Why Are Young Adults Missing from Church? Understanding the Missing Generation
- Eljoh Hartzer, MTh
- Jul 29
- 7 min read
Updated: Jul 30
What is the missing generation? It's the generation of young adults, from the age of 18 and onwards, that seems to have slipped out the back door of the church building when no one was paying attention. What defines these ones who leave the church to go search for greener pastures elsewhere? Where have they gone? And will they ever consider coming back? Is the missing generation much more complex than what we have believed?
What follows is not another doom-and-gloom prophecy about the state of young people and their flimsy faith, but a testimony of witness that God is doing something fresh among this generation, and an invitation for you to partner with what He is already doing.
This article is part of a series on helping churches disciple young adults: Why Young Adults Are Leaving the Church: 7 Reasons and What We Can Do
May you find space here to pause, reflect, and abide.
Vine Creative Studio holds a collection of what I like to call 'encounter tools', resources connecting hearts with Jesus. You're welcome to try one out with my free Workbook on Living as a Wholehearted Follower.
The international phenomenon of the missing generation
Church membership statistics show a decline. In a post-Christian, secular world, whole families are leaving the church. Yet there is one group who is running out the door faster than the rest: the young adults. Theologians and Youth Workers even coined a term for this subgroup - the missing generation.
They are missing from the pews on Sunday morning.
They are missing from Bible study groups.
They are missing from community initiatives.
They are missing from the church - completely.
The missing generation is known for a distrust in institutions and a crisis of confidence in the church as we know it. Church attendance clearly dips between the ages of 17 and 25 (Kinnaman & Hawkins, 2011:22), and they fall away from the church (Langford, 2014:324). The phenomenon of the missing generation has also been called the exodus of the youth (Aziz, 2019:147) as they are exiting the church en masse.
"Church attendance has never been lower, and the Christian influence in our culture never weaker.” ―A.W. Tozer
Why the missing generation is a problem
In South Africa at least, the phenomenon of the missing generation has sometimes been brushed over and ignored by saying things like “it goes beyond numbers” (Ferreira & Chipenyu, 2021) and focusing more on the so-called ‘quality of faith’ of those members that remain. So yes - it is necessary for me to explain why this is a problem in the first place.
The missing generation matters because the state of a person’s soul is at stake – and this is the heart of Christianity and the nr.1 task of the church.
It matters because a group of vulnerable people is missing out on the joy of fellowship and the belonging in church community.
It also has effects for younger siblings who see this as an example, and even older family members who may be tempted to follow suit.
This is written from the belief that the church does have a meaningful role to play in the life of a young person - offering them an anchor in the cultural storm that rages on around them.
Common responses to the problem of the missing generation
Most of our reactions to the missing generation have been fear-based, like this quote from D.A. Carson:
"We're actually only ever three generations away from losing the gospel. Generation one believes the gospel and notes the entailments of it. The second generation, though, assumes the gospel. It's no longer the main thing. The entailments become emphasized. The third generation rejects the gospel and identifies only with the entailments."
We focus on young adults as the ones who will have to carry forth the flame of faith into the future, and in doing so, we miss the opportunity to help kindle that spark today. In order to get there, we need to be honest about what was missing in the faith formation of these young ones, leading up to the point where they drifted away.
If they only received spoon-feeding or what I like to call 'stale manna' (versus the fresh bread of personal revelation) - it's no wonder they went looking elsewhere. The argument here is that young people did not have REAL faith development but a kind of pseudo experience. They had entertainment, not catechesis or discipleship. This is why it's so important that Sunday school does true faith formation.
"We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done." - Psalm 78:4
But a response rooted in fear is not faith-filled. Through my research and my lived experience, I've seen that there's more to the missing generation than what meets the eye.
