Survey: Churches Losing Youths Long Before College
June 30, 2009 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
“The next generation of believers is draining from the churches, and it causes me great personal and professional concern,” said Ken Ham, founder and president of Answers in Genesis and a Young Earth creationist.
Hoping to shed light on what he believes is a monumental problem, Ham enlisted the services of America’s Research Group to study why young people were leaving. The results, published in Already Gone, will shake many churches to their very core, Ham states in the new book.
While previous surveys have shown that Christian students tend to quit church during their college years, the data collected by ARG found that most of them were already gone in middle school and high school.
According to ARG’s survey, 95 percent of 20- to 29-year-old evangelicals attended church regularly during their elementary and middle school years. Only 55 percent went to church during high school. And by college, only 11 percent were still attending church.
“They’re sitting in our churches right now … and they’re already gone,” Ham said during a “State of the Nation” address last week.
Delving deeper into some of the reasons for the exodus, the research group found that nearly 40 percent of the surveyed twentysomethings first had doubts about the Bible in middle school. Another 43.7 percent said they first doubted that all of the accounts and stories in the Bible are true during their high school years. Only around 10 percent said they first became doubtful about the Bible accounts during college.
Among those who said they do not believe all the biblical accounts are true, the top reasons they gave for doubting the scriptures were: “it was written by men” (24 percent), “it was not translated correctly” (18 percent), “the Bible contradicts itself” (15 percent), and “science shows the world is old” (14 percent).
Surprising Number of Teens Believe They Will Die Young
June 29, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
A surprising number of teenagers – nearly 15 percent – think they’re going to die young, leading many to drug use, suicide attempts and other unsafe behavior, new research suggests.
The study, based on a survey of more than 20,000 kids, challenges conventional wisdom that says teens engage in risky behavior because they think they’re invulnerable to harm. Instead, a sizable number of teens may take chances “because they feel hopeless and figure that not much is at stake,” said study author Dr. Iris Borowsky, a researcher at the University of Minnesota.
That behavior threatens to turn their fatalism into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Over seven years, kids who thought they would die early were seven time more likely than optimistic kids to be subsequently diagnosed with AIDS. They also were more likely to attempt suicide and get in fights resulting in serious injuries.
Borowsky said the magnitude of kids with a negative outlook was eye-opening.
