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Grounded Podcast: ReJesus Everything!

Grounded Podcast: ReJesus Everything!

Von: Learn to be rock solid even if the world around you is not
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 Millions are walking away from church but not from Jesus. Over 25 episodes, author and missionary Chuck Quinley diagnoses what's gone wrong with global Christianity and offers a radical solution: ReJesus everything. Restore the central authority of Jesus alone as chief theologian and leader of the mission. Strip away 2,000 years of accumulated traditions and return to the simple, powerful path of following Jesus himself—his words, his practices, his mission.

www.quinley.comChuck & Sherry Quinley Christentum Philosophie Sozialwissenschaften Spiritualität
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  • Why People Are Leaving Christianity

    Why People Are Leaving Christianity
    Feb 3 2026
    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 NumberLast 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 DataAccording 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 FaithThis 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 entirelyBut 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 TrainIt’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 CrisisFaith 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...
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    11 Min.
  • Jesus Quest #4: Make a Genuine Sacrifice for Those with Less

    Jesus Quest #4: Make a Genuine Sacrifice for Those with Less
    Sep 15 2025
    Hi Disciple!Money. In 2 Corinthians 8-10 Paul spends three whole chapters just talking about giving money away. There's tipping, then there's truly sacrificing something you love to meet the true need of another person who is suffering and stuck.I was raised in an ascending lower middle class family. My dad's people were hard-working farmers and turpentine gatherers. Not much money in that. My dad's generation got more education and all of them left farming for factory and professional jobs. My dad became an accountant and rose to become the head of the entire international firm. That’s America. This journey took a lifetime.My generation across the extended family got the benefit of our parent’s steady rise. I think all of us got the education we wanted and with it all the opportunities we could pursue. Like all other families, we had times when money was short and we had to work harder to have the things we wanted.We always had food, shelter, and clothing, however. For this, I'm so grateful.For the past 35 years Sherry and I have lived in Southeast Asia and in the last 10 years we’ve been working closely with a ministry focused on trafficking which connects to the deepest kind of poverty. I sat at a table in a communist country with ministry friends talking to a young lady, modestly dressed, about her current work as a prostitute. She said she was from the mountains, doing this job to try and get the money to pay someone to take her to Malaysia so she could get a job in a factory. Poverty is complicated. I’m not sure there’s a clear formula for eradicating it. In general, good food and a chance to get an education seem to be a working prescription. This young lady’s entire life story could've been rewritten had she just been embraced by a local church that loved her and saw her potential and would help her find transformation through Jesus. There she could have put her chaotic childhood to good use as fuel for a determination to break the cycle in her own life and for her family members. She intended to send her factory wages home to them.The body of Christ is so powerful when it pulls together.At other times there’s a disaster and God’s people sacrifice and throw their tools and extra beddings and food in the backs of pickup trucks and fly out to give help in those crucial first hours after a tornado, flood or fire.We can feel God’s smile on us in those times.Paul’s Counsel to the CorinthiansIf you read 2 Corinthians 8-10 you'll find Paul telling the church that they need to put some system into their good intentions. Most people have good intentions. They sincerely want to be a blessing on the Earth.Paul reminds this gifted, wealthy church that good intentions are not enough. They need to make a plan as givers, set giving goals, and start pooling the money up, not waiting for a moment of inspiration.Sherry and I have been able to give every day of our lives to world evangelism and the training of a new generation of leaders because of a set of friends who emerged in the first ten years of our journey (you know who you are). These friends made a plan and told us, “You can count on us monthly for X amount. We won’t stop as long as we have jobs.” We’ve watched our friends return from the field year by year because they lacked a group of friends like ours. Systems matter. Systems make things happen.Maybe it’s an extra 5% set aside to create your giving pool. Maybe it’s that emergency $100 in your wallet. Some kind of plan so that when you see someone pumping gas into a milk jug to carry to their broke down car you can put some money in their hand and give them a ride back to their car.This Jesus Quest is about stepping up your level of sacrifice for those who are in trouble so you can be God’s hands extended to them.It’s a happy lesson, because it’s one of the big ways we can all fulfill our purpose as humans created to be the image of God.Hope you Enjoy this Quest and work on it daily!Every Blessing, ChuckPS: Your daily prompt questions are below the video for this week.Thanks for reading Grounded! This post is public so feel free to share it.Here are the prompts for your devotional time this week:## Jesus Quest Week 4: Making Genuine Sacrifice for the Poor### Day 1: Recognizing the Poor Among Us**Scripture Reference:** Deuteronomy 15:11> "There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land."**Reflection:** This week Jesus Quest has us trying to decide how to rewrite the life story of other people by intervening in life conditions caused by poverty. For example, no little girl dreams of being a prostitute someday—that life generally comes to the poor. Some families suffer from generational poverty and they just can't reach high enough to unlock the door to a better life. God will bless us so we can be a blessing to them and boost them up through interventions so ...
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    8 Min.
  • Jesus Quest #3: Fixing Your Damaged Relationships by Apologizing

