Why Young People Leave the Church (Part 2)

In ‘Why Young People Leave the Church’ (Part 1), I wrote about my involvement in a research project using quantitative data from the 2024/2025 Australian Community Survey.

Here are the key reasons identified:

• The process of growing up and making my own decisions (37%)

• Loss of faith or no longer believing (20%)

• Moving to a new area (17%)

• Other interests became more important (14%)

In this article, I’ll expand on the second phase of the research.

The Second Phase

In this phase, we conducted qualitative research by interviewing six young people who had left the church. It was a privilege to have these young people speak to us openly and honestly. At times, we shed tears at the pain some of them felt. Leaving the church was not easy.

CJ’s story

CJ attended an Anglican church and, while they were involved in the youth group at the age of 16, they came out as queer.

As a university student, CJ reflected on their experience when they became increasingly troubled by several theological questions. CJ wrestled with the problem of evil, asking how a good God could allow suffering and how God could command the deaths of so many people in the Bible. CJ struggled with biblical teachings on women, such as wives submitting to their husbands in Ephesians 5 and 1 Timothy 2’s instructions on women teaching and speaking. CJ also struggled with the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality in Romans 1.

For CJ, these doctrinal concerns were central to their departure from church. CJ described highlighting passages, praying, and crying as CJ tried to reconcile these issues. Although CJ felt generally supported and loved by leaders and youth group members after coming out, CJ experienced an ongoing conflict between their emerging identity and the teaching of the church.

Despite leaving, CJ misses many aspects of church life: the sense of community, congregational singing, the intellectual challenge of talking about the Bible, and meeting regularly with others. Today, CJ describes themselves as still searching spiritually. What is important to CJ is to be kind. CJ prays, "to the general universe," and lights candles when a friend is having a hard time. Leaving church was a painful process, but CJ believes there was little their church could have done differently. Ultimately, CJ felt the issue lay in the beliefs themselves.

Reasons for Leaving

In our research, doctrinal reasons for leaving like CJ’s came up many times, and this became one of the major themes identified, as well as the theme of ‘Christian Culture’.

In the words of the young people, this is why they left:

Theme 1: Problems with Christian Doctrine

• Hell

Alice: I think that there's some truly heinous things in the Old Testament.

Ellen: How can I be happy in heaven knowing all my friends go to hell and I was just like, this is my question.

• Exclusivity

Ellen: Like, most people who are Christians are from Christian cultures… Stiff luck if you're born in Pakistan, never really hear about Christianity, grow up in a Muslim country. And then you go to hell, you know, how does that make sense?

• Sexuality

Ellen: Like wanting to have sex, but also like feeling like you can relate to people I guess, and knowing that there's something that is important to you that everyone here like can't agree with. I never felt like anyone was actually homophobic; there was, like this structural homophobia that wasn't personal

Theme 2: Problems with Christian Culture

• Lack of critical thinking

Alice: every single day of [youth] camp there was like a Q and A and a talk on a different topic, like slavery in the Bible; we’re talking abortion; we’re talking queer rights. I thought that, that was wild, and they got pretty clowned on, to be honest.

[Follow up email] A lot of leaders who usually are not qualified or trained to talk about such matters in a helpful way speak very conclusively about really contentious and potentially harmful topics to young people when they're really just talking about their opinions backed by a very flimsy and cherry-picked interpretation of a Bible that doesn’t really address these matters in a straightforward way.

• Little space for questions and doubts

CJ: I kind of felt like I had to hide [being queer]. I understand now that it probably would have been really helpful for me to talk to leaders about it, but at the time I really felt like there was something wrong with me if I couldn't… I would like for there to be more space for questioning faith, for like questioning even like the Bible and people's interpretations of it

• A desire for personal agency

Darren: I get to choose what I get to believe in. I don't want people or any religion organisation to, you know, force my worldview like, you know, when I was a kid.

• Overwork without influence

Michael: There was a period of time in which I was quite overworked in church volunteering space and I was quite young. I was 17, so I didn't feel like I had much of a voice in that space… it wasn't a small job. It was somewhat stressful at times, and I was never involved in the decision making. …I was 17, didn't know how to push back against it and didn't feel like I had the opportunity, or was never given the opportunity, to say, hey, actually, I don't think this is right.

Positive memories of Christian community

Despite these reasons for leaving, we were surprised that the participants unanimously told us that they missed the Christian community. They talked about singing, regularly meeting together and sharing their lives.

Ellen: And it's unlike other communities in that they freaking want you, like no matter who you are. They don't really care what you're like or what your personality is or like what you've done in the past or your behaviour or whatever, they want you. And that's really nice

Michael: [Community] is something that I desire so much that I haven't been able to recreate anywhere. Which I didn't think would be as big of a deal. I thought communities existed through other things, but there isn't as much commitment to the community. You can join a sport team, or you can join a theatre group…but there's not a lot of commitment to building that community and that is something I miss because youth group on Friday Nights, Church on Sundays, both of those things like were quite grounding in my week. I've been able to replace the time, but I haven't been able to replace the community values and feelings.

Implications for ministry

The first takeaway is an encouragement! The young people described a degree of warmth and relational security in Christian community that was, for some, difficult to find elsewhere. This is a strength of our youth ministries.

The second is a challenge! We don’t want to water down the truths of the Bible, but young people (including young adults) in our ministries may be wrestling with key doctrines. We need to walk alongside them in their doubts and model thinking critically about God’s word in our cultural moment. Don’t assume that because they have been serving and “talking the talk”, that they are ok.

Here’s a helpful Ministry Itinerary to go through with your team:

 Are we places where:

1.      We discuss controversial topics thoughtfully?

2.      One-to-one discipleship occurs in a way that young people can ask hard questions and express doubts without being shamed?

3.      Leaders are trained to teach God’s word critically rather than assuming they have all the answers?

4.      We walk alongside young people whose faith is still ‘under construction’?

5.      We prepare young people for life transitions?

6.      We intentionally support 18–25-year-olds?

7.      We continue to build third place communities of warmth,[1] who freaking want you, like no matter who you are?

Ruth Lukabyo speaks in detail about this research on The Pastor’s Heart

[1] https://soundcloud.com/youthworkscollege/a-third-place-part-1

All names have been changed for anonymity