“From the depths of my heart, I want to love church.

I want to be head-over-heels for church like the unshakable Ned Flanders.”

So say millennials. They are speaking to us. They could be Vincentians.

I want to send global, sky-writing airplanes telling the life-change that happens beneath a steeple. I want to install a police speaker on top of my car and cruise the streets screaming to the masses about the magical Utopian community of believers waiting for them just down the street.

I desperately want to feel this way about church, but I don’t. Not even a little bit. In fact, like much of my generation, I feel the complete opposite.

Turns out I identify more with Maria from The Sound of Music staring out the abbey window, longing to be free.

It seems all-too-often our churches are actually causing more damage than good, and the statistics are showing a staggering number of millennials have taken note.

According to this study (and many others like it) church attendance and impressions of the church are the lowest in recent history, and most drastic among millennials described as 22- to 35-year-olds.

• Only 2 in 10 Americans under 30 believe attending a church is important or worthwhile (an all-time low).
• 59 percent of millennials raised in a church have dropped out.
• 35 percent of millennials have an anti-church stance, believing the church does more harm than good.
• Millennials are the least likely age group of anyone to attend church (by far).

As I sat in our large church’s annual meeting last month, I looked around for anyone in my age bracket. It was a little like a Titanic search party…
IS ANYONE ALIVE OUT THERE? CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME?

Tuning in and out of the 90-minute state-of-the-church address, I kept wondering to myself, where are my people? And then the scarier question, why I am still here?

Read the rest of this startling article by Sam Eaton at the source: faithIT!