Essentially sticky faith is what it says: faith that
sticks. Many people grow up going to
church, they come to VBS and Sunday school as children, youth group as
teenagers, and then they go to college.
The Sticky Faith research done by the Fuller Youth Institute suggests
that 40-50% of young people who are connected to a youth group when they
graduate high school will not stick with their faith in college, and that only
20% of the college students who leave the church planned to; this means that
80% planned to stick with their faith but didn’t.[1] There are a number of reasons for these
statistics, and each story is different and each story matters. And it’s not just college students who leave
the church. Sometimes it’s a matter of
life getting busy and church doesn’t fit into the schedule. Sometimes hard things happen in life and we
can’t understand why God would let those things happen. But faith is so much more than the busyness
of life, so much more than the challenges life presents.
Just as there is no one reason people leave their faith
behind, there is no one size fits all solution to this reality. But there are steps that we can take as a
church to help our children, youth, and adults, move toward a faith that
sticks no matter what life circumstances change. And we want Sunbury UMC to be a place where
faith sticks, no matter what changes or challenges come along. So this August we are kicking off the SUMC Sticky Faith Initiative. We
will hear people’s stories. We will see
videos and talk about what it means to be sticky. There will be a parent Bible study
offered. There will be new ministries
started and different faces in ministries that have been around awhile. We want your faith to stick, and to grow, and
for you to experience the fullness of what God has for you.
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