Why Young Adults Leave Church

I told you Mark Sayers was worth reading… Today he has an excellent second post in his series on why young adults leave church.

The early church lived in a pre-Christian culture, other believers in the world today live in cultures that are Islamic, Animist, or Buddhist; however we live in a culture which is primarily Post-Christian. Western culture has bought the suit of Christianity, put it on, worn it around town for a bit, and now has returned it to the store, unhappy with its purchase, and is seeking a refund. Dan Brown swims in a sea of money because his book The Da Vinci Code, although historically ridiculous, connected deeply with the sense that many have today that the church in its union with worldly power has more damaged than blessed the world. Many intelligent and earnest people today in the secular West believe that the church is an agent of evil.

Many Christian young adults feel that they are living on the wrong side of Christian history. When they share their faith with their secular friends they are reminded of pedophile priests, fundamentalism and the Spanish inquisition. When they share their faith with their Muslim friends, inevitably the Crusades will enter the conversation. When they share their faith with their Jewish friends, old painful stories that have been past down for generations , memories of ghetto’s, pogroms and ’Christian’ Germany engineering the Holocaust, will be heard again. Read more.