Why are women leaving the church?

[Smellin Coffee]

While Erin Lane never fully dropped out of church, her attendance for many years as a 20something was spotty. She never could quite come to the point of committing to one church—even the one where her husband was a pastor. Author of the recently released, Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe, Lane points out that women’s decrease in church attendance is in line with a drop (or delay) in other traditional social bindings. “Women are delaying marriage and children, two things that have historically strengthened young people of both genders’ relationship to the church,” she says. “So our reluctance to be ‘tied down’ to people naturally affects our reluctance to be tied down to a place.”

Aside from delaying marriage and children, young adults are eschewing other forms of “settling down” as well, such as long-term careers. They are more prone to regularly switching jobs (and, with that, often locales); 9 in 10 Millennials expect to stay in a single job less than three years.² In other words, there are very few institutions—either social or economical—binding Millennials. In a recent Barna Group study on identity, Millennials were significantly less likely than other generations to claim any of the surveyed factors (family, faith, country, city, state, ethnicity, career) as central to their identity.

This generational sense of disenfranchisement has not helped draw young adults in general to a church—let alone women, among whom such societal untetherdness is unprecedented. “As women have begun to catch up with men in our privilege to choose—choosing when and how to have children, choosing when and where to move, choosing what and how we will make a living—it makes sense that we’d also experience the same decreasing sense of interdependency that has anthropologically been the disposition of men,” says Lane.

Additionally, Lane points out, women have been gaining ground in every arena of society: economically, in their careers, at school. They have a new sense of vocational agency—something the church hasn’t always encouraged in women. “With more education, women have had more opportunities afforded to them to contribute to the public good,” she says. “What was different (or better) about using my gifts in a church than, say, in my work as a retreat facilitator for clergy or in the feminist writer community of which I was a part? As a young woman, I often felt a greater sense of personal voice and agency in my work outside the church than I did within its walls. Often I wouldn’t think twice about scheduling a work trip or speaking gig at least one or two weekends a month because those creative outlets felt more life giving to me and the people I served than attending church.”

http://www.todayschristianwoman.com/articles/2015/june-10/why-are-women-leaving-church.html?share=xdRGMYDSdCn5nqC5IlgS4eZf2jdNSTjj

And, while we may have wanted to tell ourselves we could grow spiritually and pursue Jesus just fine on our own—no church necessary—the evidence shows otherwise. The truth is, people who are disconnected from church (even those who self-identify as Christian) are proven to be less likely to engage in other faith activities, including Bible reading, prayer, volunteering, and charitable giving. While correlation never equals causation, these are important indicators to pay attention to. Whether we want to admit it or not, church attendance roots believers in regular faith rhythms and practices.

If I could give my decade-younger self some advice, I’d tell her to keep investing in that hungry small group of spiritual seekers. But I’d remind her to not give up on the church in the meantime—broken, flawed, and deeply human though she is. I would gently insist that one cannot love Jesus but not love his bride. There is no such thing as a healthy spirituality divorced from religion. To seek God in this world today, I’d say to her, is to necessarily find the church—it is his promised hands and feet; it is the body of Christ alive, present, and at work.