Gone are the days when young adults attended church because they're "supposed to," said Scott McConnell, associate director of LifeWay Research.
Today's Christian News Online - The Christian Post
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (JN 8:32)
CP HOME
> church > Polls/reports
Survey: Reasons Why Young Adults Quit Church
By
Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter
Wed, Aug. 08 2007 03:22 PM EDT
[-] Text [+]
Prev1Next
Most Commented Articles
La. Governor Signs 'Science Education Act'
Obama Prying Loose Evangelicals from Republicans
Federal Marriage Amendment Re-introduced in Senate
Why I Thank God for Charles Darwin
Anglican Head Sees Risks in Conservative Proposals
PCUSA Assembly Approves Deleting Gay Clergy Ban
Arizona Puts Marriage Amendment on Ballot - Again
-
Megachurch Sets Record Straight on Recalibrating
PCUSA Assembly Approves Deleting Gay Clergy Ban
When Car Seats Become Church Pews
Obama Prying Loose Evangelicals from Republicans
Conservative Anglicans Avoid Split, Launch Fight against Liberalism
Breakaway Anglicans Win Property Battle
La. Governor Signs 'Science Education Act'
Featured Advertiser Links
Comments
Chocolate
Go look into your mirror and you'll find the answer to that question. When I look into the multitude of mirrors around myself and everyone else in humanity and the human experience. the human testimony, creation, history, etc., I see the blatant and inevitable reality of God.
Of course, you are going to respond to that by insisting that I am only seeing that I choose to see. And I will respond to that by quoting Abraham Lincoln, "The substance and character of a person is like a tree under the sun. The shadow (evidence) is what we choose to make of it. The tree is the real thing." I can describe and regard the shadow of the tree as anything I want or, as you said, choose to believe it to be. But I cannot make the tree go away by choosing not believe it is there.
All you've accomplished is simply IGNORING God. Keep in mind that every time you draw a breath or each time your heart beats, it happens by His permission.
Chocolate
Well, okay. I just "chose to believe" that you don't exist. But does that make you go away. Does that mean that you don't?
the main reason young people leave the church is because what we are doing (we=the church) is not working. I was a youth pastor fo 7 years, AND TAUGHT MY STUDENTS HIGH OCTANE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE, (no fun a games, bet we had fun learning together). The students that remained strong throughout college (that I could count on one hand), were the students that have strong family support. The church today is not holding the Dads accountable for Deut. 6 and Eph.5:12-6:4. If we win and train Dads to be the Biblical model of headship in the home as Christ is head of the Church, we will win and retain the family and the next generation.
I think young folks fall away because that want to taste what the world has to offer and by
attending Church would only go against what they're seeking. Thier parents held them accountable prior and any excuse is only NOT with God.' You shall have no other God's Before
Me". I think when they return it's because it took that time to change thier rebellous character or least prove that He who began a good work will continue until we are complete. Commitment to
Jesus Christ wholeheartedly is rare with young people but when they do they're a beautiful aray of strength to the Church Body. Let's keep Praying for them because much of the end time
prophecy is fulfilled. REMEMBER Jesus pose the ? would He find any faithful when he returns...
WHY DOES IT MATTER IF YOUR THERE TO SERVE GOD. WHEN WE GO TO THE HOUSE OF THE LORD WE"ER GOING TO WORSHIP GOD. AND TO HEAR WHAT GOD HAS TO SAY TO US THOUGH HIS TRUE PASTORS OF GOD. IF YOU WOULD READ THE BIBLE YOU WOULD KNOW GODS PLANS FOR YOUR LIFE. GOD WORD IS TRUE. HIS IS A GOD THAT CAN NOT LIE
I believe young people any age, are caught up in the marvels of the current age. They also think they need to see positive feedback from their beliefs. I myself am 42yo, i do have faith and belief, but even myself wonder where is the signs the god is out there. Where is the prophets, where are the miralcles and divine interventions of the past. God took the slaves out of Egypt out of bondage, but what miracle intervention has he weaved to save the Jews from Hilter, after all that mass killing, why didnt he intervene? As a christian, I know i shouldnt question his reasons. But society, especially younger people, will question this.Young people, seem to need more tangible ways on proof god is listening. How can we possibly just instill faith to them? and others who need to see some current divineness in this world. Christian teens who are shying away from the church need the feeling of brotherhood in belief. More so churches seem to not be careing for individuals, as they want money, or bragging what they do or have. Jesus says, whereever two or more gather to worship him is a church. Big churches to me have the problem of being indifferent to individuals. They also come up with their own doctrines. One should only practice what is in the bible, not ad to it.
