A recent America’s Research Group survey has confirmed the dire stats earlier reported by the Southern Baptist/Lifeway survey, namely that 88-89% of broadly evangelical kids leave the church by college. To quote from the article in the Christian Post: “According to ARG’s survey, 95 percent of 20- to 29-year-old evangelicals attended church regularly during their elementary and middle school years. Only 55 percent went to church during high school. And by college, only 11 percent were still attending church.” Survey: Churches Losing Youths Long Before College

Obviously the first order of the day when you see statistics like these is to find out why it is happening and then act to deal with root causes. Unfortunately, even the denominations that are aware of the problem have shown preciously little interest in actually doing that. For instance, at present the Southern Baptists have more youth groups and more youth pastors than ever before, and yet denominationally the cry is for yet more of the same. This is rather like the captain of a sinking ocean liner ordering “full steam ahead” and expecting a positive result. Far from making the situation better, more of the same failed policies will only make the situation worse. While Ken Ham, in the article blames a “storybook” approach to Sunday school that leaves children totally unequipped to defend their faith as adults, the problem has been festering for many years and is actually a conglomeration of different factors. Because of this, a little tweaking here and there is not going to fix the situation. So let me start by discussing things that won’t fix the situation:

i) Homeschooling: While homeschooling helps in a few areas and may decrease the drop-off rate slightly, it is not a magic fix-it for the problem of the next generation leaving the church. Homeschooling is an answer to problems associated with the education of our children, and so while it may provide solutions to the problem of the public schools, it can’t solve problems in the church. Personally, I have met with several homeschooled children who no longer attend evangelical churches.

ii) MoreChurch Youth Programs: As I mentioned above we have more of these programs than ever before, and as they have accumulated the problem has gotten worse, not better. The evangelical church was statistically much better off when it had nochurch youth programs.

iii) Greater Worldliness: For the last twenty years many in the evangelical community have assumed that the way to keep children from leaving the church for the world is to make the church more worldly so they can get “what they are looking for” in the church. All this has done is to raise worldly children who prefer actual worldliness to the ersatz worldliness peddled by the church.

iv) Doing nothing: Having the band strike up “Abide with Me” as we all await the inevitable while the evangelical ocean liner slides gracefully into the deeps isn’t a plan, it’s surrender.

If the above solutions won’t work, then what will? Well, it seems to me that the answers to the problem are to be found only in personal, familial, and congregational reformation, and reformation always involves abandoning the human solutions we have devised and getting back to the instruction we find in the Word of God:

I) Preach the whole GOSPEL: While this may seem obvious, it really isn’t. Too little attention is paid to preaching in evangelical churches these days, and far too often what is preached is not the gospel but uplifting stories, political addresses, or motivational speeches. Far too few churches spend all their time presenting the law and the gospel, and as a result the one thing that God ordinarily uses to actually regenerate the hearts of children is often missing from the church. It shouldn’t surprise us if without the preaching of the gospel, our children are not coming to faith, because “…faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). Therefore as churches we need to be able to say with Paul, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16), and the truth of that statement be seen in the primacy of gospel preaching in our pulpit.

II) Rediscover PRAYER and the PRAYER MEETING: By far the weakest element in most evangelical churches is prayer. By comparison to our Christian forefathers, we have become a prayerless people and it shows in either the non-existence or sparse attendance of prayer meetings. Our children do not have the benefit of prayer, neither do they grow up in a community where they are learning to talk with their Father in heaven. Can you imagine a child who daily desires to come into the presence of his heavenly Father and fervently offer up his supplications both in private and in the assembly leaving the church? By contrast, does it surprise us if a child walks away from the God he never spoke to? We need to ask ourselves if the extent of our instruction in prayer is a haphazard thrusting our children forward once in awhile to talk awkwardly with an unfamiliar God, in the same way we might force them to walk over and speak with their odd uncle at a family gathering. Also, parents need to ask themselves, are THEY wrestling with God in prayer for the souls of their children? Are they calling on God in say the way that Monica called on God to save her son, Augustine? “You do not have because you do not ask,” (James 4:2), and certainly this would go a long way in explaining why we do not see more of children coming to faith.

