55% Drop in CoC Students At Our Colleges

The Christian Chronicle published this report: Christian universities face ‘extremely difficult’ recruiting outlook: Number of freshmen who identify with Churches of Christ hits new low, annual survey finds:

"In the 21st century, those universities have seen a 55 percent overall decline in the total number of first-time freshmen who give their religious affiliation as 'Church of Christ.'"

This is absolutely the kind of number we'd expect to see if the Churches of Christ were collapsing. How many within our fellowship know this disaster is happening, and yet all they can imagine doing is doubling down on what's been done for the last three to five decades? We need to be asking ourselves what we can change as if it's an emergency... because it is.

Numerous factors are effecting this drop. Money is a big one, the falling value of college degrees is another, but I'd venture to guess that the biggest factor is just demographic decline. Our brotherhood is aging rapidly, and we've lost hundreds of thousands of adherents during the past nineteen years of this century. Millennials and Gen Zs are the most likely to leave.

This isn't a problem the younger generations can solve. It's not fair for older members to demand that change come from us when the Baby Boomers, and other older members, are the ones who own and control all the church's institutional resources. They are the elders, deacons, and preachers, and they control all of the church's financial and material assets. There's very little that younger members can do without their help, and yet so many of them seem utterly content to maintain this deadly course. Something must change, or the Churches of Christ will soon become just another historical footnote.