Myths About Church Dropouts

Sam Rainer at Church Forward has a good post on church dropouts where he summarizes the research that is going into a book he will be publishing.  Like the book UnChristian, he's focusing on younger folks, although his focus is a bit narrower than theirs - he's specifically targeting 18-22 year olds whereas UnChristian had a broader base of research.  Still, the results seem similar.  He has found that 70% of those who leave the church do so between the ages of 18-22, but the reasons may not be what we think.

UnChristian pointed out that, of those disenchanted with the church, many of them had relationships with professing Christians, thus there disenchantment can't be explained away by hostile media.  Sam finds similar things.  Here's the bullet points - these are the three main myths:

1. The influence of the secular university has pushed them away. Not true - of the dropouts, it is a virtual statistical tie between those who go to college and those who don't. 
2. High school students are planning to leave the church once they go to college.  The overwhelming majority of high school students do not plan to leave their church when they graduate.
3. The scandal-happy media has disenchanted our youth.  Only 15% of those who leave church say it is because of moral or ethical failures in church leadership.

I'll be very interested to see what he does point to as the cause of these dropouts.  For me, points 1 and 3 are the main ones worth considering because they illustrate that the cause of dropping out may have less to do with overwhelming worldly temptations than we think, and more to do with a lack of a compelling faith to begin with.  This is not to deny that the world does offer overwhelming temptations, but it seems to me that the temptations are overwhelming to those who have an underwhelming faith.

As C. S. Lewis illustrates and as Kelly Monroe Kullberg and the folks from the Veritas Forum demonstrate, there is nothing necessarily overwhelming about the influence of a "secular" university and God can indeed be found in places like Harvard. I'm working on a theory that I hope to blog about later, but the gist of it is that one of the reasons that Christian kids succumb to the "overwhelming" tempations and arguments of the secular world is that they spend their lives in churches that condition them to believe that the secular world will overwhelm their faith, so when they make contact with said secular world, they are conditioned to believe that their faith can't hold up.  I know those are provocative words that need more development, but to point you to where I am thinking check out this article by Theodore Dalrymple on his dealings with recovering heroin addicts.  He has found that a heroin addict's expectations and anxieties about the withdrawal process are what makes the withdrawal process seem so overwhelming.  I'll try to connect the dots on that later, but I think there is an analogy here for Christian kids - if we condition them to believe that secular arguments are overwhelming and powerful they will import power to the secular world.

But back to the main point - if Rainer is right here the world out there poses less of a problem to the faith of our kids than do their own hearts and maybe the church's lack of presenting a compelling faith.  I know it is fashionable to blame the dropout rate on the church, and I do that sometimes and very often the church is blameworthy, but let's remember that we are always working against indwelling sin.  Thus the church needs to assess it's own culpability in failing to present a compelling faith, but we also need to remember to place the responsibility where it belongs - on the individual who makes the choice to drop out. 

I am also intrigued by that comment that 80% of Christian kids don't plan to leave the faith after graduation.  So what does that mean? Is the droput rate less than we think?  I don't think so or Sam and the UnChristian folks wouldn't be writing these books.  The question then becomes of what happens to kids with the best of intentions once they do graduate.

So, it's stimulating to think about.  Sam invites interaction on his post so I'd encourage you to do so there, but also feel free to share your thoughts here.

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