The Data
Two-thirds (66 percent) of American young adults who attended a Protestant church regularly for at least a year as a teenager say they also dropped out for at least a year between the ages of 18 and 22, according to a new study from Nashville-based Lifeway Research. Thirty-four percent say they continued to attend twice a month or more.
Lifeway Research, 2019
Statistics indicate that anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of Christian students walk away from their faith or stop attending church during their college years. So, what can be done? A lot of people recognize there’s a problem, but no one’s going after a solution with any passion.
Christian Standard, 2022
If there are about 20 million K-12 Christian youth, then losing 60% of them would be 12 million kids. What a waste on so many fronts.
Two studies conducted by both the Barna Group and USA Today found that nearly 75 percent of Christian young people fall away from the faith and leave the church after high school. One of the key reasons they do so is intellectual skepticism. But how many of these youth were actually taught the Bible in their homes or in church?
Statistics show that children today spend an average of 30 hours per week in school where they are often taught ideas that are diametrically opposed to biblical truths, e.g., evolution, the acceptance of homosexuality, etc. Then they come home to another 30 hours per week spent in front of a television set bombarded by commercials and sitcoms, playing video games, or connecting on social media. This is in contrast to the time spent weekly in the church classroom: Less than an hour.
Given the amount of exposure to worldly influences versus Bible training, it’s understandable why young people leave the home without a Christian worldview and why many are falling away from the faith. Not only are most youth not being well-grounded in the faith, but they’re also not being taught to intelligently examine the views of skeptics who will inevitably challenge their faith. Most of these students are not prepared to enter the college classroom where more than half of all college professors view Christians with hostility and take every opportunity to belittle them and their faith.