An initial question: Whose definition of church are we using here?
Until they settle down and grow up and understand why Mom and Dad went to church.
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If you want more about this, you may want to consider getting the book “Broken: 7 Rules Every Christian Should Break” by Rev. Jonathan Fisk. He really gets into how Satan uses his lies to get people into false faith.
Have you ever noticed how many hateful atheists there are on the Internet?
Three sons all gone from home, none practicing a faith in Christ, to my knowledge.
Can't disagree with the "reasons", would add some of my own, including a youth minister who was unfaithful to his wife and publicly and painfully resigned, in front of the church and youth.
I don't judge this young man whatsoever, however it is evident that when young people look up to a leader in the church and that leader's sin of adultery follows behind him or her the obvious is going to happen in effect cause disenchantment with the gospel, the church, you name it, among the youth.
My guess is it is because of something called ‘free will’, and the normal tendency of man to hate God. Faith isn’t carried on the X or Y chromosome.
thanks for posting.
Went to church & religion as a youth. Got a Bible and started reading it. I soon released I didn’t believe it.
And that’s probably the number one reason people leave the church, They just don’t believe.
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Importantly, like any “customer survey”, why they *say* they didn’t like “the product” may not necessarily be the real reason why they don’t like it.
I have what may be a good analogy, from a (good) US history teacher. In most high school history classes, the students have a complete disconnect with the subject matter, from before the American Revolution, until the class is near the end and talking about current events. Then finally they have something they can connect to, something they at least know something about, that relates to where we are now.
So he decided to do something different, with exactly the same content. He decided to teach his class beginning with current events and going backwards in time.
But even then, eventually there was a disconnect, at about the start of the US Civil War. So instead, to make connections to early US history, he used large subject blocks, like “the history of slavery in the US (from start to finish)”, and “the history of US transportation”, etc.
When children are first introduced to religion, they really have no clue to what it’s about. They don’t grasp the lifetime of abstracts, like religious art, music, history, and learning, the adults share.
They have a hard time grasping five years in the past, much less 5,000 or more. Likewise, the Middle East is an enigma to them. Typically it can take years of study to get a real grasp of what is going on here.
And “monkey see, monkey do” is an awful introduction to faith. “Pray because I say so.”
This is why church school arose in the first place, so that children would get some help figuring out what in the world is going on here?
And why in the world did the Bible end, since so much that matters has happened since then?
the media, culture, schools and government are against us... even a lot of “churches” are against us
the Bible says we will be a small oppressed minority in the end
7. You sent them out unarmed:
***Even the kids who stay in church are unarmed. They have as much of an idea of why they’re christian as the average muslim thinks of why they are muslim. Neither of them can explain their belief in a rational fashion to someone outside their faith. Eventually they end up trying to browbeat newcomers into their belief system rather than treating their questions with intelligent respect.
What turns me off from most churches is the judgmental holier-than-thou behavior of some people.
It’s firm confirmation that it’s not a true church.
My son was raised in church and he doesn’t care to attend church right now either, and he may not for a while- but I am not in the least concerned.
We pray together, (on occasion), he has been baptized by his own choice- and he lets me know that he has his faith still.. and you know what?
He belongs to God, not to me.
I actually believe every word in the Bible. God has got this one.
As a Mom, I plan to support his as he grows into adulthood. If he never goes to church again, that is his business.
The way the emergent/progressive church is taking over, God isn’t in church anymore - anyway.
Reason 0: You sent them to public school.
Most government schooled kids graduate and stop going to church, on the order of 80%.
Only about 10-15% of homeschooled graduates stop going to church when they leave home.
Want your kids to stay faithful? Keep them in church and at home while their faith is forming.
Today’s generation is the most Scripturally ignorant and morally confused and lacking in conscience that America has ever birthed, yet until they reach the secular seminaries ( college), they are relatively open, but open to most anything, and someone will reach them (and is, atheism is growing fastest).
As for why they leave, although perhaps it is implicit in the accommodationist and “deeds not creeds” points, what should be #1 is the lack of strong anointed preaching that works by the Holy Spirit to convict sinners of their damned destitute condition, as law breakers in the eyes of an infinitely holy and perfectly just Almighty God.
And whose life will send them to Hell, not heaven, being utterly destitute of any merit that would gain their escape from their just and eternal punishment and gain them eternal life. And who thus must look toward God for the mercy which is in only found in the Christ, who “once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but resurrected alive by the Spirit (1Pt. 3:18).
And thus by abasing themselves and trusting the risen exalted Lord to save them on His expense and credit, they will find salvation, being washed, sanctified and justified. And which faith decision is shown in baptism, confessing the Lord Jesus in “body language” (not that baptism itself makes one born again) and then living it out.
I have often basically told souls after giving them a gospel tract (which opens the door for an explanation), “God looks at your life and says, “the things you did will send you to Hell,” but He looks at what His Son did and says, “what My Son did can gain you Heaven.”
But the work of an evangelists is not simply to tell them how to be saved, but to bring them to the place Isaiah was when He saw the Lord Jesus (it was: Jn. 12:34ff) high and lifted up in His glory, and thus cried, “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:5)
And as he found,
“The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. “ (Psalms 34:18)
This message should be preached everywhere, but the church service is usually most conducive for conversion, insomuch as the atmosphere is heavenly and the preaching exalts the Lord by the Spirit.
But lacking this preaching and subsequent regeneration, souls simply have religion at best, and most will fall away or will be inert.
However, this conversion must be followed by discipleship which teaches sacrificial commitment and surrender to and prayerful dependance upon the Lord, versus the world, flesh and devil, and which confronts, in meekness but boldness, the issues which challenge the basic faith once delivered to the saints. (Jude 1:3
I would guess the majority return when they have children. I did.