The largest generation in US history is headed to college. According to Neil Howe and William Strauss, perhaps this nation’s leading generational experts (in Millennials Go to College); the peak birth year for Millennials was 1990. That would make the high school Classes of 2008 and 2009 the largest graduating classes ever. The demographics shout the facts. Over the next few years the enrollment in American colleges and universities will swell to the largest ever.

            The church must do something about it. Undoubtedly, you’ve heard the statistics. The number one time for people to quit going to church and, in fact, walk away from their relationship with God is immediately following their graduation from high school. According to a soon-to-be-released study from Lifeway’s Ed Stetzer (see Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches That Reach Them to be released in February 2009), “88% of evangelical children are leaving the church shortly after they graduate from high school.”

            Here’s what church life experts Thom Rainer & Sam Rainer III reported in their new book, Essential Church: Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts, “The church is losing the generational battle… Multitudes are dropping out of church… in order to stop the mass exodus, churches must renew their focus on those in the mid to late teens.”

Well-known youth ministry expert Chap Clark agrees and identifies a common scenario, "In most churches, when adolescents leave high school, there are few programmatic options available for them much less a welcoming community that is committed to bring them into the life of the body." (See Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers).