Hi Friend! Welcome to the Grounded Podcast 2026! We’re naming this season, ReJesus Everything!
We’re going to explore the current crisis going on within Christianity worldwide, the reasons for it, and work to recover the original foundation of the Christian movement—Jesus himself. I hope you’ll stay with us throughout this series and add your perspective in the chat and comment section. Let’s dive in!
47,000 is a Big Number
Last Sunday 47,000 Americans walked out of church for the last time. They didn’t plan it. They didn’t make a big announcement. They just... didn’t go back. And here’s the thing—most of them still love Jesus.
They’re not rejecting Him.
They’re rejecting This system that has grown up around Him. If you’ve ever felt that tension—if you’ve ever wondered whether it’s possible to love Jesus and still feel deeply unsettled by Christianity as you’ve experienced it—then this season of the Grounded podcast is for you.
The Data
According to research from The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis and Michael Graham, 40 million American adults—16% of the U.S. population—used to go to church but no longer do. This represents the last 25 years, roughly from 1998 to 2023.
Let me put that in perspective. This is the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of the United States. More people have left the church in this period than all the new converts from the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, and Billy Graham’s crusades combined.
And it’s not just happening in America. Across Europe, church attendance has also plummeted. In Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and even among Chinese house churches, the story is the same. Traditional Christianity is in decline across most of the world.
But here’s what’s important to understand: this doesn’t seem to be primarily a story of people rejecting Jesus. It’s a story of people rejecting what their local form of Christianity has become.
According to the Barna Group, 42% of all U.S. adults say they have deconstructed the faith of their youth.
Why We’re Devoting This Season to The Topic of Reconstructing the Christian Faith
This isn’t a fringe movement of angry ex-Christians. This is happening in the pews, in Christian colleges, in pastors’ families, and in missionary communities around the world.
The quiet exodus is real. It’s massive. And it’s accelerating.
Sherry and I’ve spent more than four decades in full-time ministry—inside churches, seminaries, nonprofits, and faith-based organizations. We’ve seen Christianity at its best.
We’ve also seen it drift—sometimes far—from the person it claims to follow.
This is the first episode in a new season of the Grounded podcast. It’s is not about defending Christianity. And it’s not about abandoning faith.
It’s about re-centering everything—belief, discipleship, spirituality, mission—directly on Jesus, not the religion built around Him. The living person Himself.
Most conversations about this subject leave you with two choices:
Defend Christianity as it is
Leave everything entirely
But I believe there is a third way: to reJesus everything. (More on that later.)
The Global Exodus from Institutional Christianity.
Okay, so let’s unpack this.
Something historic is happening beneath the surface of Christianity that many Christians haven’t noticed. Large numbers of people raised in Christianity (we’re talking millions here) are no longer finding spiritual nourishment within its institutions.
In the last five years alone (basically since Covid), approximately 15 million regular church attenders in the USA alone have stopped going to church.
Many others are still attending occasionally, still listening to sermons online, still praying—but with a growing sense of distance and fatigue. They are fading out. This is not rebellion; it’s disillusionment.
Losing Faith in the Train
It’s like being in a once-busy train station late at night. The lights are still on. The signs still work. The announcements are blaring, but fewer and fewer people are boarding the train. There’s no big protest going on. It’s just that fewer and fewer people still believe that train will take them home.
The good news is that despite popular narratives, most people in the current faith crisis are not rejecting Jesus. They are stumbling over the gap between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Christianity they experience in real life.
When belief systems, practices, power structures, or cultural battles seem to contradict Jesus’ words and way, something inside us resists. That resistance may actually be a sign of spiritual integrity.
The Anatomy of a Faith Crisis
Faith crises rarely happen all at once. They begin with small questions, quiet disappointments, unresolved contradictions. Over time, the weight accumulates until the structure can no longer hold. What feels like sudden collapse is often a long, invisible unraveling.
Think of a rope under tension. It doesn’t snap immediately. Individual fibers begin to fray—one by one—until eventually the rope can no longer carry the load. I’m bringing this up because millions of sincere Christians around the world are under that tension, and for many of them, it’s more than their rope can support.
In case you’re thinking of walking away
Many people assume they must choose between staying in Christianity as it is or abandoning faith entirely. But that may be a false choice. Before walking away, it’s worth asking a deeper question: am I leaving Jesus—or am I leaving a system that no longer reflects Him? That distinction changes everything for me.
It’s the difference between leaving a noisy, overcrowded marketplace—and leaving the person you came there to meet.
If you’re listening to this and thinking, “This is me,” I believe that your questions are not a failure of faith. They may be an invitation to return—not to a simpler religion—but to the center of it all. I believe God is moving around the world, responding to those who are reaching out to him even if they feel really disconnected to the institutional forms of Christianity they may have grown up in.
This is a life journey. No rush. No pressure. It’s too important for that.
In this season, we just want to make an honest return to the question that matters most: Who is Jesus—and what does it actually mean to follow Him?
In this season, our series is entitled “Re-Jesus Everything.” If you think this discussion could be important to someone you know and love, please forward a link to them.
In the next episode, we’re going to talk about that strange inner experience many people are having right now—feeling drawn to Jesus, but increasingly alienated from Christianity. Why that split exists. Why it’s growing. And why it might be the beginning of something healthier, not the end of belief.
I would love to hear from you in the comment section on YouTube and on Substack, which is my home, at Quinley.com. Thanks for reading!
