I saw a statistic this morning that spoke volumes about the current state of the American church. A recent survey revealed that 40% of regular churchgoers believe the church is largely irrelevant, while only 27% of the unchurched hold the same view. While the researchers may have been surprised by this, I wasn’t. Here’s why.

According to the Church Answers Research team, which surveyed 604 people from various backgrounds, there’s an “unexpected” gap in how the churched and unchurched perceive the church. The findings reveal that both groups generally agree that churches are good for their communities—almost 6 out of 10 unchurched people think so.

Yet the dichotomy arises in other areas. Regular churchgoers say they trust their churches and pastors but find them largely irrelevant, while the unchurched view the church as relevant but lack trust in the institution and its leaders.

The researchers explain this as a result of two main issues: insularity and scandals. With so few churches focused on genuine evangelism, they’ve become closed-off social circles filled with long-time believers rather than new converts. Churches aren’t reaching the unchurched, who instead form opinions based on the scandal-ridden headlines they see.

This, the researchers conclude, leaves churches with a self-imposed perception problem—the sense of irrelevance felt by regular churchgoers—and a self-inflicted trust issue in the eyes of the unchurched.

And while there is certainly a lot of truth to that, these issues actually reveal something far more obvious to me. The unchurched may view the church as relevant, but that’s only because they have no idea how far these mainline churches have apostatized and made themselves irrelevant. They hold an abstract, idealized view of what “church” should be—a home of truth and morality.

The reality, however, is that the vast majority of these institutions are empty shells, mere shadows of their former selves, more focused on appeasing culture than preaching the gospel. These so called “churches” have essentially fully embraced secular ideologies, often wearing them proudly as they march alongside the world, affirming sin rather than proclaiming the truth.

The unchurched see an idea of “relevance” in these churches because they can’t perceive the theological rot inside while the ones who attend these churches see themselves as irrelevant because they’ve made themselves indistinguishable from the world.

The reason so many regular churchgoers view their own churches as irrelevant isn’t because they misunderstand the purpose of the church but because these institutions have, in fact, become irrelevant to Christ. They’ve abandoned their mission, trading biblical fidelity for “cultural engagement.”

Instead of convicting, they now entertain—instead of standing firm, they bend to every wind of secularism. They are no longer sanctuaries of truth but are mere reflections of the culture, dressing themselves up in rainbow flags and parroting the latest social justice slogans, as though pandering were the gospel’s command.

In reality, if this survey had focused solely on conservative, Bible-believing churches—those that uphold and proclaim the unadulterated gospel—we would see a vastly different outcome. Churches that remain dedicated to the truth don’t have this crisis of confidence because they stand on the firm foundation of Scripture rather than the shifting sands of public opinion.

Such faithful congregations would view their mission as eternally relevant, regardless of how far the culture deviates from reality, because they recognize that the gospel itself is eternally true.

This statistic is not some call to action for the faithful to “rebrand” or “win back” the unchurched. Rather, it is a telling indictment of what the apostate church has become: irrelevant to the kingdom of God, wandering ever closer to the judgment it seems so eager to ignore.

While the world may continue to admire the husk of these false churches, true believers recognize that they are no longer vessels of truth but of compromise, destined for judgment.