Thoughts on the Millennials I See Coming to Church

Since Rachel Held Evans recently wrote a blog for CNN on Millennials leaving the church, social media has been full of responses, some positive, most reacting against much of what she shared.  I've decided to weigh in.

I don't know why millennials are leaving "the church."  I know that lots of people of all generations are not going to church anymore.  I don't know all the reasons why.  I'm no sociologist and I don't follow Pew Forum as closely as a probably should.

I do know that lots of millennials are coming to the church I serve today.  At my last church, we had tons of them, too, and I had more than forty of them that came to a college Bible study I led on Wednesday nights.  The congregation I serve now and the last one I served are very different from each other.  One thing they share in common is that neither of them looks much like a church that ought to reach young people, but they both do.  So I've been thinking more about what works in reaching millennials more than what has caused them to leave.

In my mind, there are differences between generations, but people within a generation cannot be painted with a broad brush.  There are differences within the people in all the generations within the church.  I do not believe in shaping the message or the programming of a congregation to suit the whims of any generation.  I think that young people would be repelled by a congregation that seemed too desperate to reach or keep them.  Young people value authenticity.  That's nothing new--young people have always valued authenticity.

Of course, there are simple things that we can do to communicate in a relevant way with emerging generations.  Social media is helpful.  Web is helpful.  Fresh music can be helpful.  This has always been true--Christians have always used the newest forms of communication available to them.  Early Christianity grew quickly for many reasons, but one of the reasons is that the first Christians were some of the first religious people to use a codex as a medium for sacred text and therefore had a portable tool for sharing their scriptures.  The Christians with the good music have reached people effectively in every era of the Christian faith.  These things are not new, either.

I agree with Evans that many millennials are put off by the religious right and that many kids who were raised in conservative evangelical homes during the era of the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition have walked away from their churches as soon as they could.  It's also true that people of every generation have been put off by religious political entanglements of every kind in every time and place.

I disagree with her that the answer is to replace conservative religious politics with liberal religious politics.  There is no life in subjugating the heart of the Gospel to any political agenda.

Any time Christians have tried to force society to act like society is Christian rather than sharing the Gospel in love, the power of the cross has been set aside for the sake of an earthly form of power and the church has become impotent and astray from its only true power: the crossly, shameful, powerless power of the crucified Lord.

Is anything new these days?  I think so.  What's new is that a tipping point is being reached in American culture as a whole.  We are no longer culturally Christian.  To my mind, this means that we can no longer expect that people will come to church because it's considered a good thing to do.  Americans don't have to go to church to be considered good citizens anymore.

Then what should we do?  There's only one thing to do.  It has nothing to do with strategizing to reach millennials (though an exodus of millennials might make us finally willing to get back to fundamentals).  Millennials, like all sinners, need the Gospel.  They need Jesus.  They will come (better, they will respond when we come to them) when we talk about Jesus, as long as we refuse to add anything to our message of Jesus.  They will journey with us if we will walk as true disciples.

I don't believe that millennials want coffee bars, candles, light shows, skinny jeans, or progressive activism at church.  Some do, but those who are put off by church won't return for that stuff.  They can get that stuff somewhere else.

I do believe that if we offer Jesus, if we genuinely share the love of Jesus by listening to people, if we build relationships oriented around the love of Christ, if we share Christ's love in our community and world in tangible ways, if we proclaim the message that Jesus loved people enough to live and die and rise again for them, if we offer the life that comes from walking with Jesus, then the Spirit will bring life to all people.  It works with millennials.  It works with everyone.  It's working at our church.

It's helpful, of course, not to put an unnecessary burden of an unscientific worldview, the burden of a political agenda, the burden of intractable forms of worship and church programming, the burden of legalistic moralism, the burden of anything but Jesus alone to the call of the Gospel.  That's always been true, as it was true when the Gentiles shocked the first Christians by receiving the Spirit in the book of Acts.

At my church, we talk about Jesus.  We talk about Jesus a lot.  The people offer true hospitality in the Spirit of Christ.  They reach out in Christ's love when people have been broken by life.  They care about everyone, no matter their age.  They want young people, but they also want people of all ages, not to build the church, but to build the people Jesus loves.   They love peoples' children.

We are not a cool church.  We have Folgers coffee.  We have organ music.  Our contemporary worship service is in a metal building.  We're working on it.  But I don't think we will ever make the cover of Relevant magazine.  I wear suits.  I'm not ever going to wear a pair of skinny jeans.  None of these things matter.  Not really.

I'm blessed beyond measure to be in a church where people are coming into relationship with Christ and connecting with a community of fellow disciples.  Many of them are millennials.  I have come to believe that there is no magic formula, no program, no system, no fad, no worship style that works.  I believe that the the love of Jesus works.  I believe that there is no substitute for laboring passionately to share Christ's love in creative and even desperate ways.  I believe that when it focuses on Christ and focuses on being the church, the church works.