This is part 2 in a series where I'm exploring ministry to young adults. In part 1 I shared some of my personal perceptions of American young adults. You can read that post here. This series is also being highlighted on my church's young adult ministry blog here. Today I will share what I found out when I opened a dialogue with young adults in Maryland. This dialogue took place over the span of almost two years and was conducted with upwards of 100 young adults age 18-30. Many of these young adults grew up regularly attending church. Many of them had not regularly attended church since graduating from high school. In a very informal manner I spoke with them about faith, the church, and their personal walk with God. Ultimately I was trying to find out why so many of them no longer attended church.
In 2006 I was a youth and young adult pastor and could not help but notice that in a church with membership numbers close to a thousand, there were less than a handful of young adults regularly attending church and even less actively participating in the church’s young adult ministry. I set out to find out why and started a series of formal and informal discussions to find out where young adults were.
Here’s what I found out…
1. Many young adults felt that the church did not care about them.
At many churches there was a distinct lack of young adult ministry.
Many of these young adults had grown up in youth group. From age 13 – 18 they had worshiped and grown in an atmosphere specifically catered to them. At age 18 that abruptly ended. Now they were considered adults and were expected to make an unguided transition into “regular” church. No more personal attention, no more age appropriate teaching, and nobody to guide them through the transition. The result was that many of them were left feeling that nobody in the church cared about them.
2. Many young adults felt that the teachings offered by the church did not relate to them and their life circumstances.
As these young adults made the transition into “regular” church they found that their life circumstances did not match those around them. They were not facing midlife crisis, most of them were not raising children, and they certainly weren’t adjusting to retirement.
They acknowledged that pastors mean well, but one size doesn’t always fit all when it comes to sermons. Too many sermons seemed to miss the mark of applying to their life.
3. Many young adults felt that the church was full of hypocrites.
On top of all of this was a powerful undercurrent of distrust. As teenagers many of these young adults had picked up on the hypocrisy prevalent in many churches. They saw parents, and reputed church leaders who acted one way in church but lived another way outside the walls of the church building. Now they were being told that hey needed to join the very group they had disdain for. To them the question was, would they play the game? Would they join the hypocrisy? Would they act spiritual on Sunday knowing that they struggled with sexual purity and a holy lifestyle all week long? Would they attend church on Sunday when they had been out clubbing all night on Saturday? The answer for many was “NO”! They may not be living right, but they would not compound things by acting a certain way in church that was not a proper representation of where they were in their life and walk with God.
4. Some young adults remained connected to their church but still felt that there were almost no opportunities for them to serve in the church.
Then there were the small numbers of young adults who had continued to attend church. It was interesting that this usually occurred when there was a personal contact involved. That is, there was someone in the church who they loved and knew loved them, someone that had invested in their life when they were a teenager. Interestingly, that person was almost never a relative.
However, there was a problem. In most cases these young adults found no place to serve within the church. Most areas of service were occupied by the “adults”, often by people who had been doing the same job for longer than the young adult had been alive. Of course nobody would dare to ask these people to step down, to do such would be an offense.
So here was a small number of young adults, bucking the trend. Often they stood in a gap, still connected with the young adults not in church while being in the church but not connected enough to be actively serving.
Next time I'll share what these young adults believe about God and their personal spiritual journey. But let me hear from you!
Which category have you been in?
What has been your experience?
Are you part of the almost 80% that left church after you graduated from high school or have you stuck it out?
I look forward to hearing from you!
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