The Most Overlooked Reason Why Millennials (& Gen Z) Have Left the Church

We were talking with a friend last night after dinner, and it struck me like a brick hitting Marv in the head in Home Alone 2.

Millennials and Gen Z never left the church.

Millennials and Gen Z were never part of the church in the first place.

This is the most overlooked reason in all of our talk of why millennials have left church and how is it that we can get Gen Z to go to church.

We have to dig into this reason if we’re ever going to uncover real reasons in reaching unreached people, and if we’re ever going to undo the damage that has been done.

So let’s do that.

Defining Terms

When I say Millennial, per Pew Research I’m referring to anyone born between 1981 and 1996. Yes, a lot of these people have children now and are not teenagers. No, these are not the youth of the nation anymore. Yes, we are America's workforce now and are in effect today’s boomers of yesterday.

When I say Gen Z, I’m referring to anyone born after 1997. These are 15-27 year olds now. I can’t even believe that Gen Z has grown up. My nieces are in this generation and it’s crazy to me. A baby I once held as a college student is now #adulting. Unreal.

Diving into the Reason

I’m a Millennial. And I grew up in church. So you might be wondering, how is it that I can be saying that Millennials were never part of the church. Isn’t that a contradiction?

No it’s not and here’s why.

When I was brought to church by my parents or with my parents, or whenever I was dropped off at some youth gathering, I was never part of the church.

In last night’s discussion as we were reminiscing on our pasts, our friend reminded me of something I had long forgotten. As kids we would refer to church as “Big Church.”

Ice cream socials, pizza parties, and sleepovers at the church happened. Trips to theme parks may have happened. Lots of activities happened. And while Big Church was going on, we were sequestered in our own youth rooms of small, medium, and gigantic sizes hearing different messages (often about not having sex, or the end times/rapture, or watching funny videos, or something).

As I thought about it last night, and into this morning I realized that an entire generation of kids that grew up going to church were never included into the family of God throughout their church attendance. After Youth Group ended, we all grew up. Many of my peers who grew up with parents who attended church did not continue to go to church. A small few may have found something like Cru or Intervarsity in college, or maybe a college ministry to attend. But the many never returned.

What I’ve said so far is anecdotal. This is my experience, and it’s personal and it doesn’t speak for everyone by any means. But it is a trend, or a pattern that I have encountered often when speaking with Millennials who have deconstructed their faith and no longer attend church.

And this general trend has caught my attention to see something larger at play.

The Big Picture About Big Church

According to a survey conducted in 2021, with each successive generation we’ve had declining church attendance.

What this graph doesn’t highlight very well is that with each of these generations, it isn’t the kids who choose to go to church less frequently. It’s the parents of each generation who are choosing to do other things besides attend church. And with each passing generation, the next generation of parents goes to church just a little bit less.

What I’m trying to point out here is that the fault and the blame isn’t on the Millennials and Gen Z for not going to church anymore. Typically this is how the news articles and the blogs and such paint it. Something like:

Bad Millennials. Bad Gen Z. You are destroying Christianity! Bunch of snowflakes and pansies. God help us all!

And the fear builds, and the freaking out and yada yada.

But the real blame is on our approach to doing church generally. The blame is on each generation of parents in our parenting.

What happens when we train up an entire generation separate from Big Church? What happens when our children never experience what it’s like to belong to the family?

Well, they do exactly what they were trained to do: they don’t go to church because they’ve never been to church.

Before we act surprised at the recent data, we have to take responsibility for our actions. If we don’t view an entire generation as part of our church family in the first place, then we can’t act surprised when they don’t want to be in the family.

It’s our fault.

This is on churches.

This is on parents.

But if you’re Gen Z or a Millennial like me, we can’t just put the blame on our parents and act like it’s all good. If we do that, then we will continue the downward trend for our own children, and our children’s children. We can’t do this because now it’s on us.

We are occupying the leadership positions now. We are parents now. It’s the Millennials and the Gen Z’s who are taking up leadership roles in churches and who are having and who are raising children who need to begin including children in gathered worship spaces and who will need to send a clear message that includes our children in the family of God.

This is the way if we’re ever going to change the trajectory and alter the course of history.

Now do you see what I mean when I say Millennials and Gen Z never left the church because they were never part of the church?

Separating children for decades from the word and sacraments will ultimately create apostates and agnostics of us all. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me” and in general we’ve taken the position of keeping them at arms length away from Jesus and his words of life. And when we exclude an entire generation from our gathered church family, we exclude them from the table. So we can’t act surprised when they don’t show up to dinner once they’re older. It makes sense.

So there it is. That’s the most overlooked reason why Millennials and Gen Z have left the church.

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If there’s enough interest on this topic I’ll write a follow up post to this one outlining some practical ways churches and parents can begin to include children and send a clear message that the next generation is our church family.

5 Stupid Things Christians Need to Stop Saying

Some of my greatest pet peeves of all time come from hanging around the proverbial Christian bubble. I broke the bubble a long time ago and don't hang around Christians exclusively, so thankfully I don’t hear this stuff very often. But when I do, man it irks my nerves and then some. Here are five stupid things Christians need to stop saying, like right now. Or yesterday. That works too…

1. “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.”

Cue the video with a millennial talking, standing outside with a historic church building in the background. This one drives me crazy. It’s not me, it’s you (meaning, this statement). This one has to go. Christianity is not a private faith, it’s a public faith. When Jesus died on the cross, was he crucified in solitary confinement? No. He died in a public space, where people on a public road passed by to witness his death. This makes being a Christian not only a personal act or decision but a very public one. (Remember when Jesus said something along the lines of, “If anyone denies me in front of others I’ll deny him before the Father?”)

