Christianity, the focus of this research is on how Christian knowledge and doctrine function as a moral framework and undergird the worldview of dechurched believers.

2. Methodology

This study focuses on Protestant Christians in Hong Kong. In this study, I first immersed myself in the field through engaging with those on social media who identify as Hong Kong Christians but no longer attend church to gain a broad understanding of the sort of narratives they present. I then, through snowball sampling, conducted three semi-structured interviews of participants who identified as either (1) Christian but no longer attending church or (2) previously Christian and still curious about faith but no longer attending church, in order to gain a more in-depth understanding of individual experiences. These interviews consisted of one male and two female participants, and their ages ranged from 27 to 40 at the time of the interview. Two were previously affiliated with a charismatic/Pentecostal Protestant church, while one was affiliated with an Evangelical Protestant church. I asked them the following questions, based on Abby Day’s (2009) research:

• Opening question
  • What do you believe in?
• Questions about morality
  • What are rights and wrongs for you? Examples?
  • Have they changed for you?
  • How do you know those things?
  • How do you put that into practice?
• Questions about meaning and transcendence
  • Has there ever been an inspirational figure to you, real or fictional?
  • Are there any books, movies, or TV programs that have significance for you and have influenced you?
  • How much influence or control do you think you have over your life?
  • Do you ever think about the purpose or meaning in life? If so, what?
  • No one can say for certain how it all began, but I wonder what your thoughts might be on how the universe came into being?
  • What will happen to you after you die?
  • When are you happiest?
  • When are you most unhappy?
  • What frightens you?
  • What do you do to find comfort during those times?
  • What, or who, is most important to you in your life?
• Final question
  • For the first time, the census had a question about people’s religion. Do you remember what you said?

These interviews are supplemented by Yih (2023) and Michael Chee-man Tang’s (2019) respective accounts of leaving church but continuing to identify as Christians, and Andrew Wai-luen Kwok’s interview of Wong Wai-ching, who no longer considers herself a Christian from an institutional church’s perspective (2019). I cross-checked my findings with newspaper articles on this topic, such as those by Isabel Ong in Christianity Today and Andrew Ka-pok Tam in Christian Times. I also analyzed their experiences through existing paradigms developed by theologians and psychologists in other contexts outside Hong Kong, such as psychologist Daryl Van Tongeren and theologian Alan Jamieson, who both conducted extensive empirical research on church leavers, focusing both on why people leave and how their faith changed and developed after leaving (Jamieson 2002, p. 6).

The idea that Christians must attend church is prevalent in Evangelical Christian churches, often supported by references to Hebrews 10:25. For example, Wing-Chee Leung (2020), a pastor from Yuen Long Baptist Church, emphasized that church attendance is important for Christians to watch over one another. Church attendance is largely seen as an obligation of Evangelical Christians in Hong Kong, and those who do not attend may feel a deep sense of guilt and shame, as I will demonstrate from Yih’s (2023) experiences. The focus of this study is on this type of Christian and not those who see Christianity as normative religious behavior.

It is worth noting that those who are dechurched tend not to have an organized religion and are thus more difficult to reach. While there are no existing statistics on which Christian denominations are experiencing higher levels of church exodus, the 2024 Hong Kong Church Survey, conducted every five years by the Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement, is due to be released in the coming year, and I hope to watch this closely for any indications. As a practical theologian, I am interested in learning more about how people, especially those who consider themselves to be dechurched, understand their spirituality through semi-structured interviews, asking probing questions about faith experiences and practices. Through thematic analysis, where I coded the interview transcripts using NVivo, and identified themes that emerged, this type of measurement is meant to produce thick descriptions that allow researchers to understand individuals deeply, providing a multifaceted understanding of a person and how they make sense of their own spiritual life. This approach is more meaningful than surveys, as it provides a narrative with more nuance as to their spiritual practices and why they left the church.

3. Individual/Collective Identity of Religious Affiliation: An Analysis

There are many reasons why people who remain attached to the Christian faith choose not to attend an institutional church regularly anymore. Some researchers have argued that some have intellectual struggles with their faith, whereas others have experienced abuse and suffering. Other empirical work revealed that people leave because of how the church treats LGBTQ+ individuals, seeing how these churches’ values do not align with the secular ones churchgoers may hold dear (Van Tongeren 2024, p. 19). Packard and Hope (2015, pp. 14–15) acknowledge: “The dechurched typically struggle with the decision to leave for a long time. […] Many, in fact, see leaving the church as the only way to save their faith. […] If they stayed, they would risk further estrangement from their spiritual selves, from God, and from a religion they still believe in”. Through thematic analysis of my field observation and interviews by using NVivo for the coding process, I have identified three issues worthy of further discussion: (1) mundane trauma as a cause for leaving church, (2) the tendency of contemplative believers to leave church, and (3) the fragility of religious identity.

