Or alternatively: “Help! My Children Aren’t Christ-centred!” I’m sure we all know many Christian parents of young people who are not in an active relationship with Christ, who show little interest in coming to church, and who currently show no sign of wishing to fully engage with the Christian faith. Let’s analyse some possible reasons why. First, let me draw your attention to this Bana article Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church - which is over ten years old now - but indications from my searches online today suggest the same multifactorial pattern is still prevalent in 2025. The six reasons are, in summary:
1 – Churches seem overprotective
2 – Teens’ experience of Christianity is shallow
3 – Churches appear antagonistic to science
4 – Church teaching on sexuality feels simplistic,
judgmental
5 – They wrestle with Christianity’s exclusivity
6 – Church feels unfriendly to doubt
Now, if you see the world in the way I do, you might already sense that this is quite a mixed bag, and that it evokes the Nietzschean problem (it’s not always easy to tell vice from virtue, and virtue from vice), in that from the perspective of many of those outside the church, some of these I think are virtues being confused with vices; and from the perspective of many of those of us inside the church, some of them are vices being confused with virtues. Let’s take each in turn, where I’ll elaborate on what the findings are, then make a comment:
Reason #1 – Churches seem overprotective
“Today’s teens have unprecedented access to ideas
and culture. They want faith to connect with the world, yet experience
Christianity as stifling, fear-based, risk-averse. One-quarter say “Christians
demonize everything outside the church” (23%). Others feel the church “ignores
the problems of the real world” (22%) or is too worried about “movies, music,
and video games” (18%).”
My comment: This is the one I find most ambiguous. Christianity has always been, in one sense, radically protective of its truths and virtues, especially in the sense that it has the power to expose and diminish falsehoods. And when the faith is put into proper practice, as per scriptural teachings, it guards the soul against idols that masquerade as freedom but quietly enslave too – so there is probably a lot of virtue being confused with vice here in Reason #1, especially in a world full of people wanting to be gods of their own lives. Yet, on the other hand, when young people in church experience what they deem overprotectiveness, it’s often their particular church’s defensive crouch, in which the leadership behaves as though culture is primarily a contaminant rather than a mission field, so there is mileage in the concern too. But I think a profound truth that always abounds – and especially in the modern era, with floods of competing falsehoods and distractions, more prevalent than ever before - is that a Christian faith that cannot trust its own truths and robustness in the open air of any society and culture will struggle to retain those not rooted in relationship with Christ.
Reason #2 – Teens’ experience of Christianity is
shallow
“Many feel something is lacking in church.
One-third say “church is boring” (31%). A quarter say faith isn’t relevant to
their careers or interests (24%), or that “the Bible is not taught clearly or
often enough” (23%). One-fifth say “God seems missing from my experience of
church” (20%).”
My comment: Hmmm, okay, but remember that boredom is rarely about a lack of stimulation; it is almost always about a lack of depth within a mind not fully pursuing the adventure of truthseeking. When young people say church feels shallow, I believe that what they are really coveting - often inarticulately - is a faith so much more truthful, powerful and transformative than anything that the weight of life alternatives can hope to offer them. Acquire a relationship with God of such depth and growth that it transforms your heart and mind, reorders your desires, and draws you into the gravitational pull of ultimate meaning, and do all this with the consistently devoted mindset required, and the chances of it appearing boring or shallow are zero. If young people do not encounter this level of exhilaration, it is not surprising that it seems absent in many typical church services or congregations. The places I’ve visited where God appears to be somewhat absent or diluted is often because, for the members, He has been reduced to a comforting abstraction rather than proclaimed as the living centre of reality.
Reason #3 – Churches appear antagonistic to science
“Young adults feel tension between Christianity and
science. Many say “Christians are too confident they know all the answers”
(35%) or that churches are “out of step with the scientific world” (29%). Some
see Christianity as “anti-science” (25%) or were “turned off by the
creation-versus-evolution debate” (23%). Science-minded believers struggle to
stay faithful in science careers.”
My comment: Yeah, well I’m sure my views on this are crystal clear by now. Christianity has nothing to fear from science, and science says very little about the most important questions that belong in Christianity’s domain. When both are apprehended properly, they are no more in conflict than T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is in conflict with Watson and Crick’s The Double Helix. Yet when the church speaks as though faith were threatened by honest empirical inquiry, it inadvertently implies that truth it is trying to defend is fragile. And in cases when religious fundamentalism distorts empirical facts, it actually cannot tolerate external questions because it knows deep down in the recesses of the conscience that it may not survive them. The bogus, humanly-constructed conflict between faith and science has undoubtedly been one of the most damaging things to the Christian faith – it’s all such a shame, and so entirely unnecessary.
