Marriage between man and woman today "is becoming extinct."
That was the view shared by Jennifer Murff of Millennials for Marriage at a recent speech to an audience of young people from various countries who attended a conference promoting marriage and families in Beverly, Massachusetts, CBN News reported.
Because fewer millennial couples are marrying, for the first time in U.S. history, single adults now outnumber married ones, she revealed.
"25 percent of Millennials do not get married at all," Murff said. "They don't want to get married. They've said 'this is not for me.'"
Why?
One reason cited by young adults is the fear of trauma caused by divorce as they've seen in their community, even in their own home, some with their own parents.
"They're concerned and hesitant to jump into a relationship because they don't want to see that same kind of pain and heartbreak in their own lives," Josh Craddock of Personhood U.S.A. told CBN News.
However, not all millennials share this view. Josh Hester of Beverly, Massachusetts is one of them.
"I was not one of the statistics," said Hester, who got married at 22. He said many millennials simply feel they need "to achieve something before getting married."
Dallin Leota of New Zealand, just like Hester, is also "not one of the statistics."
"I really feel that my life truly began when I got married. I was able to see a whole new perspective about life, about the value of life, especially when my son came along as well," Leota said.
"The importance of family, the importance of marriage, between a man and a woman, and the importance of having our children, and raising them in the way that we know best, that God has given us—this is the plan that the Lord wanted for us to experience," he elaborated.
But the problem, according to CBN News, is that it's hard to convince people of that plan if they don't regularly hear it or see it in action in their community and in their church.
But how can millennials see or hear it when many of them don't go to church? According to the Pew Research Center, only 28 percent of millennials attend weekly services.
Hester, who often leads worship at his church, said he feels one of the reasons for this is that a lot of millennials "have seen a lot of the hypocrisy of the church" and that they "are just fed up with it."
He said times have changed and new ways to reach out to young people need to be explored.
"The way that they need to be reached, the way that they engage with culture and society isn't the way the older or other generations do it," he said.
The problem is that instead of trying to reach a compromise with the young people, the older generations tend to shun them, especially since these millennials are now more often accepting of gay marriage, premarital sex and even abortion—things that are non-negotiable for many adult churchgoers.
"They just leave the church because of that," Hester said.
