The Spiritual Disillusionment of Millennials, Part 1
I looked deep into his eyes and could see the pain and discomfort vexing Jaden.
Jaden, an older Millennial in his mid-30s, no longer subscribes to what he calls “Evangelical Christianity.”
He now refers to himself as an “Exvangelical.” A social movement heavily populated with Millennials who became disillusioned with the church and have since walked away from their childhood faith.
Jaden’s story is a typical one. He grew up in the church and served at Christian summer camps throughout high school. He even baptized a few of his friends at his family’s lake house one summer.
Jaden’s family had high hopes for his future. His parents raised him with the affirmation that he would do great things for the gospel.
“I still get upset when I think about the hypocrisy I saw from my parents and church leaders growing up,” Jaden said as he freely shared his hurt over leaving the church several years ago.
I wish I could say that stories like Jaden’s are rare among Millennials. But sadly, they are not.
As I write this chapter, I’m stricken with heartache over a young woman my wife and I know who deconverted from her faith along with her husband.
For anonymity, let’s call her “Molly.”
Molly’s parents are a sweet and godly couple. They have been serving in their local church for over 30 years.
It didn’t take long for them to notice that their daughter had a special gift. Molly was blessed with a beautiful voice.
As one would expect, Molly pursued her passion for singing and received nothing but love and constant support from her parents.
By the time Molly was a sophomore in high school, she was offered to be the worship leader for the youth band.
It was clear to everyone that she loved God and used the gift God gave her to bless others. That was until she met her future husband.
It didn’t take long after they married that the young couple began to express their doubts about their faith to both sides of their families.
Naturally, my friends kept this private out of fear of what that might do to complicate the situation even more.
Well, things never got better for Molly and her husband.
After giving birth to their first child, they finally came out to their parents that they no longer believed Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and didn’t want to raise their baby girl around the lies and deception of religion.
Given the weight and severity of the spiritual crisis we are seeing unfolding among Millennials and Gen Z, I don’t doubt that you have stories equal to Jaden’s and Molly’s deconversion stories.
So, what do we do with the “Jadens” and “Mollys” that are our family members, coworkers, and friends?
Are we to give up on their generation seeing that the rise of the “religiously unaffiliated” continues to mass more followers? Or are we to acknowledge the crisis before us and be willing to do whatever God has called us to do to engage Millennials with the gospel of Jesus Christ?
I remember the first time I came across some data from George Barna regarding the decline of Christianity among Millennials.
At the time, I was serving at a small non-denominational church, working as their youth pastor. What surprised me the most was the number of doubts and questions Millennials had about their faith, the Bible, and the struggle to reconcile the exclusivity of Jesus’s claims.
I began to maximize my efforts to figure out just how rampant the doubts were among Millennials. As I prepared sermons and hosted venues for parents and students, I kept coming against a credibility problem. Most of my Millennial students didn’t believe that the Bible was the supreme and infallible Word of God.
They were all adorable kids and hungry to serve their communities and tell others about the love of Jesus. But only a small group of my parents and their kids wanted to study the Bible.
I will never forget this particular Thursday night at church.
I had just wrapped up an apologetic class, and one of the couples approached me to ask a few questions.
They started by complimenting me on the class and how much they were learning. But then, the couple began to scold me for teaching too much of the Bible.
Yes. You heard that right.
The couple felt that we needed to focus less on equipping families to defend the faith and put more time and energy into building up the teens’ self-esteem.
The amount of biblical illiteracy exhibited by parents eventually led me to study apologetics. So much so that my wife and I left our family and church community in Tucson, Arizona, to study under the legendary Dr. Norman Geisler in Charlotte, North Carolina.
After several more years of working with Millennials, Dr. Geisler and I published a Christian apologetic Q & A book in our attempt to provide biblical responses to leading questions young people asked in our ministry travels.
In one of the questions, Dr. Geisler and I took a deeper dive into the makeup of Millennials and their reasons for abandoning Christianity. Although we may not know the primary cause of Millennials being “less Christian” than the generations that have gone before them, Dr. Geisler and I found there to be seven reasons consistently conveyed to us by Millennials:
False Conversions: Many Millennials (18-to 29-year-olds) who claim to be Christians never had a true conversion to begin with. The pat Sunday school prayers that churches and revivals have people recite don’t guarantee salvation. Many young people never come to a point where they truly believe in Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31), repent from their sins, and give their lives to God (Acts 3:19; 8:22).
Lack of Transferable Faith: The simple fact is that a large majority of Christian parents have done a poor job living out their faith and raising their children in the Bible (Ephesians 6:4). Many Millennials have been raised to be legalistic rather than to live a biblical life. There’s been a greater emphasis on rewarding good behavior than on being obedient to God’s Word. As a result, many young people rebel and fail to see the discipline of God’s grace in their lives.
Reject the Bible as the Word of God: Doubts about the Bible and common objections about Christianity often get the best of Millennials. You would think that after being raised in a Christian home and attending church for years most Millennials would have a strong faith in the Bible. But the fact is that they don’t. When asked about this, young people say they never really felt they could express their doubts and concerns regarding Christianity at home or in the church. This caused a level of intellectual skepticism to sprout up and choke any roots of faith that may have been left.
Disconnect Between Faith and Culture: Millennials fail to see the connection faith has to culture. Their lack of involvement in the church damages their ability to connect faith to day-to-day life. When Millennials grow up, they have no idea the role faith should play in their careers, personal interests, or future lives.
Hypocrisy and Compromise: Hypocrisy and compromise in the church play a significant role in many Millennials abandoning the faith. They see the church as more concerned about money and membership than about teaching the Bible.
Biblical Illiteracy: The majority of Millennials are biblically illiterate. Most of them have neglected reading and applying the Bible. So, of course, when a competing belief or religion comes their way, Millennials are unable to defend the Christian faith. One way Satan has been able to do this is through the false teaching of naturalism—an ideology that teaches there is no God, absolute truth, meaning, or afterlife.
Misunderstanding of Jesus: Millennials have never actually been taught about the life, work, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The focus has been more on the celebrity pastor than on the Savior, Jesus Christ. More time and resources have been devoted to launching more satellite campuses than to training up the next generation in the Word of God. The result: Millennials never encounter Jesus.
Considering these seven factors that explain (in part) the decline of Christianity within the Millennial generation, part two, “4 Spiritual Crises Among Millennials,” explains the massive spiritual crisis afflicting them.