OneNewsNow has an article about a LifeWay study on young adults leaving the church.
A new study from LifeWay Research shows that more than two-thirds of young adults who attend a Protestant church in high school will drop out of church for at least a year before their 22nd birthday.
The study says about 2/3 do come back eventually, at least in some capacity:
Many of those who drop out do eventually return. Among church dropouts who are now ages 23-30, 35 percent currently attend church twice a month or more. Another 30 percent attend church more sporadically. Thus, about two-thirds of those who leave do return at some level.
If you're only attending church a couple of times a month, I have to doubt whether it's doing much good, but I suppose it's better than nothing.
Why do some leave the church?
For example, 27 percent of those individuals said they left church because they wanted "a break from church."
Other reasons cited for keeping them from attending church included: the transition to college (25%), increased work responsibilities (23%), "too busy, though still wanted to attend" (22%), moved too far away from the church they had been attending (22%), and wanted to spend more time with friends from outside the church (17%).
I think if we did a better job as parents, and the church did it's job to be relevant, this percentage would be much lower.
Many Christian parents have either become too busy, or have bought into the world's wisdom that you can just let a child figure out right and wrong for itself. If you do that, they'll pick the world over the church almost every time. Why? The church offers a life of commitment, discipline, striving for selflessness and sacrifice, and hard work...while the world offers a life of no commitment, doing what you want with no guilt, affirms selfishness, a me-centered worldview, little discipline, and the pursuit of whatever you can justify in your own eyes.
Many churches also do a lousy job of demonstrating that they're relevant to everyday life. Either they're too afraid to call for a committed walk with Christ from their young people, or they've sold out to the world's values of sexual permissiveness and non-judgmentalism no standards. If you're a young person and you can choose (1) a life that pretends some level of virtue while holding no real standards, and (2) a life that doesn't hypocritically pretend some standard, while allowing full permissiveness and acceptance of all behaviors...you'd almost be a fool not to choose #2, if you saw those as your only choices.
I came from a background not unlike this, and I walked away from the church for several years after getting out on my own. During that time, I made a wreck of my life and brought more pain on myself than I care to think long about. I'm here to tell you, you don't want to rob your young person of a solid foundation and leave them on track for that kind of destruction.
Parents and churches should decide TODAY: are you serious about the faith you say you hold and do you want your young people to be serious about it...or do you want to continue a life of hypocrisy that your young people can see through from a mile away?
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