Why do young Christians leave the church?
New research by the Barna Group finds they view churches as judgmental, overprotective, exclusive and unfriendly towards doubters. They also consider congregations antagonistic to science and say their Christian experience has been shallow.
The findings, the result of a five-year study, are featured in You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith, a new book by Barna president David Kinnaman. The project included a study of 1,296 young adults who were current or former churchgoers.
I read the report when it came out and I don’t buy it. IF this was true THEN the Episcopal Church should be full of youth, since we seem to check all the boxes the report mentions. Officially non-judgmental? check. Positive attitude towards Science? check. Accepting of doubt and scepticism? check. And so on…
Youth don’t know what they actually want. They DO know the popular excuses for avoiding church and will gladly supply them when asked to answer some questions for a survey.
How about Barn does a survey on why young people DON’T leave the church? It would be probably be enlightening.