The stats are nothing new. We’ve seen the numbers for several years now. But, we saw again recently that the numbers have remained the same. Young Adults are dropping out of church when they go to college or when they enter into the professional world.
In his VERY helpful blog, Jared Wilson gives us six ways how we can encourage this trend. Yes, you read that right. In other words, if you want to see these numbers stay the same rather than get better then here are six recommendations he has:
Attend church sporadically.
Complain about your church.
Insulate them from the rest of the body.
Ignore their crucial questions.
Church hop.
Marginalize or muzzle the gospel.
If I might be so bold, I would add a couple more that would encourage this trend:
Don’t talk to your children about the difference between going to church versus listening to a podcast or watching a YouTube video of a sermon.
Don’t model vulnerability with close friends at the church.
Treat Jesus as a means to an end rather than the end in Himself.
Only attend what is “absolutely necessary” in order to keep up your membership at the church.
Criticize the sermon every week in front of your kids.
Teach them that doctrine isn’t important as long as they just “love God and love others”.
Don’t prepare for Sunday worship like it’s an important day.
Don’t talk about how Sunday worship applies to the rest of the week.
For Jared Wilson’s full article, click here.