It’s almost cliché at this point (at least among apologists) to throw out the statistics about how many young people are leaving the church. But just in case you haven’t heard yet the figures are something like 65-75% of churched students are leaving the church after high school, many whom are never to return. This is indeed an epidemic and, even for people like me who are really terrible at mathematics, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that the church cannot endure forever with these kinds of losses. We must find a way to either stop these losses or make up for them or Christianity in America will be nothing more than something you study unfavorably in a secular history class about 100 years from now.
The church must either find a way to stop the hemorrhaging of our young people or we must make up for those losses through the means of evangelism and new converts. But, ideally, shouldn’t we be doing both? Shouldn’t we be giving our kids good reason to stay in church and follow the Lord Jesus? Shouldn’t we be winning people’s hearts and minds to the Lord Jesus all the time? What is wrong with the church today that we cannot keep our kids and we cannot replace the loss of them fast enough to keep up through evangelism?
When students who were raised in church make their exit, the two most common answers we hear from them as to why they left are “intellectual doubt” and “hypocrisy in the church.”
These young people don’t feel they can maintain their Christian beliefs in light of what they learn from the media (social or formal) which informs them that science is sufficient to explain everything in the universe, the Bible is full of errors and no different from other archaic religions in the world, that Christians are homophobic hate mongers, that human beings all really just highly evolved animals and that truth is just a social construction and there are no objective moral values that are binding for all people. God has been edged out and everything they learn in college and on YouTube points to the fact that their parents and pastors either lied to them or they are just back-wooded ignorant people that don’t know any better.
And talk about hypocrisy? The church is full of people who say one thing and do another. These kids are taken to church every Sunday and Wednesday and told that all of this stuff is very important but then the Bible is never opened in the home, the family doesn’t pray together and in many sad cases mom and dad divorce each other. Why should we expect that any young person should keep on believing in what we say is important but which we deny daily with the way we live our lives?
Allow me to add one more reason they are leaving the church, and I think it’s one of the biggest reasons that not enough people are talking about. They are leaving the church because they were never a part of it. I mean this in two ways.
First and foremost these kids never learned the gospel or, at least, they never accepted it. They have been taught moralism from the Bible and what God demands of them (or on the flip side that God loves everyone the same and expects nothing at all from them, they are fine just the way they are) and they are leaving after high school because they are lost! Why go to a building and play church if you are not part of God’s church (you know, in the biblical sense of church that means followers of Christ and not just a building)? The gospel has to be taught, constantly. Never assume the gospel, always preach it like it was the first time they were hearing it. If people have a relationship with Jesus that is real, that is, they understand their sin, need for a Savior and have repented and trusted in Jesus for new life then they won’t go anywhere. As Peter said to Jesus when Jesus asked the apostles if they would leave him also just like the crowd had, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” If you really get the gospel, you won’t leave Jesus behind.
But let me toss to you the other nuance of my point that they are leaving the church because they were never part of it. We have done something really hurtful to ourselves as the church in America. We have separated our students from the life of the church. From the moment of birth we have nursery, then children’s church, then youth group, and then….oops….then they’re gone. We have put our kids into various corners of the church so that what? So that “we can get fed.” I hear it all the time. You can’t have little ones making noise in the service or at a Bible study because that distracts from people getting fed.
May I just say that church is more than just about you “getting fed” (that’s churchanies for listening to a sermon or Bible study)? Because it is. Church is about coming together as a family in Christ and worshipping God corporately, singing songs of praise, the word being preached, interacting with other believers in fellowship, all of which kids can do too. We need to not be so quick to shuffle our kids off to some corner of the church to be with just kids and we should be quick to model for them how to be a part of the church. Kids need to sit with their parents and other adults. They need to see mom and dad singing, putting money in the offering plate/box, turning pages in their Bible and following along with the pastor. Kids need to see that “this is what we do as a family.”
I’m not advocating that we rid ourselves of all peer group interaction. I’m not against having a student ministry, or even children’s Sunday school, but we need to make sure we are intentional about integrating kids into the life of the church. Intergenerational Bible studies and small groups and, for the love of all that is good and holy, stop children’s church! Don’t send the kids out of the service! Will it be noisier at times? Yes. Will you as a parent have to work harder and maybe miss some things the pastor says? Yes. But the dividend is called discipleship and it starts at home with the parents and the church as a whole has a responsibility to encourage young people to be engaged in worship and service in the church.
We have to, have to, have to answer these problems if the church is going to turn things around. We have to put a regiment of robust apologetic teaching that can combat the secularism our kids are facing. We really do have good reasons to believe Christianity is true. Better ones than our opponents have!
We have to take our faith seriously and live it out daily. No more going to church, time to be the church. Parents, read your Bibles in front of your kids and with your kids and pray for them and with them and not just on Sunday and Wednesday…is this real to you or isn’t it? Do what the Bible says, apply it to your life.
Finally we have to teach kids the gospel and not just moralize them to death with Bible stories and commands and, in turn, we need to disciple them as parents and as the church as a whole. We have to stop segregating the kids out of the life of the church. Show them that they matter, they belong, they can learn with us, they can serve with us and they can do Christian life with us. Heck, we might just learning something from them!
