From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Our readers, listeners, and seminar participants ask this question more often than any other. The answer is that churches must abandon the failed strategies they presently employ, and adopt the one strategy that God's Word tells us will work.

The Evangelical Exodus

Surveys¹ show that nearly 70% of young people leave Evangelical churches when they reach adulthood. Some of them still identify themselves as Evangelicals, but they are not attending any church. Others are becoming part of the fastest growing "religious group" in the United States - the "no religion" category. This group has grown by over 300% since the 1980s, and now represents over 16% of the population. Most of its growth is coming from young adults ages 18 to 29.

If present trends continue, the "no religion" group could comprise one-third of the U. S. population in another 15 years. In other English-speaking countries such as England, Scotland, Wales, and Canada, the "no religion" group is fast approaching majority status.

Churches are trying all kinds of things to keep young people from leaving, with results that only worsen the problem:

• Most churches have changed the music to de-emphasize or eliminate hymns that teach Bible doctrine, replacing them with "praise songs" that repeat a few weak words endlessly, or pop and rock music that focuses on feelings and stimulates the mind and body in ungodly ways.
• Most have adopted a come-as-you-are dress code, and far too often this reflects a stay-as-you-are spiritual mindset that never truly preaches the Gospel, rarely if ever mentioning the word "sin" or proclaiming the imperative of repentance.
• Many have minimized or eliminated Bible reading in the services, and thus have cultivated a generation of Biblical illiterates who lack the ability to discern between truth and error.
• Many have gotten rid of the pulpit, thus de-emphasizing the centrality of preaching, and the God-given authority of God's man to proclaim a message that is not his own but must always have "Thus says the Lord" as its keynote. 
• Many churches that do still have what is called "preaching" have replaced systematic exposition of the Scriptures (true Biblical preaching) with a motivational talk or even a group discussion, thus implanting the idea that man's opinions matter as much as, or more than, God's Word.
• In most churches the focus has shifted to performance and entertainment in the service, as though the people are the audience in worship, not God alone.
• More and more churches hold services on Saturday night instead of (or in addition to) the Lord's Day, thus inculcating the mindset that God can be worshipped at our convenience.

Even some of the most reputedly conservative Bible colleges and seminaries are now training ministerial students to believe that these things are not only acceptable, but desirable in order to hold onto young people and grow a church.

Failed Strategies

An overwhelming body of evidence shows that these are failed strategies, both numerically and spiritually.

They are failed strategies numerically. As we just noted, despite these efforts to retain young people, nearly 70% are leaving when they reach adulthood. Overall Evangelical church attendance has dropped nearly 15% in the past fifteen years. Fewer than 17% of Evangelical churches are growing today, and only 2.2% are growing through conversions. (This is true despite the mega-church phenomenon. Studies have shown that most mega-churches grow primarily by drawing people from other churches, not by reaching the unchurched.)

Far more important, they are failed strategies spiritually. The dumbing-down of the Evangelical church has produced widespread unbelief within its congregations. 37% of adults in Evangelical churches do not believe the Bible is totally accurate. 45% do not believe Jesus Christ was sinless. 57% do not believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life. Over 50% of adults in Evangelical churches think other religions are also valid ways to Heaven. 57% believe that good works play a part in gaining eternal life. 52% do not believe Satan is real. Less than 10% of adults in Evangelical churches cite the Bible as the primary basis of their worldview and behavior. 19% of those who are living with a partner outside of marriage identify themselves as members of Evangelical churches.

What's the Answer?

What is the solution to these problems? Among the growing flood of bad-news data coming out of Evangelical churches, one statistic in particular points us to the answer.

The primary reason young people say they are leaving Evangelical churches isn't the worship style. It isn't the music. It isn't the pulpit or the preaching. It isn't the time or day when the service is held. In fact, young people are leaving despite the changes in all these things that are supposed to appeal to them.

Why, then, are they leaving? When surveyors asked that question, the number one answer was this: I no longer believe the Bible is true, and the church has done little or nothing to answer my doubts. Today's Evangelical church is off-message and off-mission. It isn't teaching young people the Word of God.

