“Not Just Some Random Dude”: Pastoral Recognition and the Experience of Dechurching

Abstract This article explores how dechurched Christians, often described as “dones,” understand and experience their relationship with their pastor and how these experiences contribute to their departure from church. Drawing on qualitative interview data from twelve participants in Hong Kong and employing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), the study identifies three experiential modes of pastoral expectation: high expectation marked by the wound of invisibility, modest expectation disrupted by perceived inauthenticity, and evacuated expectation shaped by self-protective detachment. Across these modes, a consistent pattern emerges: the experience of not being recognised—of not being seen, heard, or responded to as a person of history and presence—functions as a cumulative and often decisive factor in dechurching. The article develops pastoral recognition as a practical-theological category for understanding how belonging is experienced and eroded within congregational life. It argues that these experiences reveal not only relational disappointment but a tension within contemporary pastoral imagination, raising questions about how practices of recognition, care, and attention are enacted within the church.