People are falling away from faith at alarming rates.
One example is evident in a recent Gallup study, which stated, “The percentage of adults who report regularly attending religious services remains low. Three in 10 Americans say they attend religious services every week or almost every week (9%), while 11% report attending about once a month and 56% seldom or 31% never attend.”
Church decline over the last 40 years in the United States has prompted numerous explanations advanced by experts, pastors and church leaders, most of which are either wrong or, at best, incomplete.
The faith crisis facing churches and denominations nationwide was fueled by the collapse of the family at home.
Let me explain the severity of the problem. Research from The Marriage and Religion Research Initiative shows that most adults under 35 today were not raised in a household with married parents. In contrast, the 1970 US Census shows 40 percent of U.S. households were married with children under 18 living in the home. As of 2023, that number dropped to 17.9%.
This tragic collapse in marital love fuels a legion of other social ills—from shorter life spans to generational poverty to increased mental illness and the epidemic of loneliness.
Our ministry’s Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships found that four out of five (80%) of those in church on Sunday grew up in a home where mom and dad stayed married.
Yet, amidst these crises, our ministry, Communio, has found a troubling trend within the local church: the dire need to see the crucial role that strong marriages play within the health of their church and, by extension, their communities.
Marriage is the most urgent ministry gap in the church today.
A survey by Barna Research, commissioned by our ministry, found 72% of all American churches lack a substantive marriage ministry, while 74% have no ministry for newlyweds to help them through their first critical years of marriage. Additionally, 93% of churches don’t offer any ministries for singles.
This marriage ministry gap includes single people too—helping singles discern and express love in relationships that can more frequently lead to a healthy, faith-filled marriage.
To stop and reverse this flight from faith, gospel-centered church leaders must see this issue for what it is. We need a new path and approach toward ministry and evangelism that addresses the true root of the issue.
