One of my passions is reaching emerging generations.

I said something yesterday that I’d never said before. And it wasn’t in my notes. But something crystallized for me.

I cited a study that found that 58% of college grads who grew up going to church stop attending church for one reason or another. I’ve actually seen studies that peg the number as high as 86%.

These are church kids. And we’re losing at least six out of ten. That attrition rate is going to kill us. It’s like we’re losing a generation. It’s Judges 2:10: “After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel.”

I felt such holy conviction when I was speaking yesterday. I said, “I’m not in the camp that says what’s wrong with them. The real question is: what’s wrong with us.”

If the church was doing it’s job–incarnating the gospel in relevant ways–I honestly don’t think we’d see so many twenty-somethings leaving the church. They long for community and authenticity and meaning as much as any generation. There is a spiritual hunger. But evidently they aren’t finding what they’re looking for in the churches they grew up in.

As the infamous Pogo once said, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.”

Irrelevance is Irreverence!