Decades later, I still mourn the kids i was in Sunday school with, who faded out from church when they started high school or a little later. i still remember names and faces.
Attending a Youthworks College “Theology thinktank” this month, led by Dean of Students and Manager of Research, Dr Ruth Lukabyo, brought these faces and names back. “When Young People Leave Church: An Australian perspective” presented convincing research on an issue that faces all churches.
“Tonight is not just about statistics, but it is about you,” Lukabyo began. “We all probably know children and teenagers and young adults who really seem to understand the gospel, and they began to serve your ministries, but suddenly they stop coming or they sort of fade out.. So this is an issue, a passion issue, for our ministries.”
Lukbyo told the story of “Michael,” one of the church leavers interviewed for research she took part in. Michael felt more and more isolated sitting in the back of church using his tech skills, and taking part in the Lord’s supper seemed less and less real – but his family was there. Feeling even more leaned on as a techie during Covid made it worse. “So where’s he at now? He’s at university, and he really misses the community. He’s left church, but he really, really misses the community. He’s been looking for it in different places. He goes to the soccer team, but he can’t find that kind of commitment to being together. He feels like he’s in an inbetween place. He doesn’t want to say he’s not a Christian, but he feels ‘like I hasn’t yet worked it out. I don’t really know.’
“So this is Michael, and he’s a person, one of the people that we interviewed and not a statistic.”
Lukabyo introduced the think tank to significant results from well-regarded researchers.
72% of those attending church regularly at age 11 no longer attended by the age of 18 to 29, according to the 2008 International Social Survey program, which surveyed the general community.
“I find this amazing that the dropout rate for young people is 54 in the UK and 54 USA. Now they perhaps are starting from quite a bigger base than we are, but I find this really interesting,” Lukabyo commented.
More recent stats from the president of the Barna Group, David Kinnaman, in his book Faith For Exiles (co-written with Mark Matlock), found similar percentages. “He did a survey of Australian 18 to 35 year olds who grew up Christian, but they’re no longer Christian, or they identify as Christian but they no longer attend any church. So those who say, ‘I’m not a Christian,’ and those who say, ‘I’m a Christian, but I don’t go to church’. “‘ [add up to] 72%.”
“Now the next survey … let’s get to 2021. This is the National Church Life Survey, the survey that goes out to all the churches. You might havefilled it in yourselves sometime. In the National Church Life Survey, 44% of the children of church going to parents are no longer attending a church by the age of 30. So kids that grew up in Christian families, almost half of them are not going to church by the age of 30. Note this is all of Australia and so it’s not just Sydney, and it’s looking at the children of church going to parents.”
Lukabyo points to details about the timeline when leavers leave, which stabilises at 25. “S:That made me think if there’s good ministry done with the young adult, then actually they’re able to stay at church a lot longer, hopefully for the rest of their life.”
A Sydney-only figure from the NCLS has 36 per cent of 15-year-old children of attenders no longer in church.
Reasons to leave
The McCrindle book An Undercurrent of Faith cites reasons Gen Zers gave for leaving church:
• I felt religion was no longer relevant or meaningful to my life, (55 per cent of leavers in the sample)
• I no longer believe in the teachings of Christianity (41 per cent)
• I felt disappointed in the church due to a lack of accountability, hypocrisy, or dishonesty (41 per cent)
• I prioritise evidence-based or rational explanations over religious faith (41 per cent)
• I experienced judgment or exclusion within the Christian community (33 per cent)
Likabyo loved this quote from An Undercurrent of Faith:”Many young people leave their faith not because there is a compelling reason to leave, but because there is no compelling reason to stay.” She asked “What are we offering these young people? Are we communicating the beauty of the gospel? Are we communicating the Christian life that is one of flourishing?”
Lukabyo was part of a team that added questions to the Australian Community Survey in 2025 of more than 2,500 Australians. Their questions, “How often do you attend religious services? Have you attended religious services fairly frequently? What age did you stop, and what was the reason?”
They found 21 per cent of all respondents attend religious services fairly frequently, at least monthly. Lukabyo clarified that the response includes all religions and school services as well. 41 per cent of all respondents claim that there was a time in their life when they attended religious services fairly frequently.
