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Tuesday August 7, 2007 ~ 13 Comments
There it was. My brand new Pontiac coupe. Shiny and spotless--except for the bubble in the factory paint. Ugh! I was so disappointed. But with my workmanship warrantee in hand, I was confident the dealer would fix it. Eighteen repair trips later I gave up. My view of "Mr. Goodwrench" was changed forever. From that time on, I vowed NEVER again to purchase a Pontiac. However, about 14 years later I did buy a 'pre-owned' GM product but only for two reasons. First, it was sold to me below market price. Who can resist a good deal! Second, any guess? It wasn't a Pontiac. Could there be any connection between their current marginal auto market share and the way they have responded to their customers understanding and desires? See here. Unfortunately, the local church has been ignoring an unsightly blemish on the face of the church hoping the problem will just fix itself. No one is going to be shocked by the newest LifeWay research released on the dropout rate of 18- to 22-year-olds from church. If anything, I suspect that many will be surprised that the numbers are not higher than 70%! But do we really need numbers to tell us that we've had and do have a serious issue that desperately needs to be addressed? No, not really. Amazingly, we know we have a problem, yet we rarely address it. I'm saddened when I think about the cost this loss brings on the spiritual formation of these young adults and on the body of Christ. How can we have let this go unaddressed so long? That is a huge question which makes me wonder what other issues we're overlooking. In the fall of 2005, the campus ministry I directed sponsored a one-day seminar to train college students in the sharing of their faith. In preparation for this meeting, we called over 200 churches in Florida to invite their collegiate ministries to participate. The secretary of one church said they didn't have any college students. However, she did mention that they had a large youth ministry. We asked her whether or not they had any recent high school graduates and if so, didn't they then have college-age adults. I will never forget her seemingly indifferent attitude when she answered, "Yes, but we don't keep them." So we know there's a problem. We know it has devastating effects on believers. We know it negatively affects local churches and may create a future of empty pews. But what can we do? What should be our thoughts on addressing the matter? Second, we can probably put some patches on the problem but altering the dropout rate is going to take some serious change. Remember my Pontiac experience?! LifeWay's study tells us that less than half of the dropouts had a positive view of church members between ages 18 and 22. Unprecedented and painstaking change must take place if we really expect to reduce the college-age church dropout rate. These major adjustments would include the following: Pastors seriously changing their preaching styles and content so they don't come off as too judgmental, especially toward their homosexual and liberal activist friends. Churches must become a truly important facet of life during high school and beyond. As well, the church must abandon an event-oriented mindset and focus on the mentoring of individuals. Are we prepared to do all that? I want to suggest that 'recovery' action may not be the solution. Let's do as much mentoring as we can, connecting with ministry as possible and reforming congregational character as is achievable. However, do the math with me. I doubt pastors will change their preaching style or content (and I am not suggesting they do!). Nor do I think the church is prepared to deal firmly with the member and leader integrity issues it so often encounters. I also am not sure how our over-programmed and overworked congregations can be more caring than they are attempting to be now. My favorite show on TV is "Man vs. Wild." In one episode survivor Bear Grylls is hungry and soaking wet. He gathers some kindling and chunks of wood but it's too damp. After about 20 minutes of trying to light a fire he looks into the camera and tells us that he can continue this fruitless effort for another hour or move on and deal with his condition another way. He then drops his sticks and runs off to forage for food. Like Grylls, we can try our best at recovering the dropouts through certain methodologies or try something else. Let's try something else. Do we really believe we can step in with a few new or retooled methods and stop the drop? Unlikely. I believe a viable option to 'recovery' is to think 'rescue.' So, as mentioned above, we must do all we can to recover our dropouts but we need to start thinking about addressing dropouts as we do those who don't know Christ. After all, 64% of our dropouts never return to regular attendance as young adults (unless I'm mistaken, that's 45 out of every 100 high school graduates) and of course, we don't know which ones they are until later in life. To think rescue means to seek them just as we would any non-Christian. To care for their souls more than we care for the loss they represent to our church membership or programs. They are in deep need of the renewal of their mind and conformity to the will of God. We must seek to engage them with the same care and sensitivity that we do to our non-Christian friends and co-workers. Recently I heard an NPR program that said postmodern Americans identify with three major life issues--Social Injustice, Racial Reconciliation and Indigenous Autonomy. All three share one commonality...caring for people. This is the overall issue related to this study. Do those who consider dropping out feel like they've been cared for? And has that care transformed their thinking and life? For this to happen, we must care for their souls like they are ours, care for their life issues for they ARE ours and engage with them so that their faith makes sense. If we are to change the dropout trend then we must change. ----------------- Feel free to interact with Mark in the comments. Posted on August 7, 2007 at 9:13 AM ~ 13 Comments Tagged with: dropout, lifeway, Lydecker, namb, Reflection, Research Subscribe via RSS or Follow us on Twitter
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Wow, I think this is spot on! Great points Mark!
I've actually been thinking about this very subject recently! As a youth pastor I think it's an extremely important issue to wrestle with. Thanks for your thoughts!
To anyone who may be passing by: we certainly need to change - but in what ways do we need to change? What are practical things that we can do?
Uhhh .. has anyone thought to spend some time finding out WHY we KEEP the people we DO keep? Not just the college deal folks; I mean anyone who becomes a member and sticks around and attends regularly.
If we knew what it was that kept them coming, maybe we could look for what's missing in the college-career folks and try to fix THAT.
Might even give us a clue as to where the other eight million went.
change will come when the pain of what we are doing exceeds the pain associated with the change.
maybe I'm being too negative...but my, what I believe is realistic, suggestion is to push and promote church planting...if we can get these churches to support church planters we have hope...if we simply try and rally them to make the kind of changes internally it will take to end this trend...well...I don’t like our chances…
Great lead line Fox.
