Comments on: Is the church losing “emerging adults”?

By: Ruth Bard

Ruth Bard — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:33:54 +0000

Much of the responsibility for this phenomenon has to fall squarely on the shoulders of parents who allow their adult children to continue to live at home, for free, while doing nothing useful.

As for leaving the church, think: they’ve had 12 years of atheistic, evolutionary indoctrination in the public schools in the name of “science” and the church has failed miserably to give them an intellectual foundation for their Christian beliefs. They need to know for sure that Biblical history – all of it – is actually true, and we need to give them that conviction if we want to keep them.

By: Jess

Jess — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:02:55 +0000

I agree with your “rant” Chris, that the view that emerging adults have seen is not a pleasant one. But, I think that we have as a society some short term memory issues. In reality, it is much newer of a concept to leave home at a young age, pursue housing, marriage, career, and children – while moving across the state, country, or world. It has not been that long since we had families that lived in close proximity and parents, grandparents, great-grandparents along with multiple layers of extended family that were close by.
I have found that in my own church singleness is not so much looked down on as just a bit awkward at times. It’s not intentional, but so many things are set up for couples.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:38:54 +0000

Allow me to rant for a bit…

We’re delaying adulthood because the example given to us of adulthood is rather grim:

The generation before us has a 50% divorce rate. At least two of my friends are already divorced, both married below the median age of 25.

If they have a job, most adults hate it and chances are good they’ve gone through layoffs at least once. In the companies I’ve worked for, there’s no such thing as job stability.

For all their careful investing “adults” just lost an excessive amount of money their home and stock market investments.

In a relentless pursuit over seeker-sensitivity, previous generations made church boring to everyone except seekers.

Why in the world would anyone want to rush into that lifestyle?

We’ve seen the mistakes of the future and are reacting with–in my mind–appropriate caution.

Also, Mohler makes a big point about marriage being the path to maturity. I would argue that the church has some serious problems if it can’t conceive of maturity outside the context of marriage. I seem to remember a few important people in the Bible who remained single their entire lives…

By: Dale Fincher

Dale Fincher — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:19:20 +0000

I used part of Smith’s interview on my recent blog post (www.dalefincher.com) in trying to relate to what may be going on theologically when how we think of “church” and perhaps the rumblings of what the Spirit is doing to re-craft the way we think about the “church” as institution.

Thanks for highlighting this issue.