Past Time for Change

I have a lot of history with natural disasters. I was five years old when I experienced the Alaskan, Good Friday earthquake, the largest earthquake recorded in U. S. history. It was followed by a 27 foot tsunami. My parents then moved to Longview, Washington, not far from Mount St. Helens. You get the picture.

These are these types of disasters that are hard to ignore and fairly easy to respond to. Creeping disasters, the kind that build up over time are often harder to recognize and take seriously until it's too late. We are in the middle of one of those right now.

For over a decade, we have been losing our youth. They seem to do okay up through high school, but then a change takes place. Well over half of our youth (67%) don't make the transition into adulthood with their faith intact. We have been alerted to this fact by our leadership and by fact finding organizations such as the Barna Institute. Some Baptists estimate that they are losing 80% of their youth in the transition to adulthood. This is a new phenomenon. It has not been unusual in the past for young adults to leave the church for a short time, but they always returned within three to five years. For a decade and a half they have not been coming back.

What will the future look like if we continue to lose 67% of the next generation of church goers? Current outreach is not seeing a return anywhere near those numbers. If a third of your church today is not made up of 15 to 29 year olds, what does that say about your future?

The problem with creeping disasters is that we think things will just sort themselves out eventually. When an earthquake hits, everything changes. We had no power, no water, limited food supplies. Everyone's place of employment was gone. The community rallied together. Old grudges were forgotten. The National Guard was called in. Life changed until the problem was solved.

In Chi Alpha Campus Ministries, we know the struggles and challenges that emerging adults face. We know what our students need to be prepared to face and flourish into adulthood. We will share what we have learned here. But the problem is bigger than just college outreach. I will be honest, it is easier to be a Christian on campus today than it was twenty years ago. The attacks are not nearly intense as they were in the past. But our students are less prepared for adulthood than they were twenty years ago. The world has changed to be sure, but so have we. It is hard to defend a faith that is not there to begin with. Most of our students don't know enough factual information about their faith. Biblical illiteracy is at an all-time high in the U. S. They know little apologetics, and they haven't frankly worked through the tough issues of life. The world has changed, but so have we.

The question now is are we going to take the situation seriously? We have heard the facts for over decade and only cosmetic changes have been made. The situation calls for more. If this were an earthquake, we would take it seriously. Aren't the lives and souls of the next generation as important? In this blog we will share about the transition into adulthood, about the challenges and questions that our youth are facing, and about how to address them. We will work hard to keep and save our youth in college-that is our purpose and pledge-but the preparation needs to begin during their middle school and high school years. Our goal here is to help you with that task.