Are Churches in U.S. a Generation Away from Being Ghost Towns?

Ken Ham, whom many of you know is the president of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum and the Noah Encounter, wrote a blockbuster book, along with polling and statistics-minded Britt Beemer, called Already Gone.  I’m a little late on this scene, since the book and the poll were written 10 years ago—but it’s still relevant.  Let’s discuss the controversial results and conclusions he draws on some troubling aspects of teens and those who teach them. 

He first points to a Barna 2006 survey (another great pollster) of 22,000 young adults who were involved in a church during their teen years—but they are now spiritually disengaged. They are no longer actively participating in the Christian faith in their 20s. Specifically, he found that the 61% of them no longer go to church, don’t study their Bibles, give very little financially, do not volunteer, and do not order Christian media.  Only 20% of those who were spiritually active in high school are maintaining their commitment at the same level.  Further, Barna found that only 6% of those in 20s and 30s can be called “evangelical.”    

Confirming this serious drop-off, the Baptist Convention discovered that more than 2/3 of young Protestant high-schoolers active in church later stopped attending at all for at least a year between the ages of 18-22.

Mr. Ham wanted to study only kids brought up in conservative and evangelical churches for this poll.  Beemer made 20,000 phone calls.  The final study was balanced according to population and gender, and included kids from publics, Christian schools, and home-schooled.  He found that kids were abandoning the church proportionately, no matter the kind of schooling. Christian schooled kids abandoned the church at the same high levels.

Here are some of the blockbuster results he found: 

·         Kids don’t wait till college to “escape” the church:  One survey took all those who are now in their 20s, who have been evangelicals, who attended church regularly but no longer do so.  So these dropout rates will add up to 100%.  Please do not misconstrue what I am doing here; we are not pointing out that all kids drop out.  We are simply trying to assess when all the drop-offs actually drop off.  Here are the pollster data: 5% drop out before they finish elementary, 40% drop out in middle school and 44% of them drop out in high school.  Despite what you might think about corrupt college destroying their minds, you’re wrong:  89% of them are already gone before college.  So there isn’t much belief for college to destroy. So, only 11% disappear by the end of college.  So no, the problem is only minimally helped by upholding young adults’ Christian views in college.  The main problem is somewhere else—and somewhere earlier. 

·         So, from the Baptists and the Barna studies, we lose 61-67% of our kids.  And they leave as soon as they are “bright” enough to figure what is going on.  So this is a serious, serious problem.  We need to pray about what’s really behind this horrible decline.  Looking at these young people as our church’s future, we have to conclude that our evangelical churches are only a generation removed from being “ghost towns” for the young. This creeps into middle age and beyond later. (Looking at population of liberal church declines, they are getting there faster.)

Many parents who spend big bucks to send their child to a Christian college to avoid corruption are simply too late on the scene.  They should have done something radically different for their children in the 4^th or 5^th grade. 

·         A precipitating cause of this sudden apathy among children might be a finding from the same Beemer poll:  He asked questions to determine those who “no longer believe that all of the stories in the Bible are true.”  He found that 40% first had doubts in middle school, 44% first had doubts in high school, and 11% first had doubts during college.  You can see that these are the exact same percentages as those who left church at each age group.  So it seems that we should be focusing on “what makes them turned off to the Bible,” not just asking a vaguer question “why they leave.” For sure, they are not bound by tradition; as soon as they don’t believe, they scoot. And parents don’t seem to stop them.

·         Beemer decided to explore Sunday School, and found an even more shocking—even mind-blowing—result.  He asked the 20-somethings if they often attended Sunday School when younger.  61% said “yes,” and 39% said “no.”  Comparing how the two groups felt about critical issues, he found the following shocking facts:

a.   The 61% students who attended Sunday School were more likely NOT to believe in the truth of Bible stories;

b.   The SS attenders were more likely to “doubt the Bible because it was written by men;”

c.   The SS attenders were more likely to doubt the Bible because it was “not translated correctly;”

d.   The SS attenders were more likely to defend that abortion should continue to be legal (!);

e.   SS attenders believed more than the non-SSrs in many of the evolution ideas; the earth is old, dinosaurs were before men, animals changed from one kind to another;

f.    The SS attenders were more likely to defend premarital sex (48% vs 41% of non-SSers);

g.   The SS attenders were more likely to view the church as hypocritical.

h.   25% of those who attended Sunday School believed that “God used evolution to create human beings;” but only 19% of that crazy belief is shared by non-SSers.

i.     For the question “Do you feel the Church is relevant to your needs today?”  46% of SS attenders said “no,” but only 40% of non-SSers felt the same rejection.   

What is happening here?  Is the corrupting of the minds that I alluded to earlier caused by Sunday School teachers?  Upon further study, the answer is most likely No.  Remember, these are kids in conservative churches.  Other data Beemer shared do NOT show their teachers or pastors teaching corrupt Gospel. So this alarming data still cries for an answer.  The clear fact here is that Sunday School really had no impact, apparently, on what children believed in critical moral areas.  It didn’t help them develop a Christian worldview.  In fact, it had a detrimental impact—it seemed to harm the spiritual growth of the kids. 

