Issue Paper Intro Draft

Over the Past few years, Youth have started leaving religious organizations in greater and greater numbers. Many people have attempted to answer why the youth are leaving and have given many different responses and perspectives on the matter. The best way to learn why the youth are leaving is to ask the youth and their responses can be very enlightening. When the youth are asked a common answer appears.” I started asking questions to my family and they couldn't give me a straight answer about anything.”, “This is what happened with me, I couldn't agree with the others at church because there wasn't enough proof. Nothing made sense half the time.”, “This made no sense to me,”, “It's a kooky religion with kooky stories.”, “It simply doesn't make sense …” One of the biggest reasons youth are leaving religion is because they don’t truly understand it. The youth of this generation are growing smarter and smarter, but their knowledge of science and reason is outpacing their knowledge of god by far. Much of what the church does and says makes no sense to these now learned individuals.  For these reasons, the best way to help the youth stay in church is to learn different and better ways to really teach the youth and help them understand religion and god. If that doesn't happen, the youth are going to keep leaving in bigger and bigger numbers.