[rdl6989]

bookmark for later

[bitt]

oh, no...this isn’t gonna go over well...

[PhilCollins]

Thanks for that information. I was a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Some of their pastors say that the Devil doesn’t exist, the resurrection didn’t happen, and/or gays should be able to marry and get ordained. Some of the same pastors wonder why people are leaving their churches.

[Albion Wilde]

Ping!

[righttackle44]

Why is anyone surprised? Christianity always grows and matures during times of persecution. Current estimates are that the Chinese Christian Church--not the churches recognized by the Chinese Communist government--is many, many times larger than the American church, and the American church will grow in these difficult times.

Those who deny the Supernatural nature of Christianity and the Church are foolish for doing so.

[WildHighlander57]

From the article:

“...More Americans Attend Church Now Than At the Founding

What is really counter-intuitive is what Stark and his colleagues at the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion found when looking at U.S. church attendance numbers going back to the days of our nation’s founding. They found that the percentage of church-attending Americans relative to overall population is more than four times greater today than it was in 1776. The number of attendees has continued to rise each and every decade over our nation’s history right up until the present day. ...”

—very— interesting!!

[DeweyCA]

FTA: Pew reports that of young adults who left their faith, only 11 percent said they had a strong faith in childhood while 89 percent said they came from a home that had a very weak faith in belief and practice.

It’s not a news flash that kids don’t tend to hang onto what they never had in the first place. Leading sociologist of religion Christopher Smith has found through his work that most emerging adults “report little change in how religious they have been in the previous five years.” He surprisingly also found that those who do report a change say they have been more religious, not less. This certainly does not mean there is a major revival going on among young adults, but nor does it mean the sky is falling.

Add to this Rodney Stark’s warning that we should not confuse leaving the faith with attending less often. He and other scholars report that young adults begin to attend church less often in their “independent years” and have always done so for as long back as such data has been collected. It’s part of the nature of emerging adulthood. Just as sure as these young people do other things on Sunday morning, the leading sociologists of religion find they return to church when they get married, have children, and start to live a real adult life. It’s like clockwork and always has been. However, the increasing delay among young adults in entering marriage and family is likely lengthening this gap today.

These are encouraging stats. I had always heard that even Bible-believing churches were losing 60-80% of their young people. I grew up in a WELS Lutheran church, but never heard any good reason WHY I should believe any of it, so I quit going as soon as I went to college. A guy from Campus Crusade for Christ talked to me for an hour every week of my Junior year, answering my questions and doubts, before I finally became a Christian. Although I had grown up in a church, I had never been a Christian. I think that is true of many young people (like my two sisters). Apologetics really needs to be taught to our kids in today's secular society.