In their new book, Faith Beyond Youth Group, Kara Powell, Jen Bradbury and Brad M. Griffin offer this startling statistic about students’ faith after high school graduation:

“While spiritual and religious activity under age eighteen seems to slightly increase the odds of faith lasting after youth group, a compilation of studies indicates that about 40 to 50 percent of youth group kids drift from God and the faith community after graduation.”

In this episode of the Influence Podcast, I’m talking to Kara Powell about how churches can address this problem by cultivating lifelong faith in youth.

I’m George P. Wood, executive editor of Influence magazine and your host.

Kara Powell, Ph.D., is executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute, a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary, where she also serves as Fuller’s chief of leadership formation. A credentialed Assemblies of God minister, she is author or coauthor of numerous books about ministry to youth.

This episode of the Influence podcast is brought to you by My Healthy Church, a distributor of In Jesus’ Name.

In this book, Rick DuBose shows the path back to five forgotten altars — and ultimately, the path to your place in heaven's throne room. Full of real-world application and encouraging inspiration, this book will prepare you to pray with humble authority that moves heaven — and unleashes victory here on earth.