Young Christians Leaving Church…and Rethinking Faith

The alarming church dropout rate for youth leaving high school is less about young people losing their faith and driven by their alienation from church participation and their search to connect faith with the world they live in, according to new research from The Barna Group.

In “You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church…And Rethinking Faith”, Barna’s David Kinnaman notes that “most young people with a Christian background are dropping out of conventional church involvement, not losing their faith.” (Read: Five Myths about Young Adult Church Dropouts). His research shows that about 3 in 10 young Christians stay involved with the church through college and young adulthood (although the ELCA has reported lower figures).

The research also shows that college is not the “faith killer” many assume it to be, noting that many young people “are emotionally disconnected from church before their 16th birthday.” The study also found that it is the collective culture that is biblically and theologically illiterate, and  young people are not significantly less biblically knowledgeable than their elders.

More challenging news: Millennials are getting married six-years later than Boomers and having children much later in life, questioning the conventional wisdom that young people will return to church on their own when they have families as their parents did. Are church leaders content to wait longer for Millennials to return? Kinnaman asks. “What if (Millennials) turn out to be a generation in which most do not return?”