Why do youngsters leave?

Last week I had written about the importance of hospitality, about need for warm and loving environment to nurture people for spiritual growth.  My top priority in 2014 will be focusing on retention of our church members and seeking the “lost,” those who for some reasons left the fellowship.

As I research on the issue of why people leave, I an interesting blog where millennials, those born after 1980, or so-called “Generation Y” walked away from the church family and fellowship.  As I look over these 5 main reasons, I cannot help but concur J!

1. They don’t feel like they’re encountering God.

Seriously, who wants to leave a place where they’re genuinely experiencing God’s manifest presence? 

2. They want to be equipped to improve their lives, not wallow around in brokenness with perpetually broken people.

If our “Christianity” isn’t changing individuals in church it won’t change the world either.  “Misery loves company” may work for bars, but it’s not a good long-term motto or growth strategy for churches. If church members are as messed up as everyone else anyway, what’s a point of hanging around them?

3. They’ve found other ways to connect with people outside of church, including social media.

If the church isn’t offering relationships with substance, why would people want to stick around?  There are a million places on TV and the Internet to hear good preaching and teaching, without feeling the awkwardness or pressure that can come with attending church.  What is needed now more than ever, is the “people factor” and genuine community, because people don’t need church to connect anymore. 

4. Sometimes people leave because they’re backsliding.

Church can be doing everything right and still lose some people.

Young adults of all ages go through seasons of rebellion.  We just have to wait with open arms for the prodigals J

5. They don’t feel challenged.

The trend “meet people where they are” has made church too wishy-washy at times. People do want to grow spiritually, and it’s hard to do that in churches that spend an inordinate amount of time catering to the spiritual lowest common denominator. We should offer plenty of “on-ramps” for new believers, the lost and the unchurched, but we need to also keep high the need to grow.  The salvation doesn’t stop after justification.  If sanctification is not introduced as a process of growth people leave because they’re bored.

My dream for our church is to be a place where we encounter God, where transformation of lives happens, where relationships and forgiveness are real, where spiritual growth is directed.