She hadn’t been to church in years.
Not because she’d stopped believing. Not because she hated God or had some dramatic falling out with faith. She drifted. Life got complicated. Church started feeling like a language she used to speak but couldn’t quite remember. And then one Sunday, for reasons she couldn’t fully articulate, she decided to go back.
The greeter smiled too brightly. The bulletin advertised programs that seemed designed for a demographic she’d never belonged to. The sermon answered questions she wasn’t asking while carefully avoiding the ones that kept her up at night. And somewhere between the announcements and the closing hymn, she realized what felt so strange.
“It’s like they’re trying to talk to a version of me that doesn’t even exist.”
That’s how she described it later. Not angry. Not rebellious. Confused. Like she’d stepped through a portal into a world operating on assumptions about her that were somehow both familiar and completely foreign.
If you’re a parent watching your adult child drift from the faith you raised them in, or a church leader watching the back rows thin out, or a mentor wondering why the conversations that used to work don’t anymore, I want to offer something that might help explain what’s happening. Not to excuse it. Not to blame anyone. To see it a little more clearly.
Because I think the disconnect runs deeper than we realize.
The Time Machine Sensation
When young adults describe church feeling “foreign,” they’re not usually complaining about the music being too old or the sermon being too long. (Though sometimes they are, and fair enough.)
What they’re describing is something subtler. A sense that the whole environment was designed for a person they’ve never been. A stable, certain, non-anxious person who has their spiritual life reasonably together and needs weekly maintenance.
The actual young adult walking through those doors? Fragmented. Anxious. Carrying questions they’ve never been given permission to ask. Wrestling with identity, mental health, meaning, loneliness, and a world that feels increasingly chaotic. They’ve absorbed years of cultural messaging that says “your truth is valid” while simultaneously feeling completely untethered by the weight of being their own authority on everything.
This is where I need to be careful, because I don’t want to describe this generation as “broken” or “damaged goods.” That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m describing a generation carrying questions the church hasn’t made space for. There’s a difference between “fragmented by failure” and “fragmented by a world that offers infinite options and zero structure.” They’re not weak. They’re overwhelmed by possibilities and under-resourced for integration. They’ve been handed the tools to deconstruct everything and almost nothing to help them build something that holds weight.
Then they walk into a room where the greeter seems scripted, the announcements assume they’re interested in programs designed for a different era, and the sermon answers questions they weren’t asking while avoiding the ones keeping them up at night.
Time machine.
I know this sensation personally. After years of drifting through my own spiritual wilderness (some of it dangerous territory, mixing Christian language with practices that weren’t orthodox), I walked back into a church. I was terrified. Not of hellfire. Not of theological disagreement. I was terrified of being seen by people who might not understand where I’d been or why I’d left. I was convinced I’d be judged before I opened my mouth.
What I actually found was a vicar who affirmed my messy journey without minimizing where I’d been. A rector who genuinely wanted to know me (not fix me). A spiritual director who helped me see outside my own wounds. No one tried to fast-track my recovery. No one treated my drifting years as wasted time to be overcome. They held space for the questions I was still carrying while gently introducing me to resources I didn’t know I needed.
Formation, not information. Presence, not programming.
But I almost didn’t find any of that. Because walking through those doors felt like stepping into a world that didn’t know I existed.
The Silence That Speaks
Here’s something church leaders might not realize: what you don’t talk about communicates as loudly as what you do.
When mental health is never mentioned from the pulpit, young adults hear: “Your struggles aren’t spiritual enough to discuss here.”
When doubt is treated as something to overcome rather than something to explore, they hear: “We’re too fragile to handle your real questions.”
When issues like justice, identity, or the chaos of living in a digital age are met with silence (or worse, dismissal), they hear: “We’re not paying attention to your world.”
I know most church leaders aren’t silent because they don’t care. They’re silent because they’re terrified of getting it wrong. They see the cultural landmines on every side and default to saying nothing rather than saying the wrong thing. They’re trying to be faithful in a confusing time. I understand that impulse.
But the silence is still speaking. And young adults are still hearing it.
