• Consider: Students are now partaking in “de-baptisms” on college campuses, where they denounce their Christian faith as another student blows a hair dryer in their face…
• Only 4% of emerging adults will be evangelical, which means, they have made a profession of faith in Christ, a confession of personal sins, and have embraced core orthodox beliefs.[i]  If this is true, then at the combined four campuses of the University of Colorado, with an enrollment of 55,000, only 2,200 students will be a Jesus follower; more specifically on my daughter’s VB team, with 15 members, only 1 will be evangelical (0.6 actually)!
• Regarding “religion and spirituality” most emerging adults simply don’t spend much time at all on the topic of religion.  They tend to be indifferent about it, believe that the shared principles of religions are good, that religious particularities are peripheral, and that religion is simply about making people “good.”[ii]
• Emerging adults experience religion by way of a “take or leave what you want” philosophy.  Evidence and proof trump “blind faith” and religion is personal, not social or institutional.  In the end, emerging adults basically believe there is no way to really know what is true![iii]
• In their world, religious faith and practice is minimized, irrelevantized, moralized, simplified, homogenized, de-particularized, individualized, privatized, and de-authorized!  They see the church as “an elementary school for morals” and NOT as a place for community or relational connectivity!

Spiritually, there has never been a more lost generation!  Unless you consider the possibility as to why they are so lost??  My question however is this, Which generation is LOST- a generation that doesn’t know God or a generation that doesn’t make God known?  Judges 2:10 puts it into perspective: “After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done…”

The “generation that died” was A Generation that LOST its Children…  This was the generation that God choose to enter the Promised Land- they saw their parents “die off” in the wilderness.  The generation that was tasked with conquering the “enemies” in the land.  The generation that experienced many mighty acts of God.  The generation that failed to carry out its mission.  The generation that disobeyed God and compromised God’s purpose.  The generation that was irresponsible; they did not spiritually parent their children to acknowledge God!  Like my generation, the Boomers, they essentially allowed their children to raise themselves, to make their own “spiritual” choices, and it back-fired big time; just as it has today!  The generation that “grew up”, and the 17-23 year olds of today, have had no spiritual example or biblical pattern of discipleship to follow!

What we’ve LOST is the intergenerational dynamic of spiritual parenting and discipleship!  Let’s put that into perspective for today…

• We have a “declining” church and an “aging” generation of leaders and church goers- from 80,000 churches in the 1950’s to 70,000 today; from 1998 to 2008 membership declined by 25%; only 15% of adults associate with “church” today; between one-third and one-half of attendees are age 60 and above; only 2% of attendees are “young adults”; 10 years ago the average age of a senior pastor was 48, it is now 55![iv]   Apparently a “succession plan” is a glaring weakness in our churches.  A generation of church leaders and attendees will soon “die off”- then what?
• We haven’t exactly “conquered the land!”  In regard to religious affiliation, the fastest growing group of the American population are the “Nones”- 37% who claim “no religious affiliation!”[vi]  The most “unchurched” region of the US is now the Northeast- 7 of the top 10 states- The top ten least religious states: Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Rhode Island, Nevada, and Connecticut![vii]  For every twenty American churches, only three are growing, and only one of those is growing by conversion growth. In the Assemblies of God, only six out of every twenty churches are growing while fourteen are plateaued or declining.[viii] 

Whether you agree with it or not, in America, we are A Church that has LOST its Credibility… and we are at a major crossroads!  Do we continue down the path of consumer “Christianity” or do we make the choice to change the way we think about and live out our responsibility to raise, resource, and release the emerging generation to build the kingdom?  Only one of two futures lies on the horizon: the church in American will all but cease to exist, or there will be an exponential explosion of church planting like we see in the New Testament!  Which will it be?  Here’s a few more things to consider…

• Even if emerging adults have a desire to follow Jesus, they are nearly 70% more likely than older adults to strongly assert that if they “cannot find a local church that will help them become more like Christ, then they will find people and groups that will, and connect with them instead of a local church.” They are also significantly less likely to believe that “a person’s faith in God is meant to be developed by involvement in a local church.[ix]”  They view religious beliefs as cognitive assents, not as life drivers.  “What seems right to me” is what is authoritative.[x]
• Further, the National Survey on Youth and Religion, 2009 states, Communities of faith face major challenges in connecting to, engaging, and retaining today’s emerging adults: basically emerging adults have other places to be and things to think about, many communities of faith don’t even understand the facts of emerging adults, nor thought about possible faithful responses, and most congregations simply cater primarily to “settled,” traditional nuclear families with children[xi].
• This has resulted in an emerging generation of young adults who are amorphous, complex, self-focused, transient, confused, disjointed, unstable, exploratory, and anxious.[xii]
• Most churches obviously aren’t doing a very good job of relational discipleship, let alone spiritually developing the emerging generation!  Only a few factors during these years tend to strengthen religious faith and practice- the primary one being the spiritual influence of parents and/or spiritual mentors in the life of a young adult.[xiii]

So again, I ask the question, Which Generation is Most LOST?  An emerging generation that “doesn’t know God relationally nor have a pattern of following Jesus to follow”  OR “an aging generation of spiritual parents and leaders in the church who have not made God known through a relational example, nor have we provided a true pattern of biblical discipleship” ??? 

But all is not lost… Like David, we must choose to “build” the generation that will “build” the church (see 2 Samuel 7), which will require church leaders and churches to change the way we think about ministry; especially as it relates to reaching, raising, resourcing, and releasing youth and emerging adults to be true followers of Jesus Christ.  I certainly don’t profess to have the solution to this challenge.  However, I am convinced we must acknowledge that the church youth ministry of the last several decades, although successful is some respects, has done little to truly impact a generation and a culture for Christ.  Perhaps the better answer is a return to the biblical pattern of spiritual parenting; which all the recent data indicates is the one significant factor that strengthens and sustains faith in the life of an emerging adult.