Why do so many young people quit church?

by Arby
(somewhere in the south)

Thanks for asking such a great question. I believe at least four factors cause professing christians to quit church. I've included clickable links to more info for those who need a more in depth answer.

1. They've never been saved to begin with. Instead, they are cultural christians going through the motions without any heart belief, without any salvation, without ever being born again. They are religious but lost.
   
   
2. They've never been taught, have never learned the Bible verse by verse. Learning and living the Bible verse by verse year after year is the basis of spiritual growth which leads to spiritual maturity. Even many Baptist churches these days do not teach the Bible verse by verse, a truly shameful state of affairs.
   
   Instead, people go to church and are fed spiritual junk food, often worthless drivel that does nothing to establish them in the faith. In part, this is a result of teachers like Rick Warren and his woefully wrong Purpose Driven deception.
   
   The Willow Creek movement models the same doctrinal deficiencies, having dumbed down expository preaching and replaced it with goofy psycho-babble "messages" and carnal emergent church philosophy. Both the PDL and Willow Creek models follow a man-centered Peter Drucker model instead of a Biblical Pauline model.
   
   Many modern churches do not teach the Bible verse by verse. Modern church services are more like an ear-achingly loud rock concert or a dance recital or a profanity laced stand up comedy act from cussing preachers like Mark Driscoll or a sex class from a false "shepherd" like Ed Young, than a time to learn the Bible verse by verse. We hope that people's spiritual common sense kicks in so they can abandon those churches en masse.
   
   
3. They starve to death spiritually in charismatic and word-faith churches and other churches where God's Holy Word is largely ignored while wild emotional experiences or dead intellectualism or hyper legalism replace verse by verse exposition of the Bible. Emotion and experience become the benchmark for spiritual growth instead of Biblical discipleship, knowing and obeying scripture in context.
   
   Words of knowledge and prophetic utterances from false prophets who constantly prophesy things that never happen are common in the word-faith movement yet no one ever calls them out as false prophets.
   
   Kim Clement and Benny Hinn are easily identified as false prophets by Christians who believe the Bible. Fake messages in tongues seem to get more attention in charismatic and word-faith circles than expository preaching, i.e., teaching the Bible verse by verse.
   
   
   
   In many charismatic and word-faith churches, there is little doctrinal discernment and little dispensational discernment. Christians are taught as if they are Jews in first century Israel, with heavy emphasis on apostles and miracles and signs and speaking in tongues and alleged healings yet very little emphasis on teaching the New Testament verse by verse.
   
   The first century has been over for 1900 years. Everything changed when Jesus our Lord arose from the dead. Our Biblical message now is the grace of God in Christ according to Paul's gospel, 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, not according to a first century Messianic gospel aimed at first century Jews living under the law in the Holy Land with their Messiah walking among them.
   
   
4. They give in to post-modern thinking and ignore their responsibility to "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good," 1 Thess 5:21. Post-modernism has poisoned the culture with its willingness to accept anything except Biblical absolutes. There are no absolutes according to post-modern thinking, of that post-moderns are absolutely certain!
   
   Post-modernism and Gnosticism have infected the body of Christ like a plague bacillus, spreading spiritual disease and spiritual death. The emergent church has adopted post-modernism, gnosticism and New Age spirituality, conditioning their people not to judge anything, to regard every view as equally valid.
   
   That rejection of Biblical truth, even among professing christians, pre-conditions them for little to no spiritual growth if they are saved and eternal destruction if they are unsaved because light rejected becomes lightning, Psalm 144:6, Zechariah 9:14, Revelation 20:11-15.
   
   For these reasons, people leave the church and wander in spiritual darkness. Don't let the spiritual darkness overwhelm you.