The data on this is alarming. Over a third of young Christians report feeling unable to ask their most pressing life questions in church. Not “unwilling.” Unable. They perceive the environment as one that doesn’t welcome intellectual honesty, as one where real questions might be treated as problems to solve rather than realities to inhabit.
That’s not a style problem. That’s a safety problem.
The Operating System Gap
This part is trickier to explain, but stay with me.
Young adults haven’t developed different preferences. They’ve absorbed an entirely different structure for thinking about faith. An entirely different way of knowing what’s true. In their world, “spirituality” is internal, personal, experiential. “Religion” is external, institutional, rule-based. These aren’t synonyms. They’re opposites.
I’ve seen this described as an evolutionary narrative: “Religion is kindergarten. Spirituality is graduation.” The implicit assumption is that moving away from institutional religion isn’t falling away. It’s growing up. It’s becoming more sophisticated, more authentic, more aligned with who you really are.
(I’m not saying this structure is right. I’m saying it exists, and ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.)
Consider what’s happening underneath the surface: when someone spends their formative years in digital spaces where the “right” answer is whatever gets the most engagement, where truth is determined by what feels personally meaningful, where the algorithm literally learns to serve you content that confirms what you already believe… they’re being shaped into a completely different way of deciding what’s true.
They’re learning that truth is discovered by scrolling, not submitted to by study. They’re learning that the self is the final judge, that personal intuition is the same thing as the Holy Spirit’s guidance, that “what feels true to me” carries the same weight as “what God has revealed.”
And then they walk into church, where truth is declared rather than discovered, where authority is external rather than internal, where the answer might not feel personally meaningful but is still true.
The friction isn’t rebellion. It’s two completely different operating systems trying to communicate.
So when church leaders use words like “fellowship” or “quiet time,” they’re speaking a language that either means nothing to young ears or, worse, means something different. “Fellowship” sounds like forced small talk over bad coffee. “Quiet time” sounds like another item on an already impossible to-do list.
The problem isn’t that we need cooler vocabulary. It’s that we need to understand we’re speaking to people who have learned an entirely different grammar of meaning-making. They’re operating in a world where “trust your intuition” is the default spiritual advice, where personal experience trumps external authority, where the idea of submitting to any institution feels fundamentally unsafe.
Meeting them requires learning their language first. Not to adopt it wholesale. But to build a bridge.
What Safety Means
Let me be direct about something: I don’t think the answer is making church “safer” in the sense of removing all challenge or conviction. That’s not what young adults are asking for (even if they sometimes think they are).
What they’re asking for is a different kind of safety. The safety of being seen. The safety of being able to say “I don’t know” without being treated as a project to fix. The safety of bringing their actual questions rather than the questions they think they’re supposed to have.
Jesus modeled this. When Thomas doubted the resurrection, Jesus didn’t scold him. He didn’t give him a lecture on the importance of faith. He said, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27, NLT). He invited Thomas into his wounds.
That’s formation through relationship. Through presence. Through the willingness to let someone touch the hard parts without making them feel stupid for needing to.
Are our churches places where doubters can touch the wounds? Or are they places where people are expected to arrive with their faith pre-formed, neatly packaged, ready for weekly maintenance?
What might this look like practically? It might mean ending a sermon with a question you don’t know the answer to. And telling people you don’t know. It might mean creating a space where doubt is named rather than solved: “If you’re sitting here wondering whether any of this is even true, you’re welcome here. That question isn’t disqualifying.” It might mean a small group where the first question isn’t “What did you learn from the passage?” but “What confused you? What made you uncomfortable?”
Safety isn’t the absence of challenge. It’s the presence of permission.
The Elephant in the Room
I want to honor something first: if you’re a church leader or parent reading this, you’ve probably tried. Hard. You’ve prayed, adjusted, stayed up late wondering what else you could do. You’ve updated the music. You’ve made the coffee better. You’ve genuinely wanted to reach the young people in your life. That effort matters, and I don’t want to minimize it.
And yet… some of you are reading this thinking: “We’ve tried all that. Nothing seems to work.”
Meanwhile, some young adults (if they’re reading this) are thinking: “Changes won’t matter. The institution itself is the problem.”
