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I can’t say I have polled an official amount of people concerning this ideology of people who Fear Church. What I can say is there are a whole slew of men and women around the world who are absolutely petrified to let their clean, crisp converse enter the doors of a church. Many won’t admit it up front but if you sit down with them for a bit of time you will be able to complete an inception extraction. Hate, fear and prejudices pour out of em like an episode of Jerry Springer meets Cops meets Celebrity Rehab.

Molestation, judgement and fearful moments at church are enough for these folks to see M. Night Shyamalan “dead people” any time they see a crucifix. Church stories include men and women locked in rooms and told they cannot leave until the Holy Spirit touches them or a demon departs. Is this church or Guantanamo Bay some may ask?

Since it is America and I am American, this sort of epidemic should be labeled. We label every kind of disorder and so why not add another to the mix. If you are one of the one’s or know someone who is petrified of their shadow touching a church, then they suffer from Ecclesiophobia – The Fear of Churches.

Let’s just say someone has tendencies toward this label of ecclesiophobia, what do you do? Can the church or your church begin to implement procedures to cut back on this growing movement of ecclesiophobia? Or, do we just pass them by and say those people really do Hate Church and are unreachable?

As I was digging for some other findings of the Fear of Churches I stumbled upon this guys blog in which he deals with this topic of ecclesiophobia. This guy George Saylor gets what is happening and has some King Kong balls for battling this fear. Huge kudos to him and his work in Canada.

I would love to say there is official statistics out there concerning ecclesiophobia but there just is not. It appears if you have a Fear of Church you just simply never step foot in a church or avoid it at all cost. This is an obvious battle with all churches today. Catholics are continually under fire for molestation, Pentecostals accused and on YouTube attempting to cast out homosexual demons, Evangelicals and Independents just wanting your money, Baptists screaming at abortion clinics and so on.

When an individual is diagnosed with a phobia there is an extensive treatment process. The three basic procedures are flooding, counter-conditioning and systematic desensitization. You can read about those here.

The most important part in all of this is someone has to walk through the phobia treatment with them. Hand in hand, side to side, step for step, terror by terror, until they can confidently stand tall by themselves. It is a battle, a process and requires patience and probably some long suffering.

Have you thought about it like that before?

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