It is not just young people that quit attending church services. I am 47-years-young and for a time I quit attending mainly because of the garbage being taught and the total ignoring of people other than young marrieds with or without chidren. When those kids grow up there is nothing unless they marry and have children. If they do not there will never be anything for them. I'm a prime example of this. Most of what goes on and being taught is NOTHING like the word either clearly says in word or deed.
When you see a church where the leaders value every person AND trains ALL OF THEM for works of service as the Bible teaches. If not more and more people will leave. Many of my most committed Christian friends are staying away from the church because they feel like they are wasting their time. They want to serve the Lord with a body of believers. They want to see a church function like they did in the Bible.
I was fortunate to find a place not too long ago. It is a rare find. If I had not I would still be gladly out of church. I dare a preacher to try and scare me into being somewhere that is not like the word of God says it should be. They cannot use the verse 'do not forsake the assembly' to say I will fall from grace if I do not attend somewhere. The best thing I did was to stay out. It gave me a chance to see what I really believed, study and meditate the word AND find out stuff I accepted that was wrong. I can be a pretty cut and dry person when dealing with my life. HOWEVER the young people of today are way bolder and are quicker to tip away from anything they do not want to do. They want the reality of the gospel. Many of them cannot relate to what helped their parents. I hope that they will find reality in Christ and if possible a place where they can experience that reality with a group of believers.
Don't judge and assume that people that do not attend church have backslid or are likewarm. Many are not but just refuse to waste time in something that makes no sense Biblically to them. I know I do not want any of my works burned because I did religious stuff instead of what the Lord wants me to do. The only one that can really deternine that is the Lord Himself.
Amen . Man can not be satisfied without God.
DoubtingThomas and Anarchy,
I love your answers. They have so much sense.
Dear Art,
<In place of the Power of God the Church now depends on dinners,puppet shows and the like.>
Time has changed. Church is trying hard to keep its parishioners in ‘place’. If it doesn’t do ‘dinners, puppet shows and the like’, they might loose even more adherents.
<When the Church gets back to doing things the Bible way,Thus Gods way things will change.>
Art, do you give a thought to the fact that the bible was written centuries ago? You have to work hard to find the connections between the bible and the contemporary time. Of course I’m not talking here about common sense morals of most societies like “don’t kill”, “don’t steal”, etc
Does your bible have any hints or say it openly and directly that a woman is just a servant of a man; a woman is nobody; she should be submissive to a man? Are you going to teach this and the like in your church classes? Or are you going to teach common sense morality that also exists in the society apart from any religion, yours or somebody else’s.
<And for those who beleive that God is just a matter of opinion,Wake up before it is to late.>
Yes, Art, ‘god’ is just a matter of opinion. You choose to believe it exists. I choose to believe that nobody’s god does.
Maybe the kids have actually read the Bible and started noticing the contradictions, failed prophecies, and the utter lack of decency and ethics contained within it and decided, "Wow, this god character has killed as many people as anyone else on Earth. That's not a loving god. And if Jesus didn't come back to change a jot or tittle of the old law (Matt 5:18), then barbarism it is! Plus, your just picking and choosing the parts to teach. I'm out of here." Just a thought. Besides, you can be ethical, moral members of society without belief in a god, so who needs it.
Once a young person is baptised into the church they are forgotten about, no one follows up on them, They are a number added to the church's roll. Their educiation in the faith is not carried out like it should be. When this happens they loose faith in the reason they joined the church. I don't think a person should be baptised the week after they say they want to joint the church. there should be schooling in what it means to be a member if christ's church and if they can't meet this goal then they shouldn't join the church. This is the reason I think a lot of young people stop going to church, because not one care about what happends to them.
The Church has turned gifts into positions. Fellowships into bussinesses. Until 330 years after Christ, they met in homes. No one was an oracle. They all shared. Then they rape people of money inusing Malachai when Malachai clearly is directed at Leviticus priests and not Isreal. Yet somehow the word Tithe is used when it is never used in the New Testament. A close look shows it was never about money. Yet todays Church makes it all about money.