3.1. Mundane Trauma: Changes Lead to Leaving Church

I observed that most of the reasons dechurched Christians cite for attending or not attending church are related to the people in it, and not so much to do with God. Hong Kong theologian Michael Tang mentioned that he left Hong Kong’s Christian community because, as he was working in events in connection to his job, he seemed to have offended the president of a seminary and felt pressured to leave by people around him (Tang 2019, pp. 165–66). This is the main reason many people still consider themselves Christians, even though they leave the congregation: “Religion is one of the most potent cultural worldviews at providing people with a sense of meaning, making it particularly challenging to replace after people walk away from religion” (Van Tongeren 2024, p. 121). Their Christian faith can continue, even though they experienced hurt in an institutional church, because Christian values are so pervasive that they persist in shaping their worldviews.

Dechurched Christians can find it necessary to leave their original church community to maintain being a Christian. Sometimes, when people cite the motivations for leaving church, it sounds quite minute and mundane; it can seem like they are making a big deal out of nothing. However, it is more likely to be a series of similar events that simply tips the person over the edge, rather than one single event that causes people to leave. One of Jamieson’s interviewees in his study talked of her final night at church, the night she finally decided to leave. She was sitting in the church when she began to read the newsletter and saw who was scheduled to preach that night. She said she burst into tears realizing she could not take another of his sermons and left. This was the last time she went to church (Jamieson 2002, pp. 39–40). As Van Tongeren (2024, p. 23) poses: “After all, if you are consistently told that God hates who you are, why believe in such a punitive and judgmental supernatural being?” Experiencing oppression and biases can be all the more jarring in an environment that is meant to promote love, care, and unity, though it must be emphasized that churches can serve other functions, such as a community of those who share a collective identity. Therefore, for them to continue to believe in God, they find distancing themselves from such a Christian community necessary.

When someone mentions leaving church, the assumed reason that often comes to mind is something sensational, such as sexual misconduct or embezzlement. Van Tongeren (2024, pp. 23–36) labels these types of experiences as “religious trauma” since many people have reported a traumatic exit from religion, including those who suffered a personal or spiritual trauma and no longer want to be associated with religion or religious individuals. However, I would argue that it can also be the mundane disappointments and daily microaggressions that lead to Christians choosing to be dechurched. Instead of traumatic church experiences, Professor at Chung Chi Divinity School of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Kwan Shui-man concluded, from previous church seminars he conducted, that people leave the church because of prolonged internal conflicts or after a major life event such as entering university (Church Transitions Cannot Retain 2025). I will separately analyze these two issues.

3.1.1. Mismatch in Institutional Church Teaching and Laypeople’s Understandings

A reason dechurched Christians find church communities harmful is that, often, they flatten the experiences of Christianity: “When religion promises easy answers to avoid or overcome suffering, it often causes more harm than good” (Van Tongeren 2024, p. 28). Religion can take on different meanings for different individuals and communities, but the point that van Tongeren emphasizes is one of many approaches to understanding the relationship between religion and believers. The mismatch between religious teachings and the behavior of religious individuals leads to barriers to religion. Ada (alias) said that, after reflecting, she found that the values of the church did not align with her own values, and when she put forth her questions on doctrines, those from the church were not able to give her a definite, satisfying answer. She felt that her questions about life were not addressed adequately in the church. I find that the problem Ada (alias) had was not so much that she had questions, but instead, that people in the church tried to brush off her questions, which she found troubling. Bethany (alias) notices the same problem, as she thinks “that’s the fear that people have when they hold these questions, to be seen as being difficult. Because in some ways, you no longer conform to a certain pattern […] and to have that question and tension, but also to have the belief [imposed on you] that is different from that brewing inside and holding that, even teaching that, that is contrary to the wider [experience of the believer], let’s say, that can be very confronting and isolating”. Kwan resonates with this, and stated that, in the past decade, Hong Kong has developed rapidly, and believers wish to find their life’s meaning and purpose; if there are more people in society seeking their life purpose, but the church cannot respond adequately, then the gap between the expectations of believers and what the church delivers will increase (Church Transitions Cannot Retain 2025). Hong Kong philosopher Andrew Ka-pok Tam finds that second-generation believers and pastor’s kids leave church mainly because they are unable to bear rigid institutionalized faith, demonstrating their ability to reflect. Tam finds that those who leave are actually more reflective and healthier, because they are able to spot the problems of the church, even when they are unable to provide a solution (Tam 2024).

