{"id":523,"date":"2007-08-11T12:15:06","date_gmt":"2007-08-11T12:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2007\/08\/protestants-losing-their-kids.html"},"modified":"2007-08-11T12:15:06","modified_gmt":"2007-08-11T12:15:06","slug":"protestants-losing-their-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/08\/protestants-losing-their-kids.html","title":{"rendered":"Protestants losing their kids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A jarring report in USA Today:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Protestant churches are losing young adults in &#8220;sobering&#8221; numbers, a survey finds.<br \/>\nSeven in 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 \u2014 both evangelical and mainline \u2014 who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23, according to the survey by LifeWay Research. And 34% of those said they had not returned, even sporadically, by age 30. That means about one in four Protestant young people have left the church.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Why is this happening?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&#8220;Too many youth groups are holding tanks with pizza. There&#8217;s no life transformation taking place,&#8221; [Ed] Stetzer [of LifeWay Research] says. &#8220;People are looking for a faith that can change them and to be a part of changing the world.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If Jesus said his followers are to be like children and the children are leaving the churches then I&#8217;m thinking the churches have got a lot of work to do. I don&#8217;t know where to start but I think one place is politics. If a church is doing a lot of political preaching &#8211; liberal or conservative &#8211; from the pulpit it should stuff. Kids know that politics isn&#8217;t going to change the world. They are looking for a radical difference &#8211; churches need to show them Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A jarring report in USA Today: Protestant churches are losing young adults in &#8220;sobering&#8221; numbers, a survey finds. Seven in 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 \u2014 both evangelical and mainline \u2014 who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23, according to the survey by LifeWay Research. And&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-popular-culture"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Protestants losing their kids - J Walking<\/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.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/08\/protestants-losing-their-kids.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Protestants losing their kids - J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A jarring report in USA Today: Protestant churches are losing young adults in &#8220;sobering&#8221; numbers, a survey finds. Seven in 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 \u2014 both evangelical and mainline \u2014 who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23, according to the survey by LifeWay Research. 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