Both concerns are valid. And both miss something.
Surface changes don’t work because they’re trying to make an old building more comfortable rather than asking whether the foundation is showing. You can put industrial pendant lights and serve pour-over coffee and still communicate “we have no idea who you are” if the underlying assumptions about formation haven’t shifted.
And dismissing the institution entirely doesn’t work because the alternative (spiritual freelancing with no accountability, no community, no formation) has its own catastrophic failure rate that usually shows up about five to ten years down the line. I’ve lived that alternative. I’ve watched the “trust your intuition” approach collapse under the weight of being my own authority on everything. The exhaustion of endless seeking. The loneliness of curating a spiritual path that no one else shares.
The question isn’t “institution or no institution?” The question is: “What kind of formation produces people who know Jesus and can navigate a chaotic world with their faith intact?”
Not Trendier. More Honest.
I want to be clear about what I’m not saying.
I’m not saying churches need to become TikTok. I’m not saying we need to water down theological conviction to make people comfortable. I’m not saying the solution is better lighting, hipper music, or more relevant sermon illustrations (though it wouldn’t hurt to retire some of those sports analogies).
What I am saying is this: the church doesn’t need to become trendy. It needs to become honest. Honest about the mess. Honest about the struggle. Honest about the fact that faith isn’t a destination you arrive at but a road you walk, sometimes stumbling, sometimes running, sometimes sitting on the side wondering if you’re even going the right direction.
The early church wasn’t built on programs. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42, NLT). They were present with each other. Sharing meals. Sharing needs. Sharing doubts, I imagine, though Luke doesn’t say that explicitly. The point is proximity. Actual human beings knowing each other.
You can scroll Christian content for hours and still feel completely alone. Digital faith can’t actually replace embodied community. And young adults know this, even as they find it easier to consume content than commit to people. They’re caught between knowing they need real presence and being conditioned to avoid the vulnerability that real presence requires.
The Question That Won’t Leave Me Alone
The temptation is to ask: “How do we get them back?”
But I wonder if a better question is: “How do we build something worth returning to?”
Not something trendier. Something more human. Something that makes space for the fragmented, anxious, questioning people who might walk through the doors if they believed they’d be seen rather than managed.
I know some young adults have walked away from faith entirely, and that’s a different conversation. But many haven’t. They still believe in God. They still feel drawn to Jesus. They still want what church is supposed to offer: truth, community, transformation, belonging.
They just can’t find it in a space that seems designed for someone they’ve never been.
There’s a subplot in Acts… how the early church grew not through programs but through the radical visibility of their love for each other. “See how they love one another” wasn’t a marketing campaign. It was observation. People on the outside looking in and seeing something so unusual it made them curious.
Maybe that’s the time machine we need. Not back to the 1950s. Back to the scandalous simplicity of people who were so devoted to each other that outsiders couldn’t help but notice.
If You Want to Try One Thing
I don’t have all the answers here. I’m still figuring out what it means to build bridges between the world I came from and the faith I’ve returned to. Still learning what it looks like to be held by Jesus rather than constantly trying to prove I deserve to be.
But if you’re a parent, church leader, or mentor who wants to understand the young adults in your life a little better, here’s one small thing you could try this week:
Ask one young adult you know (your kid, a college student from church, someone who used to come but doesn’t anymore) a single question: “What’s something you wish church understood about your generation?”
That’s it. One question. Don’t defend. Don’t explain. Don’t offer solutions. Listen. Write down what they say if it helps you remember.
Five minutes. Maybe less.
You might be surprised what you learn. You might hear something that shifts how you see things. Or you might give someone the rare experience of being asked and heard.
Either way, it’s a start.
And starting is the hardest part. Everything else is one conversation at a time.
There’s this section in Hebrews about running the race with endurance and fixing our eyes on Jesus. The part about being “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1, NLT). The image of a stadium full of people who’ve gone before, cheering us on. I wonder what it would look like if the church felt less like a performance and more like that. People who’ve run ahead turning back to encourage the ones still finding their footing. Something to sit with, maybe.
