News - Northern Caribbean University (NCU) .: Mandeville, Jamaica W.I.

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Lost Sheep?

Published: Saturday, May 05, 2012 7:56:04 PM

*NCU is co-owned and operated by the Jamaica Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (JAMU) and the Atlantic Caribbean Union Mission of Seventh-day Adventists (ACUM), both of which came out of the reorganization of the former West Indies Union Conference on November 29, 2010.

When I was in high school, I hated going to church. Having attended Adventist church and school all my life, by the time I was a senior, I felt like waking up for Sabbath school and church was just another morning of sitting through Bible class.

“What can we do to draw you in?” trusted adults would ask. I never had a profound answer. I’m not jumping ship, I’d often think. And I don’t think the majority of my peers are either. Your lesson plans are fine; the service is fine. Maybe we’re just sick of being talked to and not talked with.

Friends creepingly became less and less interested in church. Like a mold that spores seemingly from nowhere, peers began influencing peers and more and more dropped off. But none had a fight with a church member. None professed that a huge rift had been created.

For a long time I’ve wondered why some of my peers have stopped attending. I decided to sit down and ask them. In doing so, I had some epiphanies about church myself. In fact, writing this article only reinforced that I am not going to quit attending church anytime soon.

What’s the Difference?
According to recent polls, seven out of 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 quit going to church by the age of 23—even though these individuals attended church regularly in high school.¹ Among the millennial generation (those born after 1981), more than one quarter claim no religious identity, and the numbers are climbing.^{Read more}

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