Was the problem HOW they were taught? Such as, did the teachers unintentionally teach Bible stories as fables? Or did the other kids in Sunday School, or their parents’ hypocrisy or pressure trigger the kids’ rebellion, so they were worse off than if they had never heard the Bible, and had to think it out on their own? 

The problem could not have been simply the overwhelming secular system, with its 30-hours of teaching a week (vs. 30 minutes of teaching the Bible in Sunday School). If that were the cause, both Sunday School and non-Sunday School would have, at worst, similar results.  The problem is that SS attenders were worse. 

Mr. Ham and Mr. Beemer considered what to do about this grave problem.

1)   He asks:  Should we eradicate Sunday School?  He does say that Deuteronomy 6:6-9 insist that fathers and mothers teach their children the Gospel:

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. ⁷ You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. ⁸ You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. ⁹ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.  

Likewise Ephesians 6:4:

And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

He also acknowledges that Sunday School is not a long tradition in the church; it only dates from the 1700s.  Finally, he feels that Sunday School allows parents to shrug off their responsibilities as the primary teachers of the children.

Nevertheless, he can’t bring himself to the radical step to eradicate Sunday School.  He proposes a second idea:

2)   Shall we renovate Sunday School?   He says Yes, by, among other things, teaching more apologetics.  Apologetics is defending every teaching of the Bible as the Word of God.  Now here’s my thought:  Aren’t we supposed to be teaching the Bible to these elementary, or middle schoolers, before they are overwhelmed by their secular schools’ doctrines?  But how can we teach apologetics, a conceptual and difficult process, to those so young?  And, keep in mind, few in the adult teachers have this capability.  Also, renovation has already been tried a thousand other ways, but we still get the distressing results above.  I personally don’t see this idea turning things radically around like we need. 

Then he writes about how some of those who left church might return if they have children of their own.  Here is his quote about those who might return when they have children.  But what I see in this statement is that he might have stumbled upon possibly the root problem for these “turned off” kids instead.

“What they object to, however, is hypocrisy, legalism, and self-righteousness.  The Bible is relevant to them, but the church is not.  This group needs to be convinced that Christians in the church are living by God’s truth, and are living in a way that is relevant to their lives.”

So let’s run with using this quote as maybe why kids are turned off.  Let’s consider each charge individually.  Hypocrisy is defined as living in a different way than what you say. Elementary kids pay attention to what their parents say; so when their parents run down the pastor’s salary, or the Sunday School teacher’s lazy lifestyle, they pick that information up.  Then when that teacher or that pastor preaches about how they should live a holier life, when the child sees how they live (per their parents), the child become familiar with hypocrisy.  The kids then are not interested in “holier” as is represented here. 

Legalism is defined as judging people based on surface criteria.  Let’s say mom is fundamental enough to send her kids to Sunday School.  Mom also happens to mention about how some teenage girl dresses like a slut in church.  Her daughter knows that girl, and knows how the girl took time to help her at her homework once, or how she has a perpetually friendly personality (and how she wishes she had one too).  The daughter becomes familiar with legalism of her mother. 

Self-righteousness shows in too many families.  A lot of kids get the general feeling that since their parents have more money, the parents feel that God must love them and is rewarding them with wealth for being good parents, having sent them to Sunday School and all.  But the kids know how their parents ignore them when they have real needs, and don’t have time for them—work gets in the way. Getting more money, to them, means work and cash are placed higher than the kids.  The parents’ view of God is wrong, they conclude, so Christianity must have deeper flaws when it makes their parents like that.

Brothers and sisters, what do we learn from this?  For one thing, speak carefully about other people when your kids are around.  Avoid picking one a child or adult that you know little about.  Avoid speaking critically about other people, knowing that we each have sins of our own to wrestle with.  Never sacrifice your kids, putting work or money on a higher plane.  And certainly avoid thinking that God’s love for you can be measured by how much money you have. Explain to kids that money is simply a gift from God, and we seek His approval other ways instead. Sadly, as Jesus pointed out, many rich people are living the best life that will be available to them—they will go to hell when they die.  Many poor people will have an eternity in heaven. So riches are not a measure of God’s approval.

Maybe this idea of renovating the parents is not the solution that will work. We’re asking parents to sacrifice and change habits and somehow focus on what their child really needs—is that asking too much?

I wish the Sunday School problem could be solved by making an astounding curriculum.  But the truth is, Satan is temporarily the god of the earth, and targets the young children to win them over to the world and never live for God.  Parents should make it the FIRST desire of their heart to prepare their kids to face up to all of Satan’s tricks, by reading and learning His Word.  Don’t forget, when Jesus was tempted, He answered Satan with Scripture.   

The book covers a lot of other topics, but this one is the one that touches my heart.  This is not meant to be a summary of the book, but just about certain eye-popping data and thoughts around it.

Acknowledgement:  Already Gone, by Ken Ham and Britt Beemer.