“Mind The Gap” … amazing how a simple announcement introduced to warn travellers of the gap between platforms and trains on the London Underground has entered the popular consciousness! And it popped into my head when I thought about something Myra and I have been talking about. It’s no revelation that many kids brought up to attend church regularly are unchurched by the time they are 25. In fact the “news” is so old that the phenomenon has a name : “Church dropouts”. There’s some great research on the topic conducted in 2007 by Lifeway (LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention is one of the world’s largest providers of Christian products and services). You can find their stuff on Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/). The statistical bottom line is that — among those who attended a Protestant church twice a month or more for at least a year in high school — 70 percent of 23-30 year olds stopped attending church regularly for at least a year between ages 18-22 (but the good news, I suppose, is that 35% of these dropouts eventually returned and are attending church twice a month.)

What Myra and I are praying about is “are we called to help young adults jump the gap?”. Of course that’s a big deal for us. We still feel called to marriage and family ministry.  We begin to feel that it’s long enough from our disappointment in not joining FamilyLife that it might be time to get active, but we’re very leery of trusting in our own understanding. We want to be sure that we are following God’s leading, not our own desire to make a difference.

Of course, we are not spring chickens either. We’re at least two generations away from these that we are so worried about. What do these youngsters want? How do they think? What works for them? We can see why church “our way” doesn’t work. We can see that there isn’t much going on around us that really guides young adults … gets them, if you like, from the platform of teen life to the railway of adult existence. So where should we go …