What is church life like these days for Americans, the religious research division of Barna Group recently asked.”Millions of active participants find their church experiences to be lacking,” Barna Group President David Kinnaman said in a report released Monday.Young adults and Catholics are among those experiencing a striking disaffection with church, researchers found.Faith leaders can’t take their flocks for granted, Kinnaman said, even though many churchgoers report that attending provides them with a rich and diverse set of connections to God and others.Most people surveyed, 66 percent, feel they’ve had a “real and personal connection with God” at church, researchers said. Yet, when asked about frequency, they report the encounters as “rare.” And about a third of those polled who attend said they have never felt God’s presence in the congregational setting.The report, released Monday, was based on a recent poll or more than 1,000 adults across the U.S. The maximum sampling error is reported as plus or minus 3 percentage points.Read full story

In a survey conducted by the religious research division of Barna Group, only 72 percent of Catholics polled reported feeling a real and personal connection with God, compared with 85 percent of mainline Protestants and 88 percent of evangelicals. Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS