issues with my issues

            As I have written my paper I have run into many struggles especially in narrowing my topic down. With the topic, youth in religion, I have been taken in many directions with my research. This has proved to be a real problem. First I targeted my audience towards Christians. This proved to be too broad. I had an incredible difficulty finding one source for everybody’s problems. However, while exploring retention rates I discovered that protestant faiths were on the lower end of youth retention. This caught my attention. Because of this discovery, I narrowed my audience to protestant religions. By doing this I have been able to find a common thread. This thread is not a sure thing but it at least gives me a little more direction. The thread that I found is unity. Unity in the church that is. I discovered that the religions and churches with the highest retention rates were either global churches or they had a strong sense of unity in their customs and culture. The Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, and Catholics all have a strong sense of unity, whether it be in the customs they follow, the pope or the prophet. Unity is also the major thing that he protestants are missing. With so many churches, different pastors and interpretations of the bible it is difficult for protestants to be united. Once I narrowed my topic to this I chose three subtopics. These are topics that have been claimed to be the cause of youth leaving the church. My goal was to take out the counter argument by linking them to unity. in my paper I am trying to connect religious ignorance, historical turnoffs, and strong enticing of outside alternatives to a lack of unity in the protestant faith. This gives me direction but I am still concerned about how I can effectively develop my arguments based off my research, and how I can make the whole thing flow. It is a lot of pages to fill and I don’t want to sound as if I am rambling. I still have a lot of work cut out for me but I am confident I can pull it off. By addressing my audience, almost as if in a letter, I can make it clear who I am addressing and I can use aggressive diction to both show my professionalism and the seriousness of the issue at hand.