Reason #4 – Church teaching on sexuality feels
simplistic, judgmental
“In a hyper-sexualized culture, young believers
struggle with chastity and delayed marriage. Research shows many are as
sexually active as peers. One-sixth feel judged for their “mistakes” (17%).
Among Catholics, two-fifths say church teachings on sexuality and birth control
are “out of date” (40%).”
My comment: This is often a case of virtue being confused with vice. Christian sexual ethics are costly, demanding, and countercultural, but entirely necessary and beneficial - and one can easily see the mass harms caused by their abandonment, which is what has happened in much of modern culture has largely abandoned. On the other hand, judgemental Christianity is also a malady, especially when mercy is low. In a world already saturated with shame, anxiety and identity crises, young people who come smack against the church’s failure to accompany them patiently through failure and mistakes, are likely to see even Christianity’s most profound truths and virtues as vehicles of condemnation. If that happens to you, please do find a more loving and gracious church - there are plenty out there.
Reason #5 – They wrestle with Christianity’s
exclusivity
“Shaped by values of openness and diversity, young
adults want common ground. Three in ten say “churches are afraid of other
faiths” (29%) and feel “forced to choose between my faith and my friends”
(29%). One-fifth say church feels like a “country club, only for insiders”
(22%).”
My comment: Here again, the vice–virtue confusion is acute. While exclusivity without humility or invitation is prohibitive to community, Christianity is exclusive in the same way that truth is exclusive: not because it wishes to exclude, but because it cannot be two contradictory things at once. To say that Christ is the way, truth and life is a claim about reality. Truth precludes falsehood in a healthy and beneficial way, a bit like how medicine deals with our sickness in order to heal. So one cannot come to a full life in Christ except on His terms, which also happen to be the best terms we will ever encounter.
Reason #6 – Church feels unfriendly to doubt
“Young adults say church isn’t a safe place for
doubts. They feel unable “to ask my most pressing life questions” (36%) and
many have “significant intellectual doubts” (23%). One in six say their faith
“does not help with depression or emotional problems” (18%).”
My comment: Yes, this is a big problem – and runs counter to Tennyson’s great observation that “There lives more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds”. One of the best lessons to be learned is that doubt is not the opposite of faith; indifference is. As we see in so many Biblical figures, doubt is often the sign that faith is alive enough to contemplate, to wrestle with, and to pursue God with even greater depth. When churches treat doubt as a moral failure rather than an intellectual and spiritual journey, they unintentionally teach young people to either pretend or leave – which probably engenders a near 100% hit rate because churches that treat doubt as a moral failure are places one would be advised to leave anyway. If the church cannot be a place where questioning, uncertainty, and intellectual struggle are spoken aloud, young people will seek other spaces that at least allow them to tell the truth as they see it, even if it takes them off course for a while.
In closing, I will mention something from a previous blog post that might be useful as an adjunct to the above. A friend of a friend, a researcher called Dave Fenton, did some research on young people who had fallen away from the church at a young age and were no longer following Jesus or on a close walk with Him. The researcher found that the most common reason given was that they felt their parents weren’t living a very Christian life at home, outside of the church – and that their outside conduct didn’t live up to the messages being preached in the church.
So, if the title “Help! My Children Aren’t Christians!” is relatable (and similarly for other young people you know, not just your own children), then I think this taps into one of the all-time most important questions about Christianity – one that never goes away: What kind of faith are people being invited into? Because one thing we can always say with confidence is that young people are exquisitely sensitive to what is real. They may not always be quite ready to give their life to Christ (I know that feeling when I was on the cusp of becoming a Christian), but they can usually embrace authenticity, honesty, mystery, difficulty, and cost that offers genuine transformation. But they rarely forgive boredom, fear, inauthenticity, dishonesty, false humility, false confidence, exaggerated certainty, judgementalism, artifice or pretence.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a hard balance for Christianity to strike, because too much cultural compromise or cultural insulation creates barriers. But Christianity can truly flourish when it is lived as a truthful, honest, life-changing, exhilarating encounter with the living God, and parents and elders who manufacture relevance or dilute conviction will only end up dissuading in the long run. They need only to embody a faith worth exploring and acquiring - one that trusts truth, welcomes honest struggle, and radiates a joy proportionate to the transformative reality it proclaims. If we get back to that, then all the signs are that, for young people, Christianity can be irresistibly caught and sustained.
