Younger generations are less likely to return to church once they have left, a new study has found.
Much of this has to do with life's responsibilities getting in the way, but the findings form part of a greater picture that shows a dramatic decline in Americans who identify as Christians, Christian Post revealed in a report last week.
"This should sound an alarm for people concerned with church growth," said Ryan Burge, the Illinois pastor and assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University who conducted the study.
The results of Burge's research, published by the Barna Group, is based on an analysis of church attendance among various generations. The groups were divided up according to the five-year window periods during which they were born, starting from 1965 and running through to 1984.
"The theory here is that these groups of people experienced the same world events at basically the same age," Burge explained. He then looked at what the church attendance was for age groups ranging from 18 to 25 to people aged 65 and over. According to the data, younger Americans are less likely to return to church when compared to members of the "baby boomer" generation who were born between 1945 and 1964.
In the past, people in their 20s who left the church often returned when their lives began to "stabilize" and they settled down and started families, Burge explained. Not for the younger generations though. There is a notable decline in the number of people born between 1980 and 1984 who eventually returned to church.
Said Burge: "Many pastors are standing at the pulpit on Sunday morning and seeing fewer and fewer of their former youth group members returning to the pews when they move into their late twenties and early thirties."
The study follows a recent report by the Pew Research Center which noted that only 65 percent of adults in the U.S. described themselves as Christians. The report also highlighted a decline in the number of Americans who attend church and religious services. Based on this, researchers confirmed that "the U.S. is steadily becoming less Christian and less religiously observant "
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