Why Are Our Youth Leaving the Church When They Graduate?

Mark this down: If you don’t see nurturing your children in the gospel of Jesus Christ as your highest priority as parents (and to have "highest priorities" is to have "posteriorities" as well, which are things at the bottom of the list of priority), let me just tell you what very well may happen. You may know the Lord, and you may be committed to his church, but the culture will swallow alive your children.

Let me share some statistics: According to the SBC’s Family Life Council Study (2002), when churched youth leave home, 88% leave the church. In a 2007 LifeWay Research study, 70% of youth who leave home leave the church. According to the Assemblies of God study, 66% leave. And most optimistically (and the numbers aren't actually optimistic), a 2006 Barna study cites 61% of churched youth who leave the church when they leave home.

Let me give you my take on one of the primary reasons why this is so. Those familiar with Dorothy Sayer’s Lost Tools of Learning may recall how she explains the classical educational model of grammar/logic/rhetoric.

In our youngest years we’re sponges for grammar—not just of language but of everything: colors, names for things and proper names for people. This is the grammar they’ll use throughout life.

Then there’s the stage of logic, when they learn to argue, question and explore connections between various subjects (commonly called being a teenager).

Finally they reach the stage of rhetoric as they begin to communicate their convictions in their own words. Mike Horton asserts that those who’ve never learned the grammar tend to be always on the outside looking in. Those who’ve never learned to think clearly and to relate their knowledge in a coherent pattern (logic) often find that they simply have to take the "so-called" experts’ word for things. And those who haven’t learned to express themselves well (rhetoric) often find that they are captives to persuasive powers that may not share the core beliefs that are essential to their identity.

Horton argues (The Gospel Commission, 146-50) that growth in Christian discipleship can be compared to this model of learning. First, children learn the grammar of the gospel at home, but also through public worship.

In fact, after reading Horton, I came across this text in Exodus that supports what he is arguing. Listen to how Israel’s children learned the grammar of God's great act of redemption: Ex 12:25 And when you come to the land that the LORD will give you…you shall keep this service (Passover). 26 And when your children say to you, “What do you mean by this service? 27 you shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.

So in this text, the children observe their parents and other adults worshiping, and it spurs questions: "What do you mean by this service?" (v. 26).

Think about this. Children will learn the grammar of the gospel only by watching and listening adults sing, read Scripture, pray, and picking it up from sermons, baptisms, and celebrations of the Lord's Supper. This means that they have to actually be around older Christians instead of spending all of their time with children their own age.

Could it be that "children's church" (which is a late 20th century fad) and our youth's Exodus "from" church when they leave home, is related. I strongly think so! Children need the grammar or when they reach the logic stage, they don't have any grounding or foundation from which to appeal when the culture/world makes its appeal for their souls.

Consider again the words of Exodus 12. This is God's prescribed method of teaching the children. They observe the covenant people worship and it teaches them. There's no better way, even if children's church is more entertaining (and easier for the parents).