Reasons Young Christians Leave Church

Hard to resist finding out what this shows up: The Barna Group - Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church: 

One big reason uncovered is that "much of their experience of Christianity feels stifling, fear-based and risk-averse" which is in contradistinction to their "desire for their faith in Christ to connect to the world they live in." Interestingly, part of the reason, I think, that I've found myself in a 'meta-church' ministry: I don't find myself drawn to servicing the stifling and fear based ways of many churches and drawn to connecting faith more fully with the world.

The fearfulness is perhaps related to another dimension of dissatisfaction: "Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow." I suspect that the shallowness is a fairly direct consequence of the risk-aversity.

The next set of reasons deserve fuller quotation:

 "“Christians are too confident they know all the answers” (35%). Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that “churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in” (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that “Christianity is anti-science” (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have “been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate.” Furthermore, the research shows that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries." 

I'm particularly interested in this because it resonates so much with what I'm so often finding in my work and relating with young people. I would want to underline that we need to pay heed to this. And this is probably related to another theme emerging from the research where the issues expressed are captured in this sort of way: "not being able “to ask my most pressing life questions in church” (36%) and having “significant intellectual doubts about my faith” (23%). "

Sexuality also comes up as a major issue, mainly this is something about the tension between church and culture in this area. It's not so much about same-sex attraction in particular as the general difficulty of such different attitudes between the two domains of living.
There is a hopeful note sounded: 

"many churches approach generations in a hierarchical, top-down manner, rather than deploying a true team of believers of all ages. “Cultivating intergenerational relationships is one of the most important ways in which effective faith communities are developing flourishing faith in both young and old. In many churches, this means changing the metaphor from simply passing the baton to the next generation to a more functional, biblical picture of a body – that is, the entire community of faith, across the entire lifespan, working together to fulfill God’s purposes.”"

Again, I've seen something of this and would add that newer generations are far less hierarchical and don't defer just because of established social positions but tend to relate well to being engaged in an open and friendly manner where respect is given as well as received on the basis of common humanity and offering what one has to the 'conversation'.