Thursday

Young Adults struggle to find their place in the Church

The past couple of days I have been looking for articles exploring the impact of doing a year of service on young adults’ faith and vocational discernment. It was surprising to me to find there has not been a lot of study done on this topic. Although I wasn’t able to find exactly what I was looking for, I did find some interesting data on young adults and their connection with the church. According to USA Today, “Seven in 10 Protestants ages 18-30, both evangelical and mainline, who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23. And 34% of those said they had not returned by age 30. That means that about one in four Protestant young people have left the church.” As coordinator of the Young Adult Volunteer program of the Presbyterian Church in Atlanta and Director of Dwell, our intentional Christian communities for young adults, I have the privilege of walking with young adults as they explore their faith at this pivotal point in their lives. I see firsthand the struggles that young adults have finding their place in congregations. At the same time I see young adults who are highly interested in God, highly interested in participating in vital mission, and many times in need of guidance and support. Unfortunately many young adults are also largely uninspired by what churches are currently doing. Many of the folks in our Dwell program find the Christian community experienced in the Dwell houses as closer to what they are searching for in a church then what they find in traditional congregations.


The Barna group, in their study titled “Twenty-something’s struggle to find their place in the church” believes that lack of leadership opportunities may be one of the reasons that young adults struggle to find their place in the church. The study showed that “just 4% of young adults currently serve as a lay leader at their church; only 12% have been a leader at any time in the past two years. Older adults are three to four times more likely to serve as church leaders.” In fact, the age group with the greatest number of church leaders is those in their 50’s. Is it lack of leadership ability or desire to serve as leaders that prevent young adults from serving? Surprisingly no. The Barna study reports that “people in their 20’s and early 30’s are actually more likely than older adults to think of themselves as leaders – and they are much more likely than mature generations to want additional training to become better leaders.” Perhaps one of the reasons that our Dwell communities are attractive to young adults is our practice of having the participants shape the communities. It is the gifts, passions, struggles and leadership of all of the Dwell community members that make the communities what they are. As Director of the program I try to serve as a mentor and pastoral support to the houses, but it is the folks in our houses that lead our weekly Dwell nights and develop their service work in the neighborhood. My hope is that our program plays a small role in helping young adults find their place in the church. Many of our community members make big life-shaping decisions while they live in our communities. It is my desire that our Dwell communities provide a space for the Dwellers to take seriously the biblical perspective in making those decisions, both while in the community and in the future.

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