“We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in US history. It is greater than the First and Second Great Awakening and every revival in our country combined...but in the opposite direction.” This is the conclusion of the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching in America by sociologists Ryan Burge and Paul Djupe. In The Great DeChurching, pastors Jim Davis and Michael Graham unpack why and how over the past twenty-five years, forty million of those who formerly attended church no longer do so. There is no one reason for such a wide-ranging phenomenon, but one theme was that for many who had dechurched, the faith they had received in their early churched experience was too thin. It didn’t answer their questions, nor give them satisfactory answers to the questions of identity that greet us in today’s world.
Six months ago, my wife, Angel, and I released Trading Faces: Removing the Masks that Hide Your God-Given Identity. We wrote the book because of our passion to help come alongside those who struggle to know who they are. Our hunch is that most of us know less about who we are than we might think. Reflecting on our journeys, we considered how often our identities were rooted in our vocational callings or role as a spouse or parent. The spiritual consequences of our lack of understanding were significant.
It’s not an accident that Paul frontloads his letters with language that reminds us who we are in Christ. Look at his letter to the church at Ephesus, for instance, where he reminds them that they are saints (1:1), chosen (1:4), predestined (1:5), and adopted as sons (1:5). And that’s just the first five verses!
We don’t consider ourselves the identity experts but fellow sojourners on the journey. If we’ve learned anything in our years writing and now launching Trading Faces, it is how much longer the journey ahead is and how much more our identities need to be rooted in him.
In the first paragraph of his magnum opus Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin writes, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”
We pray that Trading Faces is part of your journey to knowing yourself more and knowing your Creator and Savior more deeply. We also pray that it helps those who read it swim upstream in a culture that is so confused about questions of identity. May it help point to biblical answers to existential questions that have drawn many away from faith.
One of the things that we’ve heard from others in this process is the benefit of reading Trading Faces in a group. We’ve learned of young adult, women’s, and small groups who have benefited from reading it together. We have created a free study guide that we’ve heard has been well-received: just shoot me an email and I’ll send it to you.
If you’ve benefited from Trading Faces, would you consider reading it with your group or buying it for a friend? Other ways you can help little-known authors, such as ourselves are by posting Amazon and Goodreads reviews. We also would love to hear any feedback you have. We welcome your comments via email and will do our best to get back to all who respond.
We pray that we are those who know Christ deeply and are known deeply by him.
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Photo by Andrey Zvyagintsev on Unsplash