Downsizing: Letting Go of Evangelicalism's Nonessentials

by Michelle Van Loon

Overview

Evangelical Christianity has accumulated too many practices, habits, and trends that get in the way of authentic Christian faith. It’s time to downsize.
 
Michelle Van Loon came to faith in Jesus as a Jewish teenager and embraced the first Christian community she found: evangelicals. Over the next fifty years, she enthusiastically worshiped and worked in a wide variety of evangelical groups. Looking back on those experiences today, Van Loon treasures the things that truly deepened her faith. At the same time, she laments the accumulation of baggage—religious ideas and practices that were unhelpful at best, and harmful at worst. Unlike many who have given up on evangelicalism altogether, Van Loon is committed to saving what’s worthwhile in the evangelical faith tradition, and she invites others to join her. Simultaneously critical and hopeful, Downsizing encourages readers to reflect on their own experience with evangelicalism, evaluate the movement’s legacy, and participate in shaping its future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802884626
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	08/19/2025
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Michelle Van Loon’s writing is shaped by her deeply rooted faith in Christ, secular Jewish heritage, spiritual hunger, and storyteller’s sensibilities. She has been a regular contributor to Christianity Today and In Touch Magazine. Her books include Downsizing: Letting Go of Evangelicalism’s Nonessentials; Becoming Sage: Cultivating Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality in Midlife; Moments and Days: How Our Holy Celebrations Shape Our Faith; and If Only: Letting Go of Regret, which won an award of merit in the 2015 Christianity Today Book of the Year awards.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction 
1. It’s Time to Go 
2. Who’s Going with You? 
3. Assess Your Mess 
4. Commit to Purposeful Pruning 
5. Grief Is a Part of the Process 
6. Chaos versus Clarity 
7. Sort It Out 
8. There Are No Shortcuts 
9. Saying Good-bye to Useless Things 
10. Freedom in Leaving Most Everything Behind 
Conclusion: Bride
Appendix: Spiritual Trauma Resources 
Acknowledgments 
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Van Loon’s analyses are sharp and her grasp on evangelical history impressive . . . As an exploration of the complex factors that formed 20th- and early 21st-century evangelicalism, this edifies.” —Publishers Weekly

“This is the time and place for Michelle Van Loon’s book. She has a knack for speaking wisdom into our deepest needs. Here, she does the necessary work of deconstructing our distortions of the gospel and reconstructing the ancient, relevant, and Spirit-filled foundations of our faith. This is a book for all of us. The church will emerge stronger for it.”
—Leslie Leyland Fields, author of Nearing a Far God: Praying the Psalms with Our Whole Selves 

“Downsizing is a gentle and necessary invitation to recognize that perhaps the church has invested too much time and money in things with little lasting value. Michelle Van Loon challenges the assumption that more activity, more ambition, and more noise equal more faith. What if the way forward is actually less—less control, fewer accessories, smaller footprints? In a world where oversized expressions of Christianity often drown out the quiet voice of God, Downsizing offers a vision of quiet resistance: a simpler, sturdier faith that makes room for grace. With clarity and conviction, Michelle paints a picture of life rooted not in the religious rituals we clench tightly in our fists, but in the Spirit—and in love.”
—Tommy Preson Phillips, writer, songwriter, and coauthor of Invisible Jesus: A Book About Leaving the Church and Looking for Christ 

“Across the centuries, the church has made a habit of shedding harmful practices with the hope of future flourishing. Michelle Van Loon’s wisdom helps us see this pattern and apply it to our own cultural moment. Downsizing encourages us to tend to the weeds overwhelming contemporary Christian faith so that the church can bloom again.”
––Jenai Auman, writer, artist, and author of Othered: Finding Belonging with the God Who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized

From the Publisher