Young people say disconnect keeps them from church

Several religious denominations have seen memberships fall in recent years, including among young adults and teens. A new survey suggests that many young people perceive a disconnect between themselves and the houses of worship that need believers to sustain their congregations.

Half of young people ages 13 to 25 surveyed said they don’t think that religious institutions care as much as they do about issues that matter deeply to them, according to a report released Monday by the Springtide Research Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit. Those issues include racial justice, gender equity, immigration rights, income inequality and gun control. Springtide tracks the views of American teens and young adults. It has done research work in conjunction with the Princeton Theological Seminary and the Mennonite Church, among others.

The biggest disconnect involves LGBT rights. About 71% of youths said they care about gay rights, but feel that 44% of religious communities care about the same issue, according to the survey of 10,274 people across the country representing various faiths.

After many years, my son (mid-20s) just got back involved with church. When we first started going there they taught Gods word and were not afraid to call out sin...

Since then the church has waffled on social issues, which has bothered us and him (he is staunchly conservative)

Last week he asked them to sign off on a religious exemption to the vax (based on his objection to fetal testing). They refused saying it would get them in legal trouble. They would only sign off that he attended there.

Anyway, we are all looking for a new church home now.

This church is actually in a very old traditional church. I love the stained glass windows along the sides. (The one up front is blocked by the big screen TV used for announcements and song lyrics!)

But like you said, it is the people and theology inside the building that matters!

The church I am a member of this been around since the late 1700s in some form. In the 60s they added on a large Christian education building with a separate chapel and probably six or seven classrooms plus office Ian meeting spaces. Then in the Late 90s and early 2000s they connected the two of them , Added additional office space and converted the old offices to more classrooms or multipurpose rooms as the church was rapidly growing. In 2010 or 2011 someone arson the old 1800s meetinghouse portion of the building and it was rebuilt with a new modern facility with even more room and capacity.

Since that time the national level of the church along with the newly hired ministers have taken a far left hand turn and now they have had cut back to one weekly Sunday service and back in say 2004/2005 when I last regularly attended went from maybe 50 to 100 kids in the Sunday school program to now 20 on a good week and weekly attendance combined went from 200-225 to under 100.

they now have a massive, expensive, building to maintain with a shrinking congregation and shrinking pledges. Recently they have admitted they will be taking upwards of $100,000 from the endowment each year just to balance the budget. They finally admitted after doing that for many years it is not sustainable and at the current rate will probably run out of money in the next five years. Too bad, so sad

I don’t know what organized religion you follow, but there are lots of people here who think that any religion other than their own is wrong, mistaken, and guilty of its own ‘brainwashing’.

The saying you quote is valid in many areas; but it’s not going to always be true in terms of religious belief.

For those who don’t think that God is necessary for life, or that His statutes and laws are good for us, it would seem that a Red Sea-class miracle would be needed to open their eyes.
Even so, I’m reminded of a song from Davis Meece....

You can heal the sick
Raise the dead
Turn the sky from a blue to a red
It don’t matter what they’ve heard
Or what they’ve seen
Some people will never believe

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