How churches deal with contemporary secular world issues, such as LGBTQ+, and how they impose purity culture on secular societies may also lead to a mismatch in teaching and understanding. Upon entering a church context, unconditional love is often one of the first characteristics that is emphasized (1 John 4:7). However, the experience in Hong Kong churches might deviate from this mandate, as most Evangelical Protestant churches tend to shun, or are at least very uneasy about, the concept of homosexuality. Ada (alias) recounted when she entered university that she thought back to her previous church, as there were many contentious sexual issues; when congregants came out as lesbian, the church criticized their actions. When she brought issues of sexual orientation and rights to the church, she found that the church’s values were different from hers, so she eventually stopped attending. She identifies gender as the most important issue; as a female, when other people in the church exerted a perceived right to tell her how to dress, she felt those teachings were not correct but instead were oppressive to women. Tam (2024) finds highly ridiculous the idea that, in the era of equality, the Christian church still maintains the view that marriage is for breeding and attempts to force this on secular society. Jamieson (2002, pp. 15–16) also finds that people leave churches because of the changing societal culture, especially at a time of transition between the erosion of the influence of modernity and the increasing influence of post-modernity. This dissonance leads to Christians leaving the church.

While there are many other socio-political issues, such as national sovereignty, Hong Kong Christian communities have been dealing with issues related to political and faith identity constantly, and this has been enhanced since the Occupy Central and Umbrella Movement in 2013–2014 and the Anti-Extradition Amendment Bill Protests in 2019–2020 (Chu 2023). However, those events subsequently led to lay Christians’ exodus not only from institutional churches but from Hong Kong altogether. These events, as Lee (2019) notes, are life-changing events in the framework of eventful sociology, requiring in-depth study that deviates from the focus of this research, which centers on the mundane reasons for leaving church rather than single, traumatic events.

One aspect that seems quite common in other reports is the leadership disillusionment mentioned regularly by pastors and ministers, highlighting a number of situations where church leaders had “fallen” and subsequently disillusioned large numbers of people, such as adulterous relationships and/or financial impropriety. However, in my own interview with Abel (alias) and the interviews of Jamieson, a number of leavers who had been involved in churches where the senior pastor had “fallen” in some spectacular fashion did not identify this as a major factor in their decision to leave. Van Tongeren (2024) found that religious communities have frequently supported perpetrators, especially if they are in positions of leadership, and used tactics to censure, bully, manipulate, silence, or exclude victims or those who raise concerns. Whistleblowers are punished, and offenders are protected (45). Jamieson (2002) found that a more important factor in their decision to stay or leave the church was based on how the leadership elected to handle the difficulty. Where it was hidden, swept under the carpet, or not openly dealt with, people lost a greater degree of confidence in the leadership (40–45). It is not their expectation that church leaders be infallible but, instead, that they are able to hold themselves accountable.

3.1.2. Geographic Relocation

Many people leave the church due to a certain major life event, such as a change of lead pastor, migration, graduation, social movements, and more. Jamieson (2002, pp. 39–40) noted that, in his study, one of the reasons for leaving was due to a change of geographic location. This was also the case with one of my participants, Abel (alias), who said that when he lived in Japan previously or Britain now, he did not attend a church there. He only attended his home church, a community he had been part of since kindergarten, when he lived in Hong Kong. He thinks the reason for this is that he is lazy, and the language barrier is a challenge. Meanwhile, his commitment to his home church in Hong Kong is due to the relationship built from a young age. He continues to maintain a WhatsApp chat with this Hong Kong group, despite moving to Britain years ago. Bethany (alias) also said she left previous churches because she had to move countries. Like Abel (alias), Bethany (alias) stays connected with the community, but through another church they recommended she attend after she left. Since that church in the new country was part of an umbrella or network of churches, it actually felt very similar despite being in a different country, and because the pastors are connected, the network is the same, so it felt like an ongoing kind of formation process.

