Does this number surprise you? Statistics like this are being reported by organizations like Cross Examined, Answers in Genesis, and many more. Some of you might think they walk away from the church after high school and are eventually coming back when they have families and get a little older, just like in previous generations. But, other statistics shine a little more light on this. In America there is a 720% increase in agnosticism and a 200% increase in atheism. Studying this population segment we can see that people aren't walking away from the organized church, they are walking away from a relationship with God and a belief in the God of the bible.
We can talk about why this is happening and what we can do about it but that's not what I want to talk about today. Instead, let's focus on a communication medium that a majority of these kids are using (at least in places like America and Europe). The Internet. Measurements from Pew show an increase in Internet usage as you head towards younger generations. While, the numbers aren't reported for those under the age of 18, we can see that better than 90% of those in the age bracket just older than them are using the Internet.
Pew has studied teens and has found some trends that show that teenagers, age 12 to 17, are increasingly involved in social media. Over 35% of all teen girls in America blog and over 54% of girls connected post photos online. The study goes on to point out that over 64% of online teens are involved in publishing something online.
The state of youth in the church is that we have a large percentage of them walking away, we have a large percentage of them operating on the Internet, and we (the church at large) are doing a terrible job with our websites and content on the Internet. I wonder why we aren't trying to speak the vernacular of what is becoming a generation lost to the church in America.
I don't think it's totally about "the language.."
I've always felt like we've lost the last two generations in church because we don't CONNECT them to the church. We may connect them to the youth group, or to a separate "cool" service geared to them, but we don't connect them to the body.
The only way to truly do that is to have teens participating in ministry with older adults, so that when they get kicked out of youth group, they don't have to "start all over."
Just my thought on it.
Blessings,
Anthony
Part Of It
Anthony, you are right that part of it is that there are two different worlds. There is Youth and Adults. When you leave youth you have to start all over as an adult and it feels like the bottom rung.
But, that's not everything. College professors are 5 times more likely to be atheists than the average population and they are giving reason to not believe in God while many places in the church aren't giving reason to believe in God.
This is according to studies, surveys, and other ways to try to poll information from people. In any case there is a lot of work for the church to do.