Pastors were invented by Pope Gregory. Orators came into being in the time of Constantine. We have man made structure now and not what God intended. The intimacy is gone. Instead we have heritics like Rick warren leading who is enclusive. We have cross faith garbage that has people like Richard Foster and Eric McManus who teach herecy and implement eastern cults into their brand of Christianity. Thebn you have the word of faith people greatly misrepresenting God's word. Its downright sad.
But God is God
Churches are instruments of brain washing, no wonder the more educated thinkers leave and the lazy ones don't see the need to go since TV delivers equally adequate superstition.
Worship of Saklas is wrong. Its better to be an atheist than to engage in such practice. There is no confusion in Gnosticism. Jesus tossed the Law and suggested the ethic of reciprocity is better. He was right. I can see why the young are so important, the old are from the era when lynchings were still practiced. Young is better.
my heart cries over this issue. it's not supposed to be this way... God will make it right though.
The reason why young adults are leaving the church after they leave home is due to the lack of parental teaching (family devotions) during the early years, extending into the teenage years of these young adults. Parents have passed the responsibility of teaching their children to "fear the Lord" onto the church, specifically youth pastors and leaders. The absence of committed family devotions directly contributes to the complacency and non commitment of young adults after they leave home. All the hard work that youth pastors have done is quickly eradicated because parents are not fulfilling God's obligations to parents in teaching them while they are young , continuing on into their adult years and if the youth group or pastor is not where the child is, there is no accountability.
God's promises to parents regarding their children must be trusted. Parents must fulfill their God given responsibilty to teach their children the "ways of the Lord." If parents will obey God's commands, I believe we would see young adults fulfilling leadership roles within our churches instead of relying upon poor excuses that blame the behavior of others for their lack of church attendance.
AMEN ARTM! I would encourage leaders and others whether Baptist, Pentecostal or another group of believers, to preach the gospel of the kingdom over a particular denomination. Jesus never created denominations within the body of Christ. Denominations can become "demon nations" satan tries to conquer the church by the distraction of division. That's the reason why Europe is suffering spiritually and America is getting that way. While souls are dying, some "christians" are in fighting, and their blood in on our hands. Me must repent. Our youth need a God connection not another program.
When churches and groups of churches become more focused on their denominational walls than discerning the body of Christ and obedience. Every Christian must be filled and directed by the Holy Spirit of God. Satan wants to fragment and divide the body of Christ so that we are not effective because he knows that if we have become offended at another member of Christ's body the favor of God lifts and humanism begins to set in. When humanism and self-propelled effort become the driving force, carnal-minded attitudes about the Christian life and seeker-friendly strategies are developed and passed down to the next generation, who in turn trust in formulas and traditions of past success more than the word of God and God's Holy Spirit. Some of them then begin to wonder what made the saints long ago so successful and wonder how they must have walked in the power of God. Those great Christian leaders of the past become memorialized and turn into religious icons of their veneration or worship because they must have been closer to God than themselves. Jesus Christ is our only example, mediator, and King. Any other mediator or system of belief that replaces the Lord, who IS THE CHRIST (not "a" christ), is ANTI-CHRIST. Now we see what happened to the Catholic Church. Today, who are those figure head examples? Charles Finney, Smith Wigglesworth, Chales spurgeon, John Wesley, George Washington, William branum, Johnathan Edwards, Jerry Fallwell, etc. Every believer has been called to walk in the same power and life in the holy spirit that the disciples of Christ Jesus did. They read and lived the word of God through that one-on-one relationship they had with the Lord.
Without the Holy Spirit we cannot even be saved nonetheless holy before the Lord. Without holiness no man can see God. The Lord calls us to have an active, one-on-one relationship with Himself. Unless we have unction from God we will not function right as His body. What does a person’s body look like from the outside when every part does not receive orders from the persons mind? It appears epileptic. That's how we appear when we are not walking with the Lord God in obedience, loving our brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.
http://evolutionfacts.blogspot.com/#the_message_that_we_were_born_to_hear
As a teacher at a Christian school (Lutheran), I see souls, not statistics, faces with unique personalities, not numbers on some researcher's spreadsheet. In our efforts to proclaim the awesome love of Christ, we have competition from a society that employs every technological marvel to undermine the work of the Spirit. It is a battle, and for young minds and hearts, there is such a tendency to take the trendy over the timeless, to go with the shallow rather than deepen the faith. The number of positive role-models in TV-land and other media outlets won't have wholesome as a job-description.