The transience of Hong Kong Christians leads to the following question: is it necessary for Christians to attend a physical, institutional church? Nonetheless, continuing to be Christian while not being part of an institutional church conflicts with the nature of Christian communities, as “[r]eligion is a highly-social enterprise. The root word of religion is religio, which means ‘to-bind’, suggesting that religion helps bind us to other people (and to God)” (Van Tongeren 2024, p. 115). Abel (alias), however, questions this approach to the Christian faith, as he says his experiences allow him to see a common problem in the church: the larger the organization, the more chaotic it becomes and the more problems it creates. Abel (alias) argues that, since technology is so advanced nowadays, do we really need to have a church that groups so many people together at one time? Running a church requires money and renting a space, and more things happening will be more chaotic. Abel (alias) questions whether these priorities detract from the real meaning of church. I will discuss the different, new imaginations of church in a later section.

3.2. Contemplative Believers: More Prone to Leaving Church

Other than what I call “mundane trauma”, I find that most of those who are no longer attending church are more conscientious, contemplative believers. This is not to say those who are still attending church are not contemplative or conscientious, but rather, I think most people may label dechurched Christians as not caring about faith or religion. However, the opposite is in fact the case. These are people who are often very careful with faith and the expression of such, which is why they find problems in the existing establishments and want to discover something that matches their expressions of faith. Christians are also more likely to ponder existential questions on the meaning of life or to experience wonder about the universe, compared to Buddhists or the religiously unaffiliated (Ong 2024), and “[f]or those who are really sincere in their search for meaning, the process can be agonising” (Selvam and Githinji 2022). The search for meaning became such a commitment for dechurched Christians that they felt the need to leave the church to commit to this pursuit.

3.2.1. Satisfying Faith Needs

Wong King-lai, a social work lecturer, finds that some Christians have a strong urge to pursue their faith but that the church cannot satisfy their needs, which is why they choose to leave. Not attending an institutional church is their way of responding to their faith (Church Transitions Cannot Retain 2025). Ada (alias) says that, even when she is asked to accompany friends to a church every once in a while, she will still carry a critical lens when listening to the sermon. Yih (2023) found that there is room, as she moves away from the institutional church, for questions and even doubts to coexist with faithfulness. The most important aspect of this process is that they critique each component of their faith on the basis of whether they will adopt it as part of their own personal belief or value system. This involves a great deal of thought, discussion, and philosophical and theological reflection, which is an ongoing process where individuals must assume responsibility and take ultimate authority for the questioning, critiquing, and resolution of their examination (Jamieson 2002, pp. 69–72).

As a faithful gesture, a step further to leaving the church might be to study theology but continue to not attend any churches. Jamieson (2002, pp. 39–40) noted that, in his study, one of the reasons to leave was the offer to study theology. Tang (2019, p. 164) mentioned he wished to be a theologian with emotions and intellect, which was why he studied theology on a part-time basis as he worked in Evangelical ministries, but the two experiences eventually led to him leaving the institutional church completely due to the disconnection between his experiences in institutional churches and his studies. It could be that the purpose of theological study is to break down and reconstruct, and institutional churches in Hong Kong are unable to handle the break-down part because of a more foundational questioning of their underlying faith (Jamieson 2002, pp. 60–66).

3.2.2. Better Christian Faith Outside of Institutions

Some think that, by being outside of institutional churches, they are able to be more faithful Christians than when they were part of an institutional church. Hong Kong theologian Wong Wai-ching, in recounting leaving the institutional church, feels like she can really enjoy her faith, as it is entirely unrelated to an institutional church. When she first believed in Christ, she found the church to be equated to faith in itself, and serving the church became the entirety of faith life. But through caring for society, she found that even when she could point out others using faith to domesticate people, if faith became an ideology to drive social movements, it was also a confinement of faith. After joining the ecumenical movement, she found there to be too many office politics, so faith was diminished. This is why, through leaving the church, she found the most comfortable position, where her faith is simply walking with God, talking with God, and life related to God. What she does is accountable to God’s gifts to her, such as being able to exercise God’s justice without having to account for institutional struggles. She finds that not going to Sunday service is most comfortable, as going to Sunday service is actually very painful. As she studied theology, when she finds the preacher’s teachings inconsistent with her own exegesis and hermeneutics, it is painful both for her and the preacher (Kwok 2019). Bethany (alias) identifies the same issue. While she left her church because of changes within the church, it actually led to a journey of ecumenism, wondering if there was something more than just her previous experiences outside of her Pentecostal experiences. She is interested in what could be cultivated from exploring within the wider body of the Christian tradition.