At the age of 28 I became the pastor of a church that had just experienced its 3rd split in 25 years. The first thing I did was to challenge the 20 remaining members to become a loving community that cared for one another. I recall telling them that this alone, without doing anything else, might be the way for this church to recover. Seven years later we had over 300 people who called this New England church their family.
I wish there was a list of helpful solutions to recover or stop the loss but as I heard David Platt say yesterday, "Apologetics must be embodied in our lives". Bring on cool web sites, awesome bands, special events, but what we really need are lives that are full of Jesus and so irresistable that one cannot be absent from their presence.
Calvin...I think a big issue is that our youth ministries are relevant to their generation...but once they graduate from high school they are expected to "grow up" and enter the "adult" services, programs...systems. the problem is not that these early 20 something’s miss the "double dare" style games with gag and slime...it’s not that they don’t want to grow up or that they want to be immature…very much the opposite is the case…it's that the approach to spirituality that most youth ministries take is vastly different than the adult ministries in most churches...it has to do with the world they have been raised in...The "grown up" services are geared towards, for the most part, and designed by and for people who were raised in a totally different world than these 20 something’s.
so they just don't fit in...and then discover all sorts of fun things in the world...and off they go...
we need to stop this "ok, now that you are out of high school you need to grow up and come with the adults..." attitude.
Bob
I think we have you covered (I love it when that happens). This study sampled both those who dropped out and those who stayed in church. (We also sampled both those who went to college and those who didn't.)
Top reason for staying in church: 65% said Church was a vital part of my relationship with God. A person has to own their faith to want to attend.
Second reason for staying in church: 58% said Wanted the church to help guide my decisions in everyday life. One's faith must be integrated or that experience can be replaced by other experiences.
Read the whole list of reasons on pages 37-38 of the first powerpoint on the LifeWay Research site: Church Dropouts: How Many Leave Church and Why?
Just because you work with a guy doesn't mean you have to agree with him...right? Well, I think Mark nailed it. While I think the "fix" is past due I do believe we can "repair" some broken models that we hold to so dearly. "Rescuing" is the answer. But we need more than a bunch of people jumping in artic waters without a "rescue" plan or place to take them. I think a few of the key ingredients that will help make this rescue possible are: parents who win and disciple thier kids, churches who win Fathers and teach them to win and disciple their kids, churches that love Jesus so much people wouldn't think of leaving, and followers of Jesus who understand what it really means to "make disciple(s)". I know there are countless more, but they begin to provide a plan and give vision to a place that churches can adopt. Just to make some out there comfortable, we probably need to add another "R". We need a revival. A true sweeping of the Spirit of God in our churches.
Scott: I'd be interested in knowing whether the questions were "open-ended", or whether several possible reasons were given, to choose from.
Just curious, but I do know that the format can affect the answers, kind of like when witnessing, in fact.
Bob
Almost all were closed-ended questions. In other words specific choices were listed to choose from and each had to be considered by the young adult. So the answers you are reading are the percentage of young adults who selected each choice as true in their life.
Open-ended questions are ideal for exploring but really only give you a top-of-mind answer in trying to determine How Many.
Scott: Thanks.
Could it possibly be that once their old enough to stop just being moved by the message from the pulpit and the "cool christian music" and start to notice the lack of that message in the life their expected to actually lead, they get tired of holding their hands up? Look up from collecting pretty seashells and notice that the water is receding.
Mark,you make some great points with very powerful implications. I am coming at this topic from a little different viewpoint, spending most of my professional time guiding change in a couple of areas of high tech. Currently I am reading Clayton Christensen's (Harvard Business School) latest book, "Disrupting Class". He is looking at bringing change to education. As I am reading I keep thinking, the church needs to do a comparable piece of work on youth ministry.
An assumption underlying the LifeWay research is that staying in church is a good thing. It might be painful but helpful to take a look to see if that is really true. Are young people who stay in church better off than the average spiritually, emotionally, relationally, academically? I think we can make the arguement that biblically all of life is connected and so we should expect to see positive correlation in all these dimensions. Ideally we should be able to say that the reason young people should stay in church is that on average their lives will be richer and fuller on multiple levels. I suspect the first honest look would not let us say that (I hope I am wrong about that).
A second step would be to set aside all budget, structure and resource issues and just ask what kind of ministry would result in young people who simply do above average compared to the secular population in meeting the developmental tasks of adolescents of separating and indiviuating from their parents and becoming health, positively directed adults who fuction interdependently in their community and church body. Once we know what it takes to do that we can face the no doubt formidable challenge of figuring out how to get the budget and resources to actually do ministry that results in those kinds of outcomes.
Mark, your comment about guiding your congregation to actually manifest love for each other is so insightful. I have had the unusual privalege of being in the leadership of the faster growing church in Texas twice (2 different churches). Both times it was cleat that God had just decided to do something and both times the leaders and core members truly loved each other and enjoyed working together. It seems so simple but it is so rate.
I wish somewhere in Evangelicalism there was a group studying the outcomes among our young adults (or adults for that matter), strategizing on how we might produce better outcomes and tracking the results of those who find they can introduce different kinds of innovation. It would be a huge job, taking the cooperation of different kinds of expertise and gifting but the results could be very dramatic.
I think in your comments you point out the interaction of life outcomes with the dropout rate and also the structural hinderances that exist in most youth ministries to making the innovations that are needed to get different results. Until we step back and take a fresh look at this issue the structural limitations are likely to limit ministies in ways that keep us repeating the current cycle.