Young churchgoers are abandoning the church at an alarming rate, leaving many elders, parents and attendees scratching their heads. Is it a lack of faith? Has the church gotten stale?
In a 2017 LifeWay Research survey, young adults gave five main reasons for leaving the church.
1. “I moved to college and stopped attending church.”
A reason consistent with 34% of young adults surveyed, college plays a role in the abandonment of the church. Students are flooded with schoolwork, along with their other obligations as college students. Many students find themselves in numerous organizations with responsibilities outside of their schoolwork. When Sunday rolls around, exhaustion causes them to sleep through their alarm, if they set one in the first place.
2. “Church members seemed judgemental or hypocritical.”
No one likes being judged. For black young adults, most of the hometown churches are full of ‘older’ members. Church may be advertised as a judgement-free zone, but leave it to these older members to judge a young adult attending church with piercings, tattoos, partner of the same sex, etc. These things are becoming more common amongst Gen Z, people born between 1997-2012. This feeling of estrangement leads to the abandonment of the church by young adults looking for a community.
3. “I didn’t feel connected to people in my church”
Church is advertised as a place of community. People often refer to chuch members as their church family. So what happens when you have no connection to anyone in the church? Some may say an obvious solution is to just interact with the members. Ok, so you’ve interacted and exchanged phone numbers with a few members. What’s going to convince them to choose to interact with you rather than the members they’ve known for decades? This plagues young adults looking for a church home more often than not. Black churches are so deeply rooted in community and tradition that it becomes difficult to change and accept new people (unless needed).
4. “I disagreed with the church’s stance on political/social issues.”
Political issues in the church are not as potent as they used to be. Social issues, however, are at an all time high. Rather than act on issues alongside praying, young adults claim that the church would rather only pray and scripture all issues away. For black churches to preach togetherness, they tend to preach it to a nitpicked audience.
One week the church will fight alongside #BlackLivesMatter protestors, and the next week turn a blind eye to the fact that trans people are fighting for the same reason. This turns young adults away from the church; why would they want to stay somewhere where they, or their friends, do not feel welcome?
5. “My work responsibilities prevented me from attending”
This one is a much more straightforward reason. With the way the economy is, young adults HAVE to work heavy hours in order to maintain a comfortable living situation. This leads to them either being too tired to consider church on Sundays or working on Sundays. This can become a habit that follows them into adulthood.
Whether young adults fall under any of these reasons or not, the facts are clear. Young people abandoning the church is not a new issue, but the reasons for them leaving are different than the reasons for older generations. Leaving the church does not mean that they have left the faith entirely.
There are many ways to strengthen your faith besides church. Some young adults want to be surrounded by other like minded young adults. As more young people become leaders of these churches, more young people will flock to be taught by someone who can understand their story, and help them to enhance it.
-Sojourner Freeman