III) Realize that Raising Godly Children is NOT the Responsibility of a Youth Group, it is the Calling of Parents: In Deuteronomy 6:6-7, the Lord specifically commanded PARENTS to teach their children his Word saying: “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. 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.” Parents are to be daily instructing their children in the faith, but notice that they won’t be able to do this unless they have that faith in their own hearts. This is why it is so critical for parents to know, believe, and trust the Word of God themselves.

IV) Reinstitute Family Worship and Catechesis: At one time it was the norm in Protestant households for families to gather together for family devotions. They would sing Psalms and Hymns, pray, and the father (or the mother if the father was not present or not a believer) would read and explain the teaching of the Word. Paul in his second letter to Timothy makes frequent mention of the instruction that Timothy received as a child from his believing mother and grandmother noting in 2 Tim. 3:15 “that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” If we would have our children grow up with a knowledge of the Word, then we must instruct them daily, and this is best done in the context of family worship.

Also we must rediscover the lost art of catechizing which at one time was also the practice of all the Protestant denominations coming out of the Reformation. By catechizing, our children systematically learn and memorize the core doctrines taught in scripture, and as they do this their faith takes on a permanent and lasting shape. Some people have a phobia about the word “doctrine” but it is a thoroughly biblical word. Doctrine is simply another way of saying “teaching” and good doctrines are those things that are taught in the totality of scripture. Learning doctrine is critical to our growth in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. As Paul says to Timothy, “If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed” (1 Tim. 4:6). One of the best ways of teaching doctrine to your children in an easily digested way is to teach them either the Children’s or Shorter Catechism.

V) End Programs that take Children Out of Worship: Often, even in churches that do preach gospel sermons, the children are not present to hear them. Instead, they are taken out for Children’s Church which is often simply playtime with a thin Christian veneer. This should be obvious, but children learn to worship in worship. If we take them out of worship, we short-circuit the learning process and teach them that the worst thing that can happen to them is not failing to hear and respond to the Word, but becoming bored in church. Perhaps this is also why so many evangelical worship services look more like “children’s church” for grown-ups.

VI) Limit Youth Programs Generally: While some demographic separation in Sunday schools and Bible studies may be necessary, it should be limited as much as possible, and the emphasis should be on the children advancing to the main (not the adult) Sunday School and Bible study as much as possible. We should be emphasizing them taking their place in the Assembly, like coming to the table as communing members, it should be something they earnestly desire, not something they associate with a higher level of tedium.

VII) When it Comes to Teaching, Stop Pressing Down on the Top and Start Pressing Up on the Bottom!: In many cases, when it comes to teaching, our churches are “all milk all the time,” and as a result our children are simply unequipped to “give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). They have not learned the Word, or doctrine, or the reasons for their faith, and their airy beliefs are popped like so many balloons when they enter the hostile environment of the world. If we were frank, our reluctance to do this stems in part from pastors, elders, and parents being unwilling to adopt higher standards of teaching. It’s far easier to spoon feed the children Pabulum than prepare complicated but nourishing sermons and lessons. But we need to accept the fact that our low standards and laziness are working spiritual death in our children.

VIII) End the Feminization of the EvangelicalChurch: Although the article doesn’t mention it, the drop-off rate is MUCH higher among males than females. In fact, the least churched demographic in America are males 18-35. This is patly because evangelicals are making going to church, to paraphrase David Murrow, something as inappropriate to the male gender as wearing a pink sweater. Boys and men simply find little or nothing masculine in the church, and pastors are far too often representatives of the “third sex” (men, women, and pastors) who feel more comfortable among the women of the church than the men. Men need to stop abdicating their God-given roles in the church and they desperately need to recover the robust and, dare I say, “muscular” Christianity of the past.

At the risk of being overly simplistic, neither the Apostles nor the Reformers were sissies and we need to learn from them how to be men of God once again. Our worship needs to move from a syrupy sentimentality where we feel comfortable in the presence of a divine Grandmother, to a worship “in spirit and truth” on the basis of God’s revelation, sovereignty and mighty works of redemption. And here, brothers and sisters, the spiritual welfare of our sons demands that we be unafraid of offending feminists, both male and female. There are plenty of hopelessly feminized denominations they can comfortably join and together lament how mean and sexist we are.

Those are just a few that immediately come to mind, but the crisis demands a root-and-branch reformation on the part of the church, rather than more discussion and hand-wringing.
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Andrew J. Webb is pastor of Providence Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville, N.C.