The following article was written by Miss Azari Trevillion, a 14-year-old student from Indianapolis. She was inspired to write on this topic after reading the latest issue of CG Productions magazine, which encourages Christians to use their talents and abilities to build up the church.
It’s been estimated that up to 70% of young adults stop attending church as they grow up. What is causing this change? The foundation for their faith is crumbling. Parents are not forcing their teens to attend church as much as they once did. Going to church has become more of a social issue than an act of obedience to God. Teens are seeing church as a waste of time and not as a place of prayer and forgiveness.
One of the main reasons teens today are not attending church is because of the age difference between them and the rest of the church. The highest population in the church is made up people 30 to 64 years old. Most churches don’t have a teen program or plan events that directly involve teens, so teens are being pulled away from the church and into the streets. The age difference is so high that teens are seeing the church as a place for older people and not for them. Because the church sermon usually doesn’t seem to have anything to do with teens and what they are experiencing in life, they just don’t go. It doesn’t seem to matter.
The second main reason teens are leaving the church is technology. Nowadays, social media overpowers teen lives and going to church is just something you do when you get older. Getting involved with the church can be seen as embarrassing for kids 14-18. Even for the teens that go to church, all they do is sleep and get on their phones. Parents are not reprimanding their teens; instead, they just let them do whatever they want. Most teens say it’s too hard to get up at 7AM on a Sunday since they have had to get up earlier than that throughout the week. Teens just don’t care about church and think it’s just wasting their time to sit and listen to someone speak about the Word of God for two hours.
A few ways for teens could get more involved with the church would be for more parents to be stricter with their kids about getting up and listening during church. Another way is to do more teen-friendly things at the church, like having cookouts for teens only or making one day out of the week for teens to come in to talk about the Bible from their prospective instead of having to just sit and listen. Teens need to be more involved with the church and not so worried about their “social statuses” when going. One teen in the church is one more teen off of the street.