from Christian Concern
Carl Willers argues that a new Church of England report on why young adults are joining its churches should be read as a rebuke, rather than a reason for self-congratulation.
When I was 24, I was already an alcoholic; drinking a litre of whiskey a day, drink driving most nights, and utterly lost.
What made this moment in my life more tragic is that I had already spent thousands of hours and thousands of pounds scrambling far and wide, experimenting with various techniques, philosophies and disciplines to help pull myself up out of the pit I’d found myself in.
What’s even more tragic is that despite this extensive quest, I was never once presented with Jesus Christ as the solution.
I was therefore unsurprised when I recently learned that my experience overlaps with the journeys of many other young people within the Church of England.
Such journeys are chronicled in a new report titled ‘Understanding Young Adult Journeys to Faith in the Church of England’.
As it says on the tin, this new report, researched by Theos and published by CofE, is seeking to answer the question – what is bringing young people into the Church of England?
It turns out that the answer is rather inconvenient to the Church of England.