Interesting article just posted on The Christian Post talking about high schoolers graduating from their faith when they graduate school. Here’s the first few paragraphs:

Thousands of Jesus-following students who graduated from high school this summer will be claiming independent lives as they enter the big college campus in the fall. A new research study, however, is indicating the majority of those students will also be “graduating from God” upon entering college.

Fuller Theological Seminary’s Center for Youth and Family Ministry launched a three-year longitudinal study, surveying Christian students and their life transition into college and what provides for a better transition especially when it comes to faith. The milestone study is set to confirm the large number of students that youth workers say are leaving the church.

Denominations and youth workers have estimated that between 65 percent and 94 percent of their high school students stop attending church after they graduate. But no broad, multi-denominational, research-based calculation has confirmed any number.

Research for the first pilot phase of the College Transition Project began in January 2005. Initial results revealed that 100 percent of the 234 students surveyed had engaged in risk behaviors including alcohol use. Those surveyed were students who had graduated from the youth ministry of a Presbyterian church within the last four years. The second most frequent engagement in risk behaviors was sexual encounters.

JG