Gene Veith notes that
70 percent of 18-year-olds who attended church regularly in high school quit by age 23: they don’t like it. And by age 30, 34 percent still have not rebounded. That means one in four young Protestants has left the church.
… So churches lose three-fourths of their young people. About half of those eventually come back. But one-fourth never do.
An anecdote to illustrate those numbers – my daughter caught up with some old friends this weekend and got the scoop on some of my former students. Just from a group of about 30 kids that I taught a computer class to one semester (in a Christian school), one has died from a drug overdose, two are addicted to crack cocaine, three are strippers, and there are several other drug users and criminals. The kids who lack a dramatic story are still largely unchurched. Her friends had more stories to tell, but she asked them to stop; she didn’t want to know any more.
I wonder if the reason why the church is failing to minister to our own children is because the divorce rate for Christians is just as high as that of non-Christians. There are consequences to having that many broken homes. When parents service their own emotional needs at the expense of keeping their commitments, we should not be surprised when children do what feels good at the moment, or at the consequences of that behavior.
Churches are losing people (young and old) because they aren’t embodying Christ. People who grow up with parents of faith and make the decision to follow Christ just because they’re told to do so – they don’t actually know what it means. Christians use words like “become saved” and “accept Jesus” but don’t live out lives that show what it means. I regret that I can’t remember who said “preach the gospel always, use words if necessary,” but Churches are relying on sermons and little else to preach the gospel when the church body itself is responsible for delivering this message through their lives. Churches are based on capitalism and popular culture far more than they are reflective of the life of Jesus Christ. Young people aren’t dumb – we know when something isn’t worth our time. And the Jesus that the church represents doesn’t seem to be worth giving over our comfortable albeit mediocre lives for. If anybody wants to find out more about this topic, I would recommend two books I’ve read recently which are “Blue Like Jazz” by Don Miller or “Irresistible Revolution” by Shane Claiborne. Happy searching!