"WHY YOUNG PEOPLE LEAVE THE CHURCH - AND WHY THEY STAY" - John Stonestreet and Shane Morris, Breakpoint.org, 01/7/20; https://www.breakpoint.org/ [AS I SEE IT: I have become increasingly concerned that many young people leave high school declaring that, though they have grown up in sthe church, they have no personal faith but merely their parents' religion. I very much which there was more said as to WHY this has happened and specifically how churches can do more to prevent this from happening. - Stan]
You know what I’m happy to leave behind in the 2010s? All those headlines about how Millennials are killing everything. “Millennials are killing mayonnaise,” “Millennials are killing golf,” and “Millennials are killing real estate because they spend all their money on avocado toast.” Yes, those are real headlines. Sadly, there’s at least one Millennial-related headline we can’t leave in the last decade: Millennials are killing churches.
According to Pew Research, four in ten Americans between the ages of 23 and 38 now say they are religiously unaffiliated. This is the biggest drop in religiosity between generations ever recorded.While part of the hemorrhaging is explained by the forty-year decline in mainline Protestant bodies, evangelicals are not off the hook. We cannot say that conservative theology, in and of itself, is enough to shrink-proof your church. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, America’s largest evangelical denomination, just hit a 30-year membership low.
Young people have left evangelical churches and are still leaving, and new data can fix some of our wrong thinking about it. For instance, I’ve heard for years that young people who leave church in their college years will come back, as if nothing can or should be done about it. Let’s set aside for a moment what should be obvious, that we should never be okay with anyone ever rejecting Christ or His church.
According to a study by the American Enterprise Institute, Millennials who drop out of church often end up staying away permanently. Maybe in the past, young adults who wandered away tended to become religious again when they got married and had kids. But things have changed, and there seem to be three main differences.
First, many young adults today who leave the church never had strong religious ties to begin with. Whether their parents didn’t attend services regularly or they were passed back and forth between homes with different beliefs, many young adults weren’t raised with God or His people at the center of their lives.
Second, those who drop out and have gotten married tend to have a spouse who is also not religious. For obvious reasons, this makes them less likely to go through the effort of making it to Sunday services or raising their families in the faith.
Finally, Millennial church dropouts are unlikely to view religion as a necessary part of teaching their own children morality. This is quite a change from past generations, which often returned to church after a youthful rumspringa because they had kids and wanted them to grow up to be good people.
Another claim I often hear these days is that growing number of dropouts is actually a good thing because it is separating true believers from cultural Christians. I get the spirit behind this claim, but it’s misguided in at least two ways.
First, God often uses the culture we are born in to introduce us to Christ. Think about it: Are you more likely to hear about your need for Jesus in a culture with a church on every corner, or in a culture in which churches have been turned into bars? And second, the Gospel still has an effect on those who come to church for the wrong reasons, like social acceptability.
So what lesson can we take from this new data?
First the bad news: We really are losing a generation of young churchgoers, and they’re probably not coming back—at least not if we stay the current course.
The good news: We now know with even greater clarity the difference parents make, and we can apply that with members of Generation Z. Parents who prioritize church as a central part of their family life, who teach their children to take Christianity seriously, and who encourage them to marry fellow believers, have the best chance of seeing not only their children but also their grandchildren in the pews beside them.
All of this is why I’m a fan of Summit Ministries, the premiere Christian worldview training program for young adults.Summit’s two-week-long summer conferences are held in Colorado and Georgia. I’ve seen the results up close and have been a part of watching hundreds of young people learn to defend and embrace their faith in a way that will last.
[italics and colored emphasis mine]
RESOURCES:
"Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back" - Daniel Cox and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux | FiveThirtyEight | December 12, 2019; https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/millennials-are-leaving-religion-and-not-coming-back/
"Summit Ministries - A Student’s Guide to Culture" - https://www.summit.org/programs/
"A Student's Guide To Culture:" - John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle | David C. Cook | January 1, 2020; https://davidccook.org/students-guide-culture/
According to Pew Research, four in ten Americans between the ages of 23 and 38 now say they are religiously unaffiliated. This is the biggest drop in religiosity between generations ever recorded.While part of the hemorrhaging is explained by the forty-year decline in mainline Protestant bodies, evangelicals are not off the hook. We cannot say that conservative theology, in and of itself, is enough to shrink-proof your church. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, America’s largest evangelical denomination, just hit a 30-year membership low.
