Young Adults Leaving Christianity

Here is an interesting article posted on-line at CT.

The only thing I'd add to the article is to note an irony: The young adults who leave Christianity are young adults who, as youth, received the treatment of an unprecedent focus of manpower and resources on "youth ministry."

Now, perhaps all of this expenditure and manpower focused on youth ministry in fact reduced an even greater outflow of youth from the church that would have occurred without it. But somehow I doubt it.

Now I'm open to empirical evidence, but every VBS about trains or the Australian outback or whatever signals one thing consistently: that Christianity is not something to be taken seriously. After all, if Christianity were something to take seriously, adults would not truss it up with all of the infantilizing accouterments that seem de rigeur for VBS.

Don't get me wrong. I do not believe that serious stuff needs necessarily to be boring stuff. But engaging children in serious matters is not the same thing as trying to sneak serious matters in for them under the guise of entertainment.