The problem is not so much that people have questions. They are not expecting their questions to be answered, but instead, they need a space where they can ask questions: “Again and again our respondents described this combination of being comfortable with both the questioning and the uncertainty as a desirable dynamic. They felt virtually no need to resolve questions. Instead they needed a safe place to ask questions and explore possible answers, and there was a distinct feeling that this is not what church typically allows” (Packard and Hope 2015, p. 83). This is a space of tension that dechurched Christians want to hold but are not given the chance within institutional church communities.

3.3. Fragility of Religious Identity

Depending on the individual Christian, much of their identity could be tied to their roles within a church. For example, in my own experience of a Baptist church community in Hong Kong, there are adults of working age who do not work in paid jobs but, instead, full-time volunteer at their home church. When asked about what is new with them or how others can pray for them, often they would talk about the difficulties they experience with the youth and university students at the church, as if that is the entirety of their lives. They are middle-aged, so they also have parents and partners, but they choose to focus solely on the community they volunteer with at the church. This could perhaps be a problem-avoiding issue. However, it also raises a question: what would happen to them if they face a faith crisis (or epiphany) that leads to them wanting to leave the church? Their church identity is now gone—what happens next? Dechurched Christians “reported less positive and more negative affect/emotions, greater anxiety, and greater depression” (Van Tongeren 2024, p. 74). If being dechurched is so painful, why do Christians go through with it?

Yih (2023) explains the shame of leaving a church:

This trickiness in living as a dechurched believer for me lies in the responses of others in their discovery of my identity. These reactions have primarily been negative and discouraging, ranging from awkwardness to condemning judgement on me as a disgraced deviant from the faith. […] The experience of detaching and moving away from the tight-knit church community had brought me to come face to face with the pain of disconnection and the nostalgia of memory which led me to wonder on the fragility of my prior belonging. […] Having been immersed in such a tight-knit community where our lives were interlinked and braided together vastly beyond Sunday mornings, it is not surprising that our decision to part with the church and navigating life in the aftermath to be more complicated and challenging than would otherwise. Belonging to the community had become such an integrated part of our family’s identity and way of life for over two decades after all.

Abel (alias) also reflects a sense of shame, but it is directed towards God rather than a community. He said that, realistically, as he is not attending church now, personal spirituality is a bit distant. The only thing he does now is pray occasionally, especially when he faces adversity. But he does not read the Bible or attend fellowships like before. Bethany (alias) finds the years she left church very disorienting, not only because she is no longer part of a community, but it also provided a rhythm of life and routine for her. It means her life now is uncertain and outside of her control, though she has been trying to find it in her to trust God in this situation: “After all, if religion was a central part of your identity and a primary way by which you made sense of the world, to walk away from religion is a bit like walking away from yourself—or at least a version of yourself” (Van Tongeren 2024, p. 34).

Each person can have multiple identities based on differing social categories (e.g., gender, sex, ethnicity, religion). According to social identity theory, one’s identity is a potent source of self-esteem and plays a substantial role in cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes. Many identities are largely self-defined, based on perceptions of whether or not individuals meet the criteria that determine inclusion in that group’s identity. Identity can be understood as a system of self-relevant meaning, in which individuals perceive themselves in relation to a shared, or culturally endorsed, standard of group membership. One such powerful, yet somewhat malleable, social identity is religious identity (Van Tongeren et al. 2021). These identities shape how people perceive themselves and others along such dimensions, as well as how people treat others, such as engaging in ingroup favoritism and outgroup prejudice (Van Tongeren et al. 2021). Not being part of a church community immediately places a Christian in an outgroup, making them subject to prejudice from those who continue to be a part of institutional churches. They “might lament the loss of the church and grieve the abandonment of an institution they once loved and were so hopeful for, but that won’t stop them from actively expressing their faith” (Packard and Hope 2015, p. 27).

