Belonging to church has always been and continues to be a really important part of my life. Yet according to the 2008-09 International Social Science Survey, seven out of every 10 Australians who attended church monthly or more when aged 11 drop out of church life once they become adults. Why is it that we retain so small a proportion of childhood attenders?
The question is quite pointed for those of us in Australia for our dropout rates are much higher than the UK or the United States (71% of childhood attenders in Australia versus 57% in the UK and 47% in the USA) and young people who drop out in Australia are much more likely to say they no longer see themselves as Christians (46% young people in Australia versus 29% in the UK 25% in the USA).
The problem is long-standing. Across each ten year age cohort from 20 to 69 the dropout rate was between 69% and 83%. So it’s not a case of churches suddenly starting to lose all their young people when they retained them in the past. Rather it seems that for the last 70 years at least we’ve been losing people at pretty much the same rate. And nearly all of them are dropping out in the transition from childhood to adulthood.
There is then something about the way we are doing faith together that is failing to convince 7 out of every 10 people that it’s worthwhile sticking around. The challenge seems to be twofold. On the one hand half of those who drop out still consider themselves to be people of faith. For this group belonging to church simply doesn’t provide sufficient utility to make it worthwhile to continue belonging. The other half of those who drop out no longer consider themselves Christian. Despite belonging to our faith communities as children as they move into adulthood they are not convinced that Jesus is worth following.
This suggests we need to do some hard rethinking about how we help children transition to adulthood as people of faith and who find the church worth belonging to. If you’re one of the three in 10 of us who has stayed, I’d be interested to know why it is you stay. If you’re one of the seven in 10 who have left, I’d be keen to hear why you have done so.
Mate church is so boring I can hardly drag my own sorry arse along. There is nothing there for my 19yo son, he doesn’t go at all and I dont blame him. Both of us love Jesus but we need to rethink how we do church.
Similar to Marcus. I love Jesus and try to live a life that follows his lead. But Church as in a Sunday gathering just drains me. Worhsip songs all sound the same and all seem to be in one style, the sermon is one person telling how I should interpret something rather than it being an open conversation and journey. There are too many people, there is talk of justice but no action on justice. I can’t handle it.
I used to enjoy going to church but since being introduced to global poverty and standing for justice I find it very very hard to attend a local gathering
I think ‘enjoying’ Church has a lot to do with how much we serve in it and take on its responsibility and mandate to ‘reach the community’. I don’t always agree or personally favour some of the styles of worship / preaching / teaching in churches I’ve attended but I find that once I take personal responsibility for partaking in that church’s mission to engage the local and global community, that I can’t sit their and ‘knock it’ because I’m too much a part of it. That’s like knocking your own family for ‘sucking’ when its your own family you’re a part of it! I totally get the frustrations Marcus and Robert are raising but I think those frustrations can be held in tension whilst we still participate in regular church community…. and even enjoy it 🙂
For me I honestly never found a church like edgeworth…. It had a nice balance and I felt comfortable to be just me. When you left I tried a few others and it just wasn’t the same
I think some truths in that Matt Darvas but there is the added factor (for me) that I have spent the 15 years working for Christian NGO’s, community development organizations and community events. So my whole week is spent working for and being part of ‘the church’ the last thing I want to do on Sunday is more of it. I want to relax and have space
also Matt Darvas what the hell is with calling me Robert… am I in trouble>
I don’t always feel like going to church. Sometimes I want a break from everything and don’t feel like making the effort to socialise. However, when I make the effort to go I’m glad I did. Our church has great speakers who challenge me and help me grow. I grew up in church but my views have changed so much it seems I am a different person. My faith is more honest now. I’m comfortable with not knowing everything and don’t feel like I need to be a certain type of Christian to fit in.
Also, if I didn’t make the effort to go I wouldn’t have met some of the most incredible, warm and accepting people I know. I do believe our church is unique. It’s a place where we are all encouraged to get involved and use our gifts. Even our children are encouraged to be involved and as such their gifts develop and they become a true blessing to others. We are told in God’s word to keep meeting with believers and I can understand why. I feel sad for people who have a negative experience of church and as I have experienced this for myself, I understand. Our church is certainly not perfect because it’s full of people who are not perfect but it is a place I see God’s love at work.
I started going to church when I was about 6 but was out of there at 15. I didn’t really get it, it was boring back in the day and it made me feel bad about myself, and life outside church was more enticing. Some kids are not compliant and the urge to rebel is strong. I came back at 28 though because I did believe…
I started attending church when I was about 15, so I didn’t suffer the Transition Dropout thing, but I noticed that many of those who were already churchgoers did drop out over time.
I think there are multiple reasons.
Several dropped out because they married partners who pressured them not to attend church, particularly after children arrived. This was more often the case with women, but could affect men as well.
