Young people are leaving the church in droves. For those of us who work with students, this is hardly breaking news. All of us have stories we could share about young people who were “on fire” for God that, for whatever reason, abandoned their faith. Personally, I will never forget seeing a former classmate from Biola University walk by hand-in-hand with another man just one year after my graduation. I was shocked! He not only left Christianity (from what I could tell), he went headlong into the gay lifestyle.

Church attendance is a good indicator of this trend. The Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those raised in the church will disengage by twenty-nine years old. While it may be typical for young people to walk away from the faith during the college years and then return upon child rearing, the signs are that this generation (as a whole) is not coming back. As a Christian high school teacher, it’s disconcerting to think that four out of every five students I teach (statistically speaking) will be completely disengaged from their faith within a decade of graduation. The Facebook profiles of many former students tell it all.