We’ve jettisoned catechesis, sold them on “deeds not creeds” and encouraged them to start the quest to find “God’s plan for their life.”
Yes, I know your church has a “What We Believe” page, but is that actually being taught and reinforced from the pulpit? I’ve met evangelical church leaders (“pastors”) who didn’t know the difference between justification and sanctification. I’ve met large church board members who didn’t understand the atonement.
When we choose leaders based upon their ability to draw and lead rather than to accurately teach the faith, well, they don’t teach the faith.
Surprised? And instead of the orthodox, historic faith…
6. Kids leave church because we gave them hand-me-downs.
We’ve tried our best to pass along the internal/subjective faith that we “feel.” We really, really, really want them to “feel” it too.
But we’ve never been called to evangelize our feelings. You can’t hand down this type of subjective faith.
With nothing solid to hang their faith upon, with no historic creed to tie them to centuries of history, without the physical elements of bread, wine and water, their faith is in their subjective feelings, and when faced with other ways to “feel” uplifted at college, the church loses out to things with much greater appeal to our human nature.
And they find it in…
5. Kids leave church because they long for community.
Have you noticed this word is everywhere in the church since the seeker-sensitive and church growth movements came onto the scene? (There’s a reason and a driving philosophy behind it which is outside of the scope of this article.)
When our kids leave home, they leave the manufactured community they’ve lived in for nearly their entire lives. With their faith as something they “do” in community, they soon find that they can experience this “life change” and “life improvement” in “community” in many different contexts.
So, they left the church and…
4. Kids leave church because they found better feelings.
Rather than an external, objective, historical faith, we’ve given our youth an internal, subjective faith.