Abel (alias) finds that when one understands a religion, and accepts it, it is hard to just tear the religion out of the person. Even if one does not attend church anymore, but is asked about their core values, their values will still be informed by their previous religious affiliation. As Van Tongeren et al. (2021) puts it: “People may stop identifying as religious, but their deeply ingrained attitudes, values, and behaviors that encompass religious identity remain, leaving them in a psychological ‘no-one’s land’ between those who currently identify and those who have never identified”. The convictions remain, but being part of an outgroup leads to a sense of self-doubt and shame that dechurched Christians find difficult to shake off. Perhaps institutional Christians find this negative feeling to be justified, as they think dechurched Christians should return to institutional churches. How would the two groups reconcile?

4. What Happens Next? A Concluding Thought

Dechurched Christians are able to find spirituality outside of institutional churches, since spiritual practices, such as meditation and prayer, are meant to connect directly with a deity and can allow people to experience the benefits of traditional religion without holding traditional religious beliefs. Being a Christian is commonly viewed in Protestant conversion narratives as a lifelong status; however, this does not necessarily match lived experiences, often with stories of Christians lapsing from engagement with institutional Christianity. Protestant Christians who no longer attend church may be seen by those who do as “no longer Christians,” yet the number of those who identify as Christians but do not attend institutional churches continues to increase in Hong Kong, leading to creative reimaginings of what church could look like. Examples include a “pastor’s bar”, where pastors double as bartenders (Mok 2024); a pastor sitting in a café, waiting to engage in conversations (Pastor/Coffee Shop 2023); or pastors hosting board game nights (What Does the Life 2023) and running clubs (Ben Wong 2022, pp. 157–61). Many churches in Hong Kong are considering moving their operations to more flexible locations, such as restaurants, online spaces, congregants’ homes, etc., with most citing that they prayed together about it and felt God pointing them to the change. Packard and Hope (2015, pp. 76–77) also observe similar trends in their context: “Most often this took the form of a weekly dinner or meal, but there were many other manifestations, including book clubs, movie-watching groups, online chat rooms, forums, and musical gatherings. While none of these experiences might seem inherently spiritual, our participants characterized them as expressions of their faith. That is, the people we interviewed explicitly understood these activities as different and set aside from the other things in their lives that might seem similar”. At the beginning of this article, I asked whether institutional churches are still needed in Hong Kong. Is the point of a church simply for communities of believers to congregate, and is the structure unimportant? The Christian survey in 2023 concluded it is unlikely for a majority of Hong Kong churches to change their format entirely, mostly because they do not have such a vision or that their staff are not equipped for such a change, and there are no short-term solutions for these issues (Leung and Lau 2023, pp. 37–49).

In this article, I have also asked whether dechurched Christians are able to find their meaning in life outside of the institutional church. If institutional churches cannot offer a radical change to what Christians gathering in the name of God can look like, then can dechurched Christians create this new space for themselves? Are dechurched Christians able to imagine their relationship with a higher being, such as the Christian God, and continue to benefit from the practices of traditional religion without committing to an institutional church? If Christians were to take the Bible seriously, then being part of a congregation would be an important part of their faith, as in “not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another” (Hebrew 10:25, NASB). A growing number of social media accounts that tell the stories of dechurched Christians in Chinese-speaking communities, such as Out of Church (不在教會的日子) from Taiwan, simulate the physical communities of the institutional church on online platforms; they reap the benefits of spiritual communities in traditional religion, sharing their own meaning making in an online setting. As such, dechurched Christians can continue to explore spirituality through online communities, providing academic researchers a chance for nuanced analysis of this phenomenon. Packard and Hope (2015, 78) also concluded that “there’s no reason to think that any organization can retain the same practices over a span of decades and retain its success. […] the most successful churches of the future will likely bear very little resemblance to the worship hour-dominated services that have characterized church for years”. Hong Kong workplace ministry researcher Natalie Chan also argues that we should not emphasize a specific type of gathering format but instead focus on renewed spiritual life. Chan sees social media as a suitable space for pastors in place of physical churches, as it is a space where people gather. Chan (2021, pp. 82–85) also suggests that we should not only use social media to attract congregants to physical church, but see social media as a place of dwelling in itself. Perhaps now is the time for Hong Kong Christians to radically imagine what church can look like.

