I recently spoke to a group of Bible College students. As an icebreaker I asked them to go around the room and tell me what their name was and what church they attend. One third replied ‘My Name is __________ and I go to _____________ church’. Another third replied that they are not going to church, and the final third replied in this telling way. ‘My name is ____________ and I am hanging in/struggling to go to/trying not to leave_____________ church’. The facts are this, all across the Western church young adults are leaving the church around the age of 25, there are few signs that they will return. I have encountered this phenomenon in every church denomination, tradition and style, it is the same in successful churches and those that are struggling. To find out why lets turn to a seventies Sci-Fi movie.
Logan runs out of the Church
I am not really a fan of Sci FI. I must however admit a fondness for kitschy old Sci Fi, you know the stuff that they did in the 60′s and 70′s which was supposed to show what the future would look like. These films intrigue me because they are meant to be visions of the future yet they look old, kind of like a retro future if that makes sense. The movie Logan’s Run is one of those kitschy seventies Sci Fi films which is great because although it is set in the 23rd century, it just is so seventies.
The movie is set in a future domed city. Life is seems like some kind of utopia, everyone is good looking, everyone sleeps with who they want, machines do all the work. There is no real crime, every thing is clean and ecologically pure. The city looks like some modernist seventies mall, and of course the citizens of the future are dressed in those sort of funky velour jumpsuits, that everyone one in the future wears in seventies Sci FI films. The only catch to this seemingly perfect world is that all of its citizens at birth have a crystal implanted in their hand.
This crystal is known in the film as the ‘lifeclock’, it counts down the days until your death, which in this future civilization is mandated at the age of thirty. The ‘lifeclock’ counts down your days until death by changing colours to indicate how long you have left. When the crystal’s light starts to pulse, you have ten days left. On your last day, you must report to the carousel. The carousel is a kind of stadium in which people who have just turned thirty are watched by crowds who cheer them on as they are obliterated.
The Ticking Faithclock
For me I have begun to think a lot about Logan’s Run and particularly the “lifeclock.” It has become a kind of allegory as to what is happening to the faith lives of many of the young adults whom I encounter and work with in my ministry. It is almost as if they have a ‘faith lifeclock’ imbedded in them. Sure they make be excited about faith, involved, fired up, and passionate about following Jesus, in their late teens and early twenties. But at some point it almost always seems that the “faith lifeclock” begins to catch up with them and their faith is retired.
In Logan’s Run death comes at thirty. For young adult Christians in the West it seems to be some time between 25 and 35 that the fire of faith begins to dim. For some it will remain a faint flicker, they will retain some kind of allegiance to Christianity; despite the fact their faith has lost any active component. Others will find their faith simply growing cold and then dying, the way a campfire goes out, it is burning when you go to sleep, but when you wake in the cold of the morning, it is nothing but cool ashes. You don’t know at what point it went out over night, but the fact remains it has gone out. Others will throw in the towel deliberately. It could be that a life of faith has simply become too hard, or perhaps faith did not deliver the kind of life that they thought that it was promising and thus it is abandoned.
Low Faith Culture in the West
Let’s be honest, being a Christian in the MTV culture of the West is tough. While we are excited by the stories of the growth of the Christian church in the two-third’s world, it is hard not to notice how many of our peers are walking away from their faith. One reason that there is such a profound difference between the growth to the church in the 2/3 world and declining in the western world is because of our cultural context. All the evidence points to the fact that the culture of the west has a caustic effect upon faith. On one hand we have taken heart that Youth ministries are often the healthiest sectors of many churches. However in the area of young adult’s ministry, many are choosing to walk away from a serious engagement with Christ, as a report by the Barna group show us
“despite strong levels of spiritual activity during the teen years, most twenty something’s disengage from active participation in the Christian faith during their young adult years – and often beyond that. In total, six out of ten twenty something’s were involved in a church during their teen years, but have failed to translate that into active spirituality during their early adulthood.”[1]
In other western countries outside the United States the effect is even more dramatic. Places such as New Zealand, Canada and Europe, are bleeding members from their churches from all age groups but most notably from young adults. In Australia young Adults ministry is the gaping hole in the church with less and less young adults finding themselves part of the church “Recent census results have reaffirmed once more that the age group least interested in the Christian faith are people between 20 and 29 years old”[2]
Many young adults who stay in church migrate from the latest ‘hip’ expression of church to the next, changing communities like clothes, looking for the freshest worship expression, the best preaching or the hippest café church. In this sense it not that hard to gather a crowd of young adults in church. You just need all the right elements. As Ash Barker explains “Unsatisfied believers church-hop at increasing rates, seeking the new and latest experiences of worship but many, particularly 25-35 olds, simply drop out of the church altogether. It doesn’t have to be this way.”[3]
Strangely this trend is affecting even churches outside of the West. South Korea which has seen incredible growth in Christianity in the last 30 years is already seeing this growth either plateau or decline as church membership amongst young people is declining at rates of up to five per cent a year.[4] A recent survey in South Korea found that 59% of Koreans felt that Christian churches were going in the wrong direction.[5]
Boomers and Building plans
What does this mean for churches? A heck of a lot. Lets just examine a really simple and pragmatic scenario. Through my work with Uber ministries a lot of churches get me in to work with their young adults. Often I will be contacted by the senior pastor, we will chat, as I try to get a picture of where the particular church is at. The senior pastor will often share with me building plans that the church is either planning or has commenced. The pastor will outline to me the churches plans for paying off the plans of the bulding. Usually such plans are dependant on paying off a debt over a number of years. Some churches plan to pay off debts over several decades.
Later on I will begin to spend time with the young adults of that congregation. They may even have a large young adult representation, the young adults may be utterly crazy about their church. But everything changes when I ask my favourite question “How long do you guys plan on staying in this church?… Ten years?’ I normally get two responses. Response number one is “Are you joking. Ten years!!!” this is usually followed by laughter. The second response is simply blank stares, as if I have asked them a question in Swahili. My experience is that it does not matter what sort of church young adults are attending, be it large, small, emerging, contemporary, traditional; they are not planning on hanging around for any more than 3 years if you are lucky.
This leaves churches with a huge problem, once the builder and boomer generations head off to the nursing home, who is going to pay the debt? How do churches plan for a next generational shift in leadership, when your next generation is either planning on leaving active faith, or looking at the cool new church plant down the road with green eyes?
These are hugely important questions. For the last six years I have been researching as to why young adults leave churches. So over the next little while I will share with you the main reasons that I have discovered as to why young adults leave faith. Now one caveat must be stated, I don’t want to give away the farm here, as organizations and churches employ me as a consultant to come in and devise strategies to keep their young adults, so don’t expect too many answers as I need to eat and stuff like that. But I am putting out my findings because there is desperate need for a discussion to begin about this issue. So for the next week or so I will be laying out the top reasons why young adults leave the church. See you next time for the first reason.
[1]The Barna Group http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrowPreview&BarnaUpdateID=245
[2]Christian Research Association http://www.cra.org.au/pages/00000169.cgi
[3] Barker A ( 2005) Surrender All; A Call to Sub-merge with Christ. Urban Neighbours of Hope, Melbourne Australia, pg 6
[4]Overseas Missionary Fellowship UK website South Korea Religious Fact page http://www.omf.org/omf/uk/about_asia/countries/korea/south_korea_profile
[5] O Come all Ye Faithfull Article in The Economist Nov 1st2007 http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10015239
