By Zack Ball
The Church is bleeding to death. In 2020, prominent research organizations released survey results demonstrating that only 1 in 4 Americans is now a “practicing” Christian, a number that has dropped in half since 2000. Recently, Gallup reported that US church membership has fallen below 50% for the first time since 1940 while 66% of Americans age 23-30 have stopped attending church for at least one year after turning 18. Astonishingly, 7 in 10 millennials are reportedly leaving the institutional church: 66% feel that church is fake, 87% believe Christians are judgmental, 47% do not see Christian churches acting out their mission of helping those most in need. They believe the Church no longer answers their deep questions and, according to research expert David Kinnaman, “they’re not actually experiencing God in church.”
Unfortunately, COVID seems to have compounded the matter as in-person attendance is now only 36% of what it was pre-pandemic. During the pandemic, 22% of adults stopped going to in-person services, while 1 in 5 Christian churchgoers stopped attending church of any kind, digital or in-person. One pastor said, of his church, that numbers had been dipping before the pandemic, but COVID was the final blow.
Because these patterns have been bothering me for years, I engulfed myself in critiquing this generation’s trajectory as it rel ...