However, the current discussion in Hong Kong is still surrounding getting people to come back to the institutional church, which I find problematic (Church Transitions Cannot Retain 2025). A recent discussion on churches transitioning to formats such as co-working spaces was only focused on attendance growth. Kwan gave two examples: one was a church offering Sunday services in a boxing ring to serve the neighborhood, and the other was the Aspire Church, created by a few younger leaders of the Chinese Full Gospel Church Taipo Church. The Aspire Church brings the Gospel outside of church, such as by creating study rooms for secondary school students. Kwan observes that around 17–19% of the population are Christians within the institutional church, while 10% who claim to be Christians are not. These dechurched Christians are focused on ecology, coffee shops, gathering just to relax together, etc. Dechurched Christians are value driven, while the institutional church is results driven (Church Transitions Cannot Retain 2025). Perhaps that is a subtle way to say the institutional church cares more about their own growth.

As a radical change to existing church paradigms, Ng suggests the “missional nomad”—that is, believers can be part of society and the world to respond to their Christian calling (Mai 2024). That is similar to Yih’s (2023) experiences:

I may have lost my home as a done [another term for a dechurched Christian], yet I have found a new home outwith the institutional community in the secular, messy, uncertain, and fractured world. Within this initially unfamiliar and daunting great expanse of my new home, God continues to show up and I have since found belonging through practices which persist to nurture me spiritually, to stay in connection with my faith and with those around me. Not only have I retained my faith despite the fear expressed by other believers, but the experience of displacement had gifted me with the opportunity to re-discover, or rather, discover for the first time, what it means to live out my faith concretely in my everyday life. I have learnt to seek out and find my church.

Bethany (alias) shared similar sentiments:

I may not behave the same way, I may not even have the same stylistic beliefs, but I have these questions that I’m afraid to bring because in certain places, having those questions means that actually, you have slipped off the wagon […] it is incredibly lonely when you cannot find a community, or you’re afraid that you will not find a community, where the demands are not free to fit in, but for you to fit as you are. […] I’m mindful not to say I hold it openly, because I believe in the church, but I hold each person’s story now with a little bit more care. But I say that to say having struggle for a little bit to find home or feel anchored in a home. I really do think that being a Christ follower, there is power in community. I don’t know that we were designed to do it in isolation. […] I could have sat in church every Sunday, and great, it’s like I take in attendance, but can also be the loneliest and most fruitless time too. It’s not just about sitting there.

Abel (alias) also argues that, after not attending the church regularly, his actions and thoughts changed. He was simply used to attending church and listening to sermons without thinking about it. But now, he keeps reflecting on how his beliefs have changed or stayed consistent. He feels much happier to now be dechurched, as he finds sermons to be boring, and most of the time he slept through the Sunday services. He was at the church only to meet with his friends. Therefore, dechurched Christians can continue to develop their Christian faith and have a Christian community, even outside of the institutional church contexts. However, they will still need a community in which to be Christians together, and resources in order to connect with God. It looks like technology is working this out, with examples such as Abel (alias) being part of a WhatsApp group with his former church members and, increasingly, trained theologians running independent theological training online (Tang 2025). Pastoring and church communities are changing rapidly in the online era, and further studies will have to be conducted on this trend. Nonetheless, it creates a Christian community of sorts for dechurched Christians.

Hong Kong medical doctor and founder of a Christian organization for youth Philemon Yun-wan Choi (2016) said that the pastoral context needs to be considered, as Jesus meets people where they are, so there must be a paradigm shift in religious structure to meet those who are searching for spirituality. The practical issue of churches wanting dechurched Christians to return is that they depend on receiving the tithe to survive as an institution. However, it is not about the church as an institution. It is about individual Christians, their faith, and their relationships with God and with each other. Packard and Hope (2015, p. 8) find that modern religious organizations and institutions are stifling people’s ability to engage with each other and their communities. Institutional churches need to accept the possibly of their organization being erased, if that means individual Christians can flourish in a different form than what we can now imagine. I argue that, as Ecclesia means a gathering of those summoned (Ben Wong 2022, p. 56), the institutional church, as it is, was developed for that reason, and should be able to evolve or cease to exist if it benefits Christ followers. As Packard and Hope (2015, p. 24) write: “The church is wherever God’s work is being done, and too often the way we were treated and the things I saw happen in the institutional church to other people just weren’t in alliance with what we thought God wanted”. Human flourishing should be the focus of Christians—individually and collectively. This does not mean it has to happen within an institutional church. If dechurched Christians, who are thoughtful, contemplative believers, are able to be in community with one another, with the support of online technologies, to experience God together, then they can no longer be called dechurched. They are a church.