While pastors have long banked on social science showing that young people who leave church generally return, a recent analysis of that trend suggests it might be over.
Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and pastor of First Baptist Church of Mt. Vernon, Illinois, analyzed data from a recent Barna poll.
For anyone concerned with church growth, Burge says “this should sound an alarm.”
He told the Christian Post — “Many pastors are standing at the pulpit on Sunday morning and seeing fewer and fewer of their former youth group members returning to the pews when they move into their late-20s and early-30s. No church should assume that this crucial part of the population is going to return to active membership as their parents once did.”
Just this month, a new study from the Pew Research Center noted that only 65 percent of Americans now identify as Christian while those who identify as religiously unaffiliated swelled to 26 percent of the population. The drop in the number of Americans identifying as Christian reflected a 12 percent decline when compared to the general population 10 years ago. The decline was visible across multiple demographics but particularly among young adults.
As younger Americans shift away from organized religion, the study also suggests that Christians are declining not just as a share of the U.S. adult population, but also in absolute numbers.