"Patrick" <
PBARK...@r.com> wrote in news:fgfgs.291$wO6...@fe07.iad:
Your religion is dying, get used to it.
State of Christian churches: Where are the young people?
07 DECEMBER 2011
In a Sept. 28 article published by the Barna Group,
“Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church,” Barna, a
nationally respected non-profit research organization
dedicated to spiritual development, outlines six reasons
why young people stay away from churches:
• Churches seem overprotective: While many churches try
to convince members to reject or avoid “worldly” influences,
today’s young people are more connected to culture, media
and concerns of the world than ever.
• Their experience of Christianity is shallow: Young
people respond in surveys that they find church “boring,”
“not relevant to career or interests” and “God seems
missing from my experience of church.”
• Churches seem antagonistic to science: In general,
churches they perceive as opposed to science and reason
turn off young people.
• What churches teach about sexuality is all too often
simplistic and judgmental: Research suggests that self-
identified Christian young people are as sexually active
as non-Christians. They find that what many churches
preach regarding this important aspect of life is based
on fear and prejudice.
• Young people reject the exclusive nature of Christianity:
Whether it is the homogeneity of a congregation’s ethnicity
and social class or the doctrines of exclusive salvation
offered by certain churches, today’s young person values
tolerance, open-mindedness and acceptance more than ever.
• Churches don’t encourage or allow doubts: At a time in
personal development when young people question everything,
churches that “have all the answers” are often described
as trivial and intolerant.
In the Barna survey, 36 percent of respondents suggested
that they are not able to “ask my most pressing life
questions in church.”
To put it bluntly, more and more North Americans don’t
find religious institutional life relevant to their
spirituality. That’s across the board: liberal, conservative,
progressive, evangelical and orthodox.
Seminaries of all persuasions have recorded successive
years of decline in their enrollments. One could conclude
that it’s not that North Americans aren’t spiritual, it’s
that they don’t find church life necessary for their
spirituality.
http://tinyurl.com/7pec64c