Soon another year of school will begin, featuring those very youth that make up the statistical extravaganzas. We get more opportunities to promote Christ over and above any other. Pray for us, and let the Spirit do what He does best.
Young people are leaving the Church because for the most part The power of God is no longer there. The Gifts of the Holy Spirit have given way to entertainment.
In place of the Power of God the Church now depends on dinners,puppet shows and the like.
When the Church repents and declares again the True Gospel of Christ young people will be strengthened. When the Church gets back to doing things the Bible way,Thus Gods way things will change.
And for those who beleive that God is just a matter of opinion,Wake up before it is to late.
The Book of Acts is Gods Pattern for the New Testament Church, when we gat back to the basics then the Church will be the Church God intended. Art.
Hello, HampsteadPete!!! Haven't you seen what's going on in this world? Oh, yes, it's very very interesting! They're selling eachother doomsday weapons! Oh, yeah, it's true! They're selling them to people, for example, who enjoy chopping off the heads of teenage girls (Saudis), they're selling them to all kinds of people that cannot be trusted. And here you come with this brilliant advice that people should leave God and become some scientific hero who discovers the cure for cancer or whatnot, when the human race as a whole is on the brink of total extinction. I have several verses for you, if you care to hear them. "The advice of a fool is a trap." And. "Woe to the man who trusts in man." Take your advice to the nearest alcoholic bar and try it out on the blasted drunks there, they are most willing to listen to anything foolish, just do not come here with your absolute nonsense.
"The fool has said in his heart "There is no God" Psalm 14:1
Woouldn't it be a sham if our children didn't participate in the abomination that our current society is becoming. Who knows, they could be the ones to clone a human and billygoat or develop the next great plague. Think what you are helping them miss out on.
Stastistics like these represent the greatest hope our country and the world has. Every religious "drop-out" is a potential evolutionary biologist, stem-cell researcher or scientist of some kind. Those who awaken and discover they really don't need an imaginary friend will be our future leaders. It's only a matter of time before this country follows Europe into post-theism.
If you would not like your own kids to participate in the next century of advancement, feel free to continue home schooling yet another generation of ignorance.
"We wanted to get at the real situation with clear research " Ed Stetzer
Yea, right. All that was shown was the answers teenagers gave and a few weak suggestions, never touching the real problem: that the vast majority of kids went to public schools where they were indoctrinated with secular humanism for 12 years. Finally, when these kids become teenagers, they drop out. Notice NOTHING in the research was given about public school influence, homeschool, etc. if you want a REAL study, get three groups of kids, one group that has been in public school all along, another that has been in Christian school all 12 years, and a thrid group that have been homeschooled. What you will find in striking, while most public school kids are abandoning the church in their later teenage years, most homeschool kids are staying. If we as Christians were obeying the biblical educational mandate to give our children a thoroughly Christian education, this drop out rate would not be near this severe.
Christians: give your kids a throughly Christian education with homeschool or Christian school, make sure they are receiving a fully developed christian worldview 24/7 instead of goverment school indoctrination for 12 years, and this problem will begin to diminish.
I hope that those at Lifeway research will have the guts to shine their light on this area of education and it's effect on church retention. I am afraid that they don't have the courage, but if they could set their biases against homeschool aside and research it and publish the results, the church worldwide would be helped.
From my own personal experience, more damage has been done to the Evangelical church by trying to change these numbers then would have been done had plague hit the churches.
In a vain attempt to "keep the young" the older members of the churches have been subjected to an endless barrage of worship, music and theology changes designed to help keep the church from losing these very kids. It's not bad enough that our elder members are treated like invisible beings by the rest of the world, now the church treats them that way too.
Has anyone ever considered, just possibly that is how it's supposed to be. Kids leave home (the church) some return...we hope all return. That is the way things are supposed to work. We plant the seed and God gives the increase. It's how it works when preaching to adults, why can't we accept this with children who are turning into adults. Why do we think that somehow God cannot handle things on His own.