Welcome

I am pleased to welcome you to my personal blog, which I started in March 2009. I first became interested in blogging about five years ago, using old "blogger.com", which was cumbersome to use and I never mastered. About a year ago I discovered that Google had bought "blogger.com" and had revised it considerably, making it fun to use, so much so that I have devised at least 15 blogs on various subjects and frequently add posts and Gadgets to them.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Is Sunday School Failing?

I found this article in gospel.com.

Is Sunday School failing?

Did you happen to catch Answers in Genesis’ “State of the Union” address last week? It presented some very interesting facts about why and when people leave the church and the Christian faith.

You can watch it online here. Answers in Genesis is a creationist ministry, and that worldview is certainly the centerpoint of their address; but no matter what beliefs you hold about evolution and creation, you’ll find some of the research results fascinating.

Here’s a few bullet points, taken from Kent Shaffer’s excellent Church Relevance blog:

Among 20- to 29-year-old evangelicals:
  • 95% attended church regularly during elementary school
  • 95% attended church regularly during middle school
  • 
>> 40% first had doubts about the Bible in middle school
  • 55% attended church regularly during high school
  • 
>> 43.7% first had doubts about the Bible in high school
  • 11% attended church regularly during college

  • >> 10% first had doubts about the Bible in college

Oddly, the study discovered that those who attended Sunday school (61%) are actually more likely than non-attendees (39%):

  • to not believe that all the accounts and stories in the Bible are true
  • to doubt the Bible because it was written by men
  • to defend keeping abortion legal
  • to accept the legalization of gay marriage
  • to believe in evolution
  • to believe that good people don’t need to go to church
The take-home point seems to be that America’s Sunday schools and church youth education programs are failing to address kids’ serious spiritual issues until it’s too late and they’ve already left the church. While most youth ministry seems to focus on high school and college students, the above data suggests that it’s in middle school that doubts and spiritual crises kick in. And clearly Sunday school isn’t helping resolve those crises.

Kent’s post has some good thoughts and questions about these numbers. What do you think? Are these numbers a surprise to you?

By: Andy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Creationism, Education, church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

No comments:

Post a Comment