This survey produced more detail on when people leave religion: the most common ages were 18 years, 10 per cent; 15 years, 8.3 per cent; 16 years, 8 per cent; 12 years, 7.4 per cent; 19 years 6.8 per cent. These stats point to transitions from primary to high school, school to uni or work, and transitions in parental control as being important factors in young people leaving church..
The process of growing up and making my own decisions ranked as the main reason youth leavers gave, at 48 per cent. Loss of faith was 19 per cent, and other interests becaming more important at 13 per cent.
For young adults leaving, the process of growing up and making my own decisions was also at 42 per cent, other interests becoming more important 21 per cent and moving to another area was 19 per cent.
“This kind of independence is the most important thing,” Lukabyo noted. “It accounted for 37% of all responses and it was the leading reason for youth and young adult leaders. I think the first thing that’s interesting is it suggests that many young people don’t experience leaving churches rebellion primarily, but they see it as part of becoming an adult.
“This process of growing up, I think the comments that can be divided up and have different aspects to them.. So one of them was school-based participation, and this came up again and again, that they attended religious services because of school, probably couldn’t get out of it really…
“The next reason is increased freedom from parents’ choices, which goes to school participation as well. ‘So parents put less pressure on me to attend’, ‘Thought it was a waste of time and I felt forced by my parents to attend’ and ‘have no interest.’ ‘My parents forced me to go.’ For a young person, it felt like a bit of coercion, ‘you have to go’, and pressure. There was resistance to what they were expected to do or what their families were looking to do and as a young person grew up, they believed that they had increased freedom….
“The next reason was the loss of faith. Young people said they had more critical thinking skills, didn’t believe what they were preaching, ‘I denounced it, their manmade stories’ and ‘if God’s there, they’re not what they believe.’ It seems like if these young people had a faith, now they’ve becomen more critical in their thinking and examined that faith and decided it’s not [true]. And it’s not just an intellectual belief, I think, but it’s existentially. There was some talk about suffering, why does God allow suffering and also comments that [Christianity] is not coherent. ‘It doesn’t make sense. There’s no meaning to it. It doesn’t affect my life.’
“The next comments that really we could gather together were negative perceptions of organised religion. Some younger people said ‘they pushed me into being transphobic and homophobic’, ‘It was a cult, propaganda’ They are disillusioned by court cases and tired of hypocrisy.”
Implications of the studies
Lukabyo connected the dots between the studies and the changes or renewed emphases churches need to make.
“We always knew, I think, that 10 years old to 18 is a big time of dropping out of church. But between 19 and 25 years, there’s still a big drop-off, and for me, the implication is we need to keep discipling people after school.
“‘”Transitions are incredibly important as we talked about before.
“We really need to concentrate our attention, our resources, our leadership and our theological imagination on young adults. Then perhaps a different pedagogy is needed, especially for the young adults. They are asking whether Christianity is relevant, believable, and worth owning.
“So Christian formation and discipleship, I think, should concentrate not only on information, not just teaching gospel truths, not just going through the Bible, but at the same time trying to have a look at the question that the McCrindle researchers brought up: Is it worth being a Christian? Is it worth believing? Does it give purpose and meaning to my life?
“So the question is not what Christianity teaches, but what difference does Christianity make?
“Fourth implication, trust and institutional integrity. When some people see incompetence and dishonesty and exclusion or lack of accountability, the church’s witness is profoundly weakened in the world. This means safeguarding our churches, having humility, encouraging repentance and transparency and also very faithful, truthful leadership. These are really central, really central to the plausibility of the Christian.
“Young adult ministry deserves new attention. I just want to say that again and don’t assume that youth ministry alone is the answer. We need pathways in our adults, and especially with their emerging independence, intellectual questions, their schedules and their desire for authentic community.”
Jesus, of course, predicted what might happen in the Sunday school of my childhood,m and as Youthworks College principal Mike Dicker reminded the thinktank, seed did fall on the path, on rocky ground, and was choked by thorns. And for those of us who have persevered in faith, we hope that the seed sown in good soil will bring forth a harvest.