{"id":2972,"date":"2016-12-15T14:42:06","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T20:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedisciplemaker.org\/?p=2972"},"modified":"2016-12-15T14:42:06","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T20:42:06","slug":"people-shouldnt-have-to-leave-the-church-to-find-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.navpress.com\/sites\/thedisciplemaker\/2016\/12\/people-shouldnt-have-to-leave-the-church-to-find-jesus\/","title":{"rendered":"People Shouldn\u2019t Have to Leave the Church to Find Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

When Jesus said \u201ccome follow me,\u201d he wasn\u2019t heading to Sunday school. He was on his way to heal the sick, befriend a tax collector, stand up for an adulteress, and proclaim good news to the poor.
\nDiscipleship and mission go hand in hand. You can\u2019t have one without the other. And mission\u2014impacting the community for Christ\u2014is most effective outside the four walls of the church. So is discipleship in the church working?<\/p>\n

MILLENNIALS SAY \u201cNO\u201d<\/h4>\n

You may have heard that Millennials (those born after 1980) who were active in youth group are leaving the church in droves once they hit their twenties. According to David Kinnaman, \u201cThere is a 43 percent drop-off between the teen and early adult years in terms of church engagement.\u201d\u00a0 According to Rainer Research, 70 percent of active youth group members leave the church by the time they\u2019re twenty-two years old.\u00a0 Based on the current rate of departure, the Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those raised in the church will be disengaged by the time they\u2019re twenty-nine years old.
\nSome people yawn at statistics like these. \u201cYoung people have always been less likely to attend than older people,\u201d writes sociologist Rodney Stark.\u00a0 When they grow up and have a few kids, they\u2019ll come back. They always do. No need to fret or change the way we do church.
\nBut that\u2019s just it. They\u2019re not coming back.<\/strong> Even though eighteen- to thirty-five-year-olds often have the lowest rate of church attendance, the dropout rates themselves are higher than ever before. And eighteen- to thirty-five-year-olds today live their lives much differently than previous generations: Fewer are getting married, even less are having kids. These, traditionally, are the life events that drive people back to the church.\u00a0 If we\u2019re waiting for them to settle down and return to church, we may be waiting for a while.
\n\"walk\"
\nNot only that, but our Millennials are growing up in a world much different from previous generations.\u00a0 The Internet alone has produced unparalleled shifts in how people live and think. Many sociologists have compared these changes to what took place after the invention of the printing press back in the fifteenth century. Just as information and literacy spread at the speed of sound in the wake of the printing press, now information and power spreads at the speed of light. We have little clue about the long-term social, mental, spiritual, relational, and civil impact this will bring. We stand right smack dab in the center of the storm.<\/strong>
\nAs we look at the trend of people leaving the church, we shouldn\u2019t conclude that the sky is falling or that God\u2019s kingdom is coming to a screeching halt. Jesus promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church (Matthew 16:18). God is on the move! Still, as David Kinnaman says, \u201cThe dropout \"people-shouldnt-have-to-leave-church\"problem is, at its core . . . a disciple-making problem. The church is not adequately preparing the next generation to follow Christ faithfully in a rapidly changing culture.\u201d
\nSome may say that people are leaving the church because they simply aren\u2019t Christians. And this is certainly true in some cases. Churches will always have people who attend for a season but then realize that they\u2019re not as much of a Jesus freak as they thought. But in many cases, people leave the church not because they had some beef with Jesus or were fly-by-night pseudo-Christians. \u201cIn fact, 51% of teens who leave the church in their twenties say they left because their spiritual needs were not being met.\u201d\u00a0 At least 23 percent say that they actually wanted to know more about the Bible when they were in church but didn\u2019t get it.
\nSo they left. They left because they didn\u2019t experience discipleship. They left the church to follow Jesus\u2014that wild-eyed, hard-hitting, homeless peasant, who told the rich young ruler to give all of his stuff to the poor.
\nPeople shouldn\u2019t have to leave the church to find Jesus.<\/strong> But this is sometimes the case. Sociologists Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope interviewed one hundred such \u201cdechurched\u201d folks\u2014former lay leaders, active members, and congregants\u2014for their book Church Refugees. Their study turned up on surprising results.\u00a0 They were expecting to find people who were burned out, over-worked, or simply living on the sidelines of ministry. Instead, they found people who were still engaged, energetic, and desiring to make a difference in the world. Instead of being empowered by their churches in this desire, they were stiff-armed by bureaucracy or given a job that was restricted to Sunday services. As one dechurched Christian said: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing for me to do there [in church] that\u2019s meaningful.\u201d\u00a0 Many dechurched leavers were bubbling over with passion and imagination about how they can tangibly share the love of Christ with their communities. Packard and Hope sum it up:
\nThe dechurched are leaving to do more, not less. The church isn\u2019t asking too much of people; it\u2019s asking the wrong things of them. . . . Jesus commanded his followers to care for the poor, the sick, and the hungry, yet the dechurched have experienced church as an organization that cares primarily for itself and its own members.\"Go<\/a>
\nUnderstanding Millennials and other dechurched Christians will be vital for our study. I\u2019m going to make a case that many people would not leave the church if the church was doing a better, more holistic and creative job at discipling its people.<\/p>\n

\n

You’ve been reading from Go: Returning Discipleship to the Front Lines of Faith<\/a> by Preston Sprinkle. Continue reading here<\/a>. Drawing on a 2015 Barna Group study of the state of discipleship in the United States commissioned by The Navigators, bestselling author Preston Sprinkle provides a holistic, biblical response for discipleship, providing accessible tools for all those who are engaged in making Christ-followers in the 21st century. Check out Preston Sprinkle’s website here.<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Jesus said \u201ccome follow me,\u201d he wasn\u2019t heading to Sunday school. He was on his way to heal the sick, befriend a tax collector, stand up for an adulteress, and proclaim good news to the poor. Discipleship and mission … <\/p>\n

Read morePeople Shouldn\u2019t Have to Leave the Church to Find Jesus<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nPeople Shouldn\u2019t Have to Leave the Church to Find Jesus - The Disciplemaker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.navpress.com\/sites\/thedisciplemaker\/2016\/12\/people-shouldnt-have-to-leave-the-church-to-find-jesus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"People Shouldn\u2019t Have to Leave the Church to Find Jesus - The Disciplemaker\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When Jesus said \u201ccome follow me,\u201d he wasn\u2019t heading to Sunday school. 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