    Jesus Quest #3: Fixing Your Damaged Relationships by Apologizing
    Sep 8 2025
    Humans Need Community Humans require community in order to survive. We are not like sharks or some other solitary animal which can do just fine on their own. From the dawn of time, we survive because we build communities that develop into civilization. With that arrangement, there will be security from predators, more than enough food, and extra hands to help everyone survive. The greatest threat to human survival is not a T-Rex, it turns out. We have survived every apex predator that has walked the Earth in our time on the planet. The greatest threat to humans is simply the breakdown in their feelings for one another. Friends become enemies, and the love we felt before can become channeled into a murderous rage. Fixing damaged relationships matters to God.Jesus said that we should not bother to continue with our religious practices of church going and Bible study, making prayers, or offering sacrifices to God, until we have fixed our damaged relationships. He said just leave the gift at the altar and go fix it, then come back and God will want to be with you. He will even leave his blessing on the works of your hands, but only if you fix things. Fixing things often requires an apology on your part.How to Destroy an ApologyThere are two ways to torpedo an apology even after you gathered up the courage to face the problem with someone you’ve hurt. “But”—you can spend 20 minutes, apologizing with absolute sincerity, then, as you wipe your tears and blow your nose this one little word can undo everything you have said. Do not end an apology with the word “but”. You're gonna be so tempted to offer some kind of justification for what you have done so it won't be quite as bad on you but resist the temptation. Just put a period at the end of that apology and say, "So I hope you can forgive me for doing that” and then look at them until they speak. Probably it will get really easy at that point and you may have saved your friendship, working relationship or even your marriage.“If” —this is not quite as bad as the last word, but it is a form of equivocation, sort of like a plea bargain with the judge, when you are trying to get the crime down to a misdemeanor. “I'm sorry if I might've done something that might have contributed…” :-) that's a really cowardly way to start things off.By adding the word “if” to the apology, we muddy the water. Did you do something wrong or not? If you did not, then don't apologize. If you did, then toughen up and give a legitimate apology, admitting what you did. Even if you don’t feel that you did the wrong (and who does?) if you have a messed up relationship there’s probably something you could legitimately apologize for just to get the conversation started. Apologize for any little thing you have contributed, and then say something like, “I value our friendship and I really don't want anything to mess that up.” Smile and wait for them to speak.The point is that as far as Jesus is concerned, it's not OK to scratch off relationship after relationship because something went wrong and you are not willing to go face that person and try to save your relationship.So, if we want to be a disciple of his, we have to live by a higher standard than that. Here’s this week’s Jesus Quest challenge.Grounded is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.And here are this week’s prayer prompts:## Jesus Quest Week 3: Fixing Damaged Relationships - Apologizing and Making Restitution### Day 1: Examining Your Heart and Taking Responsibility**Scripture Reference:** Matthew 7:3-5> "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."Reflection: Before we can effectively repair damaged relationships, Jesus calls us to honest self-examination. This week we are going to do some amazing repair work on our relational network, but it begins with taking responsibility for our own contributions to relational damage. The Holy Spirit will guide us in strengthening these relationships and mitigating any pain being felt by others.Prompts:1. How does Jesus' teaching about removing the plank from your own eye apply to your damaged relationships?2. Have you done anything that contributed to the problems in your damaged relationships?3. What patterns do you see in your relational conflicts that might indicate areas where you need to grow?4. Are you willing to take responsibility for your part in relational damage, even when the other person was also wrong?5. What fears or pride might be preventing you from taking the first step toward reconciliation?6. Who is the Holy Spirit telling you ...
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    11 Min.
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