Well here we go, in no particular order, reason number one why Young Adults are leaving the church. Ladies and Gents introducing…(drum roll please)… Choice Anxiety. If you live in the West you are rich, not just financially, but you enjoy an affluence of options and choices.
On one hand this is fantastic, we have access to millions of opportunities and experiences that our forebears could never dream of. But the flipside of this abundance of choice means that we become paralysed in the face of a million possibilities, choices and variables. Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice notes that the more choices we are given, the more our well -being and happiness deteriorates. Why? Because whatever choice we make we are always comparing our decisions to the myriad of other possible choices. Thus we can never be at peace with the paths that we take, we are always comparing and fretting, we are stuck with a constant gut level anxiety or angst over our choices.
Add to this the fact that daily we are confronted with thousands of advertising messages all of which are designed by experts and marketing psychologists, and each has the purpose to make us feel discontent with our lives in order to make new purchases, and you can see why we are stuck in choice anxiety.
Churches are now seeing a similar marketing driven form of choice anxiety. As churches struggle to make inroads missionally in Western cultures, churches are becoming more and more sophisticated and competitive in their marketing to believers, thus many churches contribute to Christians feeling less satisfied where they are. I remember catching up with a Young Adult pastor of a large and successful young adults ministry. He was absolutely beside himself with worry over a rumour that well known church was going to plant in his suburb. He told me that he estimated that if this happened he could lose hundreds of his young adults.
How does this play out in the faith lives of young adults? Christian young adults are stuck with a constant splinter in the mind, the never ending nagging feeling that they might have made the wrong decision. Maybe they have chosen the wrong church to attend, should they be at the hip contemporary mega-church down the road, or the small emerging church in the next suburb, or should they rejoin their friends and family at the traditional church that they grew up in? Did they even make right choice in following Christ? Maybe they should move Cities, States, Countries? Should they change partners, careers, lifestyles, ethics?
All of these factors create a constant and nagging feeling that young adults must leave their churches in order to find fulfillment. However as soon as you move and set your tent down, that nagging feeling returns. Sadly more and more young adult believers are experiencing a harried, exhausting and restless spiritual homelessness.