Young people have left evangelical churches and are still leaving, and new data can fix some of our wrong thinking about it. For instance, I’ve heard for years that young people who leave church in their college years will come back, as if nothing can or should be done about it. Let’s set aside for a moment what should be obvious, that we should never be okay with anyone ever rejecting Christ or His church.
According to a study by the American Enterprise Institute, Millennials who drop out of church often end up staying away permanently. Maybe in the past, young adults who wandered away tended to become religious again when they got married and had kids. But things have changed, and there seem to be three main differences.
First, many young adults today who leave the church never had strong religious ties to begin with. Whether their parents didn’t attend services regularly or they were passed back and forth between homes with different beliefs, many young adults weren’t raised with God or His people at the center of their lives.
Second, those who drop out and have gotten married tend to have a spouse who is also not religious. For obvious reasons, this makes them less likely to go through the effort of making it to Sunday services or raising their families in the faith.
Finally, Millennial church dropouts are unlikely to view religion as a necessary part of teaching their own children morality. This is quite a change from past generations, which often returned to church after a youthful rumspringa because they had kids and wanted them to grow up to be good people.
Another claim I often hear these days is that growing number of dropouts is actually a good thing because it is separating true believers from cultural Christians. I get the spirit behind this claim, but it’s misguided in at least two ways.
First, God often uses the culture we are born in to introduce us to Christ. Think about it: Are you more likely to hear about your need for Jesus in a culture with a church on every corner, or in a culture in which churches have been turned into bars? And second, the Gospel still has an effect on those who come to church for the wrong reasons, like social acceptability.
So what lesson can we take from this new data?
First the bad news: We really are losing a generation of young churchgoers, and they’re probably not coming back—at least not if we stay the current course.
The good news: We now know with even greater clarity the difference parents make, and we can apply that with members of Generation Z. Parents who prioritize church as a central part of their family life, who teach their children to take Christianity seriously, and who encourage them to marry fellow believers, have the best chance of seeing not only their children but also their grandchildren in the pews beside them.
All of this is why I’m a fan of Summit Ministries, the premiere Christian worldview training program for young adults.Summit’s two-week-long summer conferences are held in Colorado and Georgia. I’ve seen the results up close and have been a part of watching hundreds of young people learn to defend and embrace their faith in a way that will last.
[italics and colored emphasis mine]
RESOURCES:
"Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back" - Daniel Cox and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux | FiveThirtyEight | December 12, 2019; https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/millennials-are-leaving-religion-and-not-coming-back/
"Summit Ministries - A Student’s Guide to Culture" - https://www.summit.org/programs/
"A Student's Guide To Culture:" - John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle | David C. Cook | January 1, 2020; https://davidccook.org/students-guide-culture/
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PRAYER MATTERS:
"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against
the disorder of the world. - Karl Barth
the disorder of the world. - Karl Barth
"Prayer is inviting God into a seemingly impossible situation and trusting/resting in His love and grace to accomplish His perfect will in His perfect time and for His greatest glory. Intercession is one of the great privileges AND responsibilities for EVERY believer."- Stan
World-Wide Prayer Requests:
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This week, pray with us as we focus on Christians living in countries on the World Watch List and bring you the prayers of your sisters and brothers who follow Jesus, no matter the cost.
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The article states that in light of the drop in church attendance by Millenials, a generation of believers may be lost, but that it shows the strong impact parents have on the faith of their children. I don't think it's enough to have children go through the motions... but rather to encourage children to have a relationship with Jesus.
ReplyDeleteAre Millennials "killing" churches? I respectively think that might not be the right question. Such a question implies that it's the fault of Millennials that church attendance goes down. But has the church failed them? Has the church fallen prey to hypocrisy, or has it lost its saltiness?
In a culture of death, indifference, and disrespect, the church is supposed to be a light in the darkness, a wellspring of life that people are drawn toward. If the the church fails to be that, then people will not stay. We are the church - let our lives be the stuff that makes people say, "Whatever they have, I want it."
-herb