Some had never been particularly involved even though they made a profession of faith.This tended to show up by their attending a Sunday service, often at night, and the youth group, but having an active social life which made their attendance at those two or three activities patchy: they were often too tired to get up on Sunday morning, or had something on on Friday night, so you couldn’t rely on their being there. Consequently, leaders didn’t entrust them with roles, either, because they wouldn’t necessarily turn up to participate.
Ethno-specific churches seemed to have a particularly high drop out rate, largely because the parents tended to use the church to reinforce their culture, as a little Molvania (or wherever they were from) to which they could retreat a couple of times a week. Children who didn’t speak the language well more often sought their identity among the dominant cultural group and if they didn’t transition into an ethno-general church, they would transition right out.
Molvanians aren’t the only ones to have ethno-specific churches, and those which are dominantly Irish, Scottish or even perhaps Kiwi, offer special challenges. A Sassenach in a Scottish church will often not realise that he is an intruder in an ethno-specific church, but it is possible for such churches to be as ethnically stratified as our fictitious Molvanian one would be if it had non-Molvanians attending (for example, the spouse of an ethnic Molvanian). Their children, being great recorders and lousy interpreters, will recognise this second-tier status without understanding it as a problem of the Molvanian majority, but will tend to see it as a problem of Christ.
Some were uprooted in adulthood: for example, those who attended a remote university or found employment in a remote area, or in a job requiring regular relocations. It may have been in “Future Shock” that Toffler suggest that constant relocations were already having an adverse effect on churches because people tended to become involved in a church every second move, with the intermediate move being largely a time of grieving over the loss of their previous community.
Whatever, geographical relocations did seem to be a factor for many of my peers. The first move away was often sufficient to dislocate them from church involvement.
Finally in this list, though not in reality, I think that the teaching offered to kids in church/Sunday School is pretty poor and ill equips them for the life they will face all too soon.
We had a youth leader when I was about 18 who was actually good with youth. One of his regular activities was to give us a newspaper cutting and ask us, as Christians, to think about and comment on it. He himself was a conservative fundamentalist, but his focus was always on the question, “How do we, as Christians, view this issue, based on our understanding of the Bible?” There was too little of that in Sunday School.
I think more of this kind of thing in School Scripture would make it a rather more interesting project as well.
i don’t go to church cause insiders is on
I read in the bible that the church is important to Jesus, so, he leads me there. Most weeks.
I remember when I was studying teaching at uni a few years back, it was really important that the teacher of today adapted methods considering that young people being raised in a digital age averaged a 2.5min (don’t quote me) concentration time. I don’t know if the teaching methods of the church have adapted. That’s if you go to church for the teaching… If it’s for the relationship/community/fellowship…again If you are into routine and a structured community functions, with God and people, I think it will make sense to attend a weekly service or study that fits well with everyday life. I’m quite the opposite in friendship with God and people. Unplanned catch ups and quality time (whether 10mins, an hour, or a day) are where I find meaning, relevance and the moments that have strengthened my faith. If it’s for revelation, well again it’s personal, but God is in the chaos, Jesus in service and the way I see his kingdom unfolding is in the everyday actions of both his followers and those not yet, not just in the work of the Church. The one thing I have noticed in my adult friends who regularly attend church, most of them have had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment (cliche yes) in Church, as adults or young adults…For me, I was raised in church and actually had/have those moments outside the church. Our loyalty lies in different places.
For me ‘church’ never taught me actual life skills that I could use in the world. It is quite an insular institution, and when combined with going to a christian school you get a very skewed view of the world; there is a us & them mentality. Leaving a christian school was one of the best things for me, I met people who were more christlike and not christians than people I knew in the church, and that led me to question wether I want to be a christian or a good person – and they are different things. No church I attended ever taught me to ask and challenge and explore my beliefs, there was always an aura of ‘this is the way, we have all the answers.’
When I hear, “Christian school”, alarm bells go off.
I know some are better than others, but the bottom line in most cases seems to be a parental attitude, “I am afraid of the world out there; I am afraid of what it will do to my kids, and I have enough money to make them safe.”
If that is the attitude they take to schooling, it will be the attitude they reinforce at church — nearly always a church with some connexion with the school.
It is ultimately cultistic, and doesn’t help the children cope with the real world.
A young lady of my acquaintance — a PK — got a job working with people with mental illnesses. As part of her orientation she was taken around several facilities, and her supervisor watched her very carefully as some situations were confronting.
On her return , the supervisor expressed surprise that a pastor’s kid would seem so calm about her induction experiences, expecting that she would have been coddled and kept away from the more distasteful aspects of life. “Oh no!” she said, “We had people like that coming to our church and occasionally sleeping in our living room.” Her supervisor agreed that few of the young woman’s colleagues would have had quite such personal involvement with people like their clients before commencing the job.
I think that’s a better way to go.
I stay because I love sharing, discussing, growing with like-minded people who know God and who encourage me to know him more. But I also understand why people leave. As we grow older we feel the need genuine community, and sometimes I think, our churches struggle to provide that. (At least that has been the biggest reason for those in my circles who have left…)
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