Subgroups to help us understand the missing generation: prodigals, nomads, and exiles
If we're going to respond wisely, we first need to recognise that not every missing young adult is missing for the same reason. Kinnaman & Hawkins have offered three helpful subcategories for the missing generation in their work, You Lost Me:
Prodigal
Nomads
Exiles
I have found this framework helpful in my research and ministry work because it is a bit more nuanced than just putting the same umbrella term of 'missing generation' over each individual young adult who's not in church. Some of them have good reasons. Some of them are closer to Jesus now than before. Some of them are genuinely confused and need your help.
1 - A prodigal is someone who turned their back against God and chose culture instead.
Like the Prodigal Son of Luke 15, these young adults chose to go their own way. Yet we are to take the posture of the father, watching the horizon, ready to welcome them back home.
Churches and parents generally assume that every young adult who's not in church is a prodigal, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
When we despair over the empty pews of our churches, we do not take into account that faith can take on new shapes as time goes on. The other two categories below give us the insight that every young adult who's missing from church will not necessarily be missing from Heaven...
2 - Nomads are still okay with the faith, but just not the church.
Many of them never made a sudden decision to leave the church behind, but rather gradually drifted away - or, as I like to say, they fell through the cracks. It was a slow event, almost imperceptible, until they were completely gone.
After the Covid-19 pandemic and the world's shift towards online connection, many young people sought a sense of belonging in what became known as the 'online church'. It's convenient. They could sit on their couch at home, sipping on coffee, and experience a kind of communal worship without ever leaving the safety of their home.
Just because someone 'attends church online' - does that mean they have less of an abiding relationship with Christ? Not necessarily, although a healthy church life can greatly benefit every disciple of Jesus.
The nomads have an issue with the church as an institution or a place, often expressing that it feels unsafe, unwelcoming, and inhospitable towards the outsider.
3 - Exiles feel trapped or stuck between culture and church.
The world they live in resembles a 'digital Babylon' and they are expected to be counter-cultural at every single turn.
The cultural climate young people live in today is the number one reason why they are leaving the church. Just one generation ago, going to church and being a Christian was the norm in many of these households. Now, you are ostracized for being a person of faith or going to church.
Even for someone who wants to stay close to God, doing so comes at a serious personal and social cost. A young adult today who is true to the faith is called to be like Daniel and take a complete counter-cultural stance - which could be a thing of beauty, but someone needs to teach them how to do that.
Before you continue,
take a moment now to identify if the young adults you have in mind (or, on your heart) are prodigals, nomads, or exiles. Not every missing young adult is missing for the same reason.
Prodigal
How can we become the father who watches the horizon?
Nomad
Who has quietly fallen through the cracks of your church?
Exile
How can we prepare young adults to live faithfully in a digital Babylon?
A one-size-fits-all approach won't work. For instance, in South Africa, many missing young adults are not abandoning the idea of church altogether. They're moving between expressions of church. They're coming home to a different kind of church.
Taking a compassionate stance to the missing generation
If my research taught me anything, it's that many young adults have not stopped looking for Jesus. They are asking hard questions, searching for authentic community, and longing to follow Him faithfully. Before we label an entire generation as "lost," perhaps we should first listen to their stories.
Taking a compassionate stance as a young adult myself, I wrote about the reasons why young adults leave the church in one of my first big research assignments at seminary,
"A metaphor to understand what has happened is that the church is a mother who always had a certain lullaby she would sing to her children. As the years went on, she stopped
singing this song because she thought her children had outgrown it. One day, she finds that her children have gone missing. When she eventually finds them after a long and hard search, they turn to her with innocent faces and whisper: ‘We went looking for the song’."
Before we decide how to bring them back, we must first understand who they are. Only then can our response be shaped by compassion rather than assumption.
The church must ask emerging adults how to be church in this time and age, and then put in preventative measures to plug the holes where young generations seem to be continually leaking out of the church. That's the only way we will stop the next generation from following in their footsteps and going
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Where to next?
If you've read this post and feel a beckoning within to go even deeper, you might be interested in the following resources about making disciples of younger generations:
P.S. Want to be the first to discover more resources for helping younger generations grow into faithful followers of Jesus?
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