Dr. Gary Gilley says this about the cure to the church's crisis:

Believe it or not, there is an alternative [to the dumbing-down of the Evangelical church]... It sounds simplistic and old fashioned but it has God's stamp of approval. It is a return to the Bible. Our pulpits need to return to the unabashed exposition of Scripture. Our Sunday school classes and Bible studies need to toss the manuals and guides written about the Bible and open the Bible itself. In our local church we have dropped all commercial Sunday school curriculum - which has been watered down to the point of uselessness - and simply teach the Bible. Our 4-5 years old are being taught selected Bible stories. Ages 6-7 will go through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation in those 2 years. Ages 8-9 will go through the Bible yet again. Ages 10-11 are being taught hermeneutics and Bible study methods and applying those methods to the study of the epistles. Ages 12-13 are taught Bible-college-level courses on systematic theology. High school students are taught the Bible with emphasis on biblical discernment. At this level many of them begin to teach children as well as their peers. All adult courses are focused on the study of Scripture, along with classes on church history, theology, and biblical living. All sermons are verse-by-verse expositions of the Word. Certainly our teachers use commentaries and Bible study aids but it is the Scriptures themselves that are studied.

I have found an amazing thing: when people are fed a steady diet of biblical truth they have little craving for cotton-candy fads. Why would anyone trade in the fountain of life for cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13)? Of course many have and do, but the solution is not to crawl into the cistern, it is to showcase the fountain.

But this "return to the Bible" approach has one fatal problem - we are in the midst of a crisis of confidence in the sufficiency and authority of Scripture. If we do not believe that God's Word is sufficient, then we will not showcase it. If we do not believe in the final authority of the Word then we will look for alternatives. What the church and the world need today are men and women of God who believe with all of their hearts in the sufficiency of his Word. We need a church that is not ashamed of Christ and his Word (Luke 9:26), a church that will boldly proclaim the truth from the housetops. It is reported that Charles Spurgeon once said, "There is no need for you to defend a lion when he's being attacked. All you need to do is open the gate and let him out." With Spurgeon, I believe it is time to once again open the gate and let the Word do its work.²

Are We Following God's Command?

This is exactly what God's Word commands us to do. God commanded the nation of Israel to teach His Word diligently to their children, not only in the worshiping congregation but also in all other settings of life (Deuteronomy 6:7). But the very generation to whom that commandment was given failed to obey it, and we read of the consequences of that failure early in the book of Judges:

When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel. Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals; and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger. They forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for calamity, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were greatly distressed. (Judges 2:10-15)

The Evangelical church is reaping the consequences of similar failure today. The deep problems we see on every hand in our nation have their roots in the failure of the church to fulfill its God-given mission. Today's Evangelical young people are deeply confused. They are easily attracted by spiritual counterfeits. But the only way to recognize a counterfeit is to be intimately familiar with the real thing. If we train our children in the truth, they will be able to recognize and reject counterfeits.

We need to teach our children that the Bible is true, not just in general but in every detail, and we need to be prepared to answer their questions and doubts. The problem is, many among the present generation of Evangelical adults are Biblically illiterate themselves, and have the same unanswered questions and doubts. In order to be able to do the great work of raising up the next generation to believe that the Bible is true and authoritative in every area of life and ministry, the present generation of Evangelical adults must become grounded in the Word themselves.

References:

1. Sources of data cited in this article include: Barna Research, http://www.barna.org/; Bible Literacy Center, centerforbibleengagement.com; U. S. Religious Landscape Survey 2008, religions.pewforum.org; Dr. Stephen Prothero, C-SPAN interview May 13, 2007; "Examining the Sources of Conservative Church Growth: Where Are the New Evangelical Movements Getting Their Numbers?" (Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 36, No. 1, March 1997).

2. Gary E. Gilley, This Little Church Went to Market: Is the Modern Church Reaching Out or Selling Out? (Darlington, United Kingdom: Evangelical Press, revised and updated edition, 2005), pages 112-114.

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