It’s back-to-school time — and with it, a trifecta of articles in the local Christian press this past week. Each reflects anxiety about church-raised kids who head off to college, or adult life in general, and don’t return to church for a long time — if ever.
Bob Russell, retired senior minister of Southeast Christian Church, writes that Christian parents should resolve only to pay their kids’ tuition if they go to Christian colleges.
His article in the Southeast Outlook (based on this blog post) – and ones on the same topic in the local Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic papers — reflect ongoing concerns about the exiting of young people from the pews (and theater seats).
It’s an issue to which writers have devoted vast lakes of ink and electrons in recent years. Some writers cite a LifeWay Research report that 70 percent of 18- to 22-year-olds had dropped out of church for at least a year.
Many of them, in fact, had already returned to church by the time they were surveyed. And there’s plenty of research to show that the college-educated are actually more religious than those who aren’t. (See here and here.) The hardest to reach, it appears, are the disconnected. Those with no money and no honey — or diploma — are more likely those with no church, research says.
Russell said he suspects many church-raised kids do leave the faith as they attend secular universities, more from their moral climate than anything else:
“While we need to do a better job of teaching kids the basics…that’s not the ultimate solution. I don’t think youth leave the faith primarily because they aren’t grounded in the Word of God. They know right from wrong. Their slippage doesn’t begin in the classroom; it begins in the dorm room where they encounter incredible peer pressure to ‘party’ like everyone else. They leave the faith because they are thrust into such an immoral environment that they get overwhelmed by the world, the flesh and the devil.”
“Then when they are no match intellectually for the liberalism taught in the classroom, doubt creates an excuse to abandon the faith altogether and eases their guilt….”
Parents, said Russell, “would be wise to make it clear to their children from grade school days that they will only fund tuition at Christian colleges.” Churches, he said, should provide financial support to Christian schools — but also to ministries at secular colleges.
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In a column in the Western Recorder – the paper of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, the state affiliate of the Southern Baptists — Jason Allen says churches need to look at how they’re raising young adults when they’re kids.
Allen, the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary president, contends that many young adults had “never joined spiritually” into the church in the first place. He also writes that kids grow up in age-designated silos (children’s ministry, youth group, etc.) rather than participating in the whole congregation; and that a “spirit of criticism and sarcasm” corrodes respect for the pastoral authority and members.
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In The Record, the paper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, Young Adult Ministry Consultant Sarah Fellows writes that easy solutions are elusive in seeking ways to engage young adults in faith, worship and witness. She does take heart in the public witness of Pope Francis: “They are inspired by his example.”
But applying such lessons, Fellows writes, “depends on the type of young adults showing up in our pews and those who could, but aren’t. It depends on the parish’s character, resources and location. It depends on whether there are people in the parish who really care about young adult involvement….”
(An Archdiocese of Louisville manual on young-adult ministry said of this age group — in which it includes everyone under 40 — only one-fifth are “registered in our parishes, attend weekly Mass, want to be more involved in parish life and will still be in the pews 10-15 years from now.” That’s a high bar to set, for sure, but the archdiocese has seen declines in virtually every sacramental category, from baptism to burial, in the new century.)
Practical tips, Fellows said, include everything from using technology to fostering peer ministry to providing childcare.
“Reconsider the definition of young adult ministry,” she writes. “It can happen in lots of ways, not only in the traditional ‘group’ of singles.”
And:
“Do not give up! … If young adults are not a part of your faith community, those young adults are not the only ones missing something.”