You Lost Me

by David Kinnaman

In fact, as heartrending as loss-of-faith stories are, prodigals are the rarest of the dropouts; most are either nomads or exiles—those who are dropping out of conventional forms of Christian community, not rejecting Christianity entirely. In other words, though I believe these issues are interconnected, most young Christians are struggling less with their faith in Christ than with their experience of church.

Faith switching is most likely to occur between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine.

To become a parent is to promise you’ll love prodigals.”

the sociological reality is that most of those absent young adults are going through a period of nomadism. Only 11 percent of young adults say that they grew up as a Christian but have deconverted entirely or converted to another faith; this number is offset somewhat by the 4 percent who convert to Christianity after a childhood in a different faith. All things considered, a young Christian has about 1:9 odds of losing his or her faith entirely. While this is a rare outcome, it is a very high number when you think about the estimated five million eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old ex-Christians encompassed by this statistic.

its not so bad