Last week I wrote about young adults leaving the church, highlighting the differences in how that is happening between Evangelical, Black Protestant, and mainline Protestant churches.  You can read that here.

Some people raised some interesting questions and points to consider that merit some further exploration.  The first is that in all denominations, the faith of the parents is the most likely factor to contribute to a young adult choosing not to return.  This specifically refers to the willingness of the parents, especially the father, to be transparent about what lived and articulated faith is about. A nominal faith that is very private is typically not passed on to others.

Another factor is the consistency of faith.  Too many times children and youth pick up the hypocrisy of their parents as they live out different values depending on the company they keep.  I remember in my first "secular" job working in an office of a manufacturing facility, I was really surprised at the values expressed by many of my co-workers who would have presented a different face as they went to church on Sunday morning.  This stuff matters and our children and youth are the first to see right through us.

There has been a popular notion for the last 40 years or so that resists inculcating faith in our children.  The idea simply is that parents should not be coercive, but let children find their own way.  It is true that there should be space for questions and exposure to other points of view.  But this attitude toward child-rearing has been the predominant model in mainline Protestant churches for years and has had devastating results.  It sounds wonderful and tolerant but in the end it simply ensures the demise of a lived and passed on faith.  We should be advocates for the realities of God's presence in our lives and in the lives of our children, youth, and young adults.

Parental efforts do become counterproductive with their pushiness if hypocrisy is a factor.  And we do see too many young adults carrying wounds from childhood experiences from churches and families that are just going through the motions or possibly even abusive. 

No matter what your background, as adults we will need to own our responses to what God does in our lives.  Living a certain way is not a guarantee that our children will choose faith.  And many, many people throughout history have moved beyond the difficulties of their childhood and chose a better path for their lives.

Last fall, my wife Sheila and I went to the National Youth Workers' Convention in Nashville.  I had an interesting experience with statistical analysis while I was there. I went to a seminar led by Steve Argue, a pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, MI. In it, he gave some background to the widely quoted statistic that young adults are leaving the church at a more and more rapid pace. He said that is simply untrue except for one group. This is better understood if you distinguish between mainline Protestant churches and Evangelical & Black Protestant churches. In mainline churches, young adults leave the church at a rate that is increasing and they are not coming back as they get older. However, Evangelical & Black Protestant young adults are leaving their church at about the same rate they have for the last 40 years, and returning at about the same rates. Argue's counsel was that while it is always a concern when only one young person leaves faith, the statistics that are being quoted are overblown and not reflective of churches besides mainline churches.

Right after that session, we went to listen to Rachel Held Evans and she let us know that young adults are leaving the church and not returning. But she had a solution. The solution was for the church to be more open to embracing gay marriage. So her solution was that evangelical churches (whose young adults were continuing to come back) should adopt the perspectives of many mainline churches (whose young adults are staying away). In other words, the way to fix the problem you don't have is to adopt the methods that led others to having the problem you don't have.

A few years ago, I heard a young man give his faith story.  He talked about how his parents lived a good life, tried to follow Jesus' teachings, but that he never heard them talk about their inner relationship with God nor did they seem to have a vibrant prayer life.  He decided that, at this point, he too wanted to live a good life and try to live according to Jesus' teachings.  But at the same time he was an agnostic, unsure if God really existed.  My thought at the time was that this young man came by his agnosticism honestly.  

This really tracks well with what the Fuller Youth Institute has learned in their project called Sticky Faith.  Young people will largely model after the lived faith of their parents, especially the faith of the father. (Sorry, moms, that's just what the research showed.) This is the critical and most important factor. They also found that if the father was not religious, even the grandfather could have a significant effect.  When church attendance is not important to parents, it will not be important when they become adults. When a personal relationship with Jesus is not demonstrated, young people will assume God does not truly exist.  This is not true in every case, but it is simply what is most likely to happen.

If you are a parent, you cannot outsource the faith development of your children. If you are a father, you cannot expect your wife to take care of it for you. If you don't have a faith story to share, get help and start to develop your faith journey. If you are only nominally Christian, ask God to awaken a passion within you. Live into that story and share that story in vulnerable ways with your children. Their futures depend on it. And so does yours as a parent.

You can read part 2 of this blog post about young adults leaving the church.

For more information about Sticky Faith, you can start with this article and this book.

For more about statistics about young adults, you can start with this article and this book.  In another post, I'll talk about attitudes toward Christians and divorce statistics. Again, the popular view is not the accurate view.
-John M Troyer