If you have been following my Facebook page over the last several weeks, you have seen a steady stream of posts about choir directors, ministry members, dance ministries, musicians, usher boards, and the complicated and often painful dynamics that live inside them. You have seen coded stories about real people. Real frustrations. Real pain. And real leadership failures that are quietly driving people away from the Black church one Sunday at a time.
This was not random content. This was research.
And this post is here to explain exactly what I have been doing, why I have been doing it, and where this project is going next.
Why People Are Leaving the Black Church: The Question That Started This Project
The conversation has been happening for years. Pastors talking about shrinking membership rolls. Music directors frustrated that they cannot get people to commit. Members quietly pulling back. Former members who stopped going altogether.
These are not abstract numbers. These are people.
According to Pew Research Center data, 46 percent of Gen Z Black Americans and 49 percent of Black Millennials seldom or never attend church. Gallup reports that Black church membership among adults has dropped by nearly 20 percentage points over the last two decades. The Barna Group found that the proportion of Black adults who describe church involvement as desirable fell from 90 percent in 1996 to 74 percent today.
These are not abstract numbers. These are people. People who were raised in the Black church, baptized in it, married in it, and buried their grandmothers from it. People who, somewhere along the way, decided the cost of staying was greater than the cost of leaving.
The question I set out to answer was simple: why?
It Started as a Graduate School Project
I am currently pursuing a Master’s degree in UX/UI Design at Columbus College of Art and Design. UX, or User Experience, is the discipline of understanding how real people interact with systems, products, services, and organizations, and using that understanding to make those experiences work better for everyone involved.
As part of my graduate program, I was tasked with identifying an organization or system in need of improvement and building a research-backed framework for addressing that need. I chose the church.
Not randomly. I chose it because I kept hearing the same conversation in too many different rooms, and nobody in any of those rooms seemed to have a clear answer for why people were leaving or what could actually be done about it.
So I did what UX practitioners do. I went looking for data.