If it’s public, then it’s a public religion that you are either part of or you’re not. If you’re in a relationship with Jesus, then you also belong to his church (the body of Christ, to which Jesus is the head). Entering into a relationship with Jesus begins with baptism, which is a religious thing to do. It’s a religious rite, called a “sacrament” that ushers us into the family of God—marking us out from the world and saying before the world, “This one belongs to the Triune God.” You can’t get more religious than that.

When we say “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship,” it's misleading and makes it sound like it's just me and Jesus inside of my wee little heart. But that's not the Christian faith. Sure, each Christian has a relationship with God in Christ—I get that, but Christianity is still a religion and carries with it doctrines (teachings) that we must believe if we are following Jesus. God is triune, Jesus was truly God and man, etc.

2. “Hate the sin, love the sinner.”

It’s time to let this one go. Evangelical Christians can probably recite this one with more certainty than John 3:16, but it’s a phrase found nowhere in the Holy Bible. It never made it in David’s Psalms. It didn’t make the 10 commandment list. And it was never penned by Saint Paul.

So where then does it come from? Some people cite Saint Augustine of Hippo (circa 424 AD) for this saying, but in his 211 Letter he actually just said, “With love for mankind and hatred of sins.” (Not really translating to this popular phrase, at all.)

It was hundreds of years later in 1929 when Mohandas Gandhi said it in his autobiography. “Hate the sin and not the sinner.” It sounds like a nice proverb, but it isn’t Christian. So let’s stop saying it. Because when we say it and try to implement it, our hatred of the sin always gets in the way of coming close to loving the sinner.

As we “hate the sin,” we just stiff-arm the person we claim to love. Now when we see that person, all we look at and tend to focus on is the sin that it is we see them committing that makes them less obedient to God than us. (Another problem with this right off the bat, is that Jesus warned us about pulling the plank out of our own eye first before judging the spec in our brother’s eye…oh well. That’s biblical.)

It’s as if we are saying with our actions, “I love you, but only to a point. I love you as long as there is nothing that I don't like about you. But if I find something, well, then my love for you stops.” The problem with this is, aside from failing to view each person as being made in the image of God, we also fail to seek to love them as God has loved us. And it makes us crusty and bitter and judgy. Who wants to be around that?

It’s better for Christians to lead with the gospel and with the image of God than with ethics. Ethics come, but they come as we grow up into the perfect icon of God (Colossians 1), Jesus Christ himself. The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins, and it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance (not his stiff upper lip). So let’s stop saying this one, yeah?

3. “When God closes the door, he opens a window!”

This one is pure optimism. That is all.

But what happens when God closes the door and boards up the windows too in someone’s life? Then what? This is a dumb statement.

It’s dumb because we don’t know what’s next. We can hope that when a person faces job loss, or sudden unexpected death of a loved one, or an unwanted diagnosis, that there will be better days this side of heaven. But we don’t know that for sure. Brighter days may only come in glory. We might be suffering for a long time before that though. That's what happened to various Christians throughout church history, why couldn’t it also be our destiny? Jesus suffered a buttload, why do we think somehow we are going to escape it?

Sometimes the door is shut, the windows are boarded up, and the house even burns down. That’s okay, because no matter what happens, “I am not my own, but belong in body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ” (Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 1).

Like most of these pithy statements, they are last-gasp attempts to comfort someone when we don’t know what else to say. So why not say nothing? Just food for thought…

4. “God said it. I believe it. That settles it!”

The problem with this saying is that there are a lot of things that God has said in the Bible, and that means a lot of things inside of the Bible can be used and twisted to suit unintended purposes and have harmful consequences. For example, in the Garden of Eden, the wicked serpent used God's own words and twisted them to convince Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3). “Did God actually say ‘you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” when God actually said, “You may eat of any tree in the garden, except for that one over there.”

People use and abuse Scripture to suit their own ends all the time. But there are steps to understanding what the Bible says and does not say. The words in the Bible must be interpreted through prayerful rigorous study that uses literary context, semantics and syntax, and historical understanding, all weighed against the history of interpretation in order to arrive at a trustworthy understanding of what is being said. This process goes well beyond just reading a verse, closing the good book, and saying “Ah ha! Got you!” to our “enemies.” That's just dumb.

Additionally, appealing to the Bible on its own in an age of skepticism doesn’t do anything to help a conversation move forward. Ultimately, yes, a Christian believes the Bible because God authored and authorized it and we trust him, but that doesn’t mean we believe the Bible is authoritative without reason. There are credible, reliable reasons to believe that the Bible is the Word of God and carries with it an authority we shouldn't try to overrule with our subjective opinions. But when we say stuff like, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it!” well, this just shuts any and all conversation down. It’s arrogant and boastful (which are two things that God has said in the Bible shouldn’t mark his followers—oh well.)

5. “God won’t ever give you more than you can handle.”

Um, actually he will and he often does. He gave Jesus and the apostles so much for them to handle that most of them died. One of them (John) was sentenced to exile.

I’m pretty sure God can and does give us way more than we can handle.

But that doesn’t mean that well-meaning Christians won’t say this one during a moment of deep pain or crisis. It’s like saying “Everything happens for a reason,” when you don’t know what to say to someone. Well, how about we just don’t say anything at all? Or how about we use our brains a little and say real words of comfort to someone who is utterly broken and cast down in spirit due to bad circumstances?

As an alternative, maybe say, “Wow, you're going through so much right now. I can’t imagine what it’s like, but I’m here with you in your pain. Can I pray with you?”