In churches, we often hear the warning giving to youth off to college, “You’ll lose your faith in college.” All those competing ideas about religion, philosophy, and knowledge working against everything a church has built up! I once had an old timer in my home church tell me right before I left for seminary, “Be careful, you can lose your faith in seminary!” Is there something about education and youth that are dangerous? Sordid stories of youth going wild in early adulthood often lead people to think that young people want nothing to do with church, God, religion or faith.
In a surprising new study, we have learned that young adults/youth actually want a life of faith and religious practices. Duke Divinity’s Faith and Leadership blog sums up the study:
In the National Study of Youth and Religion, 72 percent of young adults said they had positive feelings about the religious tradition in which they were raised. And nearly half of the young adults in the religion panel study said they would like to attend worship services more often.
The fact that most young people have “positive feelings” towards their religious tradition and nearly half of respondents want to go to church more, should tell us something about Generation Y.
So, how can churches reach these young people?
