Millennials and Church

intro

Millennials and

Church

I am 27 years old. I was born in Dec. 1989, which makes me unquestionable a part of the millennial generation. Millennials are the group of people born roughly somewhere in the 80’s all the way into the late 90’s. Depending who you are talking to, it can stretch as far to the late 70’s and as far as 2002. Being that we are now in 2017, something that must be realized and understood, is that only the last couple years of millennials are still at the collegiate level. Most are young adults in their 20’s and 30’s very much a part of today’s work force, have begun families, and are for better or for worse contributing to todays society.

There are lots stereo types about Millennials, some you may agree with, some I agree with…some are just fact, but some can be disputed.

There people who say.

· They, referring to millennials, are lazy…they’re all still living in their parents home.

· They are tech savy. If you are struggling mastering technology or just using the features on your new smart phone…find a millennial to help you (again these are stereo-types

· They don’t commit. Whether its relationships, jobs, or living in the same place. Millennials don’t stay tied down for to long.

· Millennials want to change everything. Traditions don’t mean much to them. They don’t have respect for their elders.

· They don’t go to church. They don’t value any one religion.

Listen, I think with many stereo-types, there has to be on some level a little bit of truth. We can find tangible examples to support each of those stereo-typical statements about millennials. However I think its unfair to use stereo-types to attach a reputation that encompasses an entire generation.

Not all, or even a majority of millenials, are living at home. There is a large percentage of younger millennials that are not yet financially independent which is an unfortunate side effect of a debt driven society…such as student loans and financial mismanagement.

Yes Millennials have definitely embraced technology because they were being raised in the beginnings of the internet and swift advancements in computer technology.

Suggesting Millennials don’t commit is a tough statement. Some positives and negatives factors exist that may explain some of the truth to this stereo-type that does not speak for all millennials by any means. There was large percentage of millennials that grew up without fathers, 1 in 3, according to one research survey. The broken family model of single parents is something that has increased among millennial parents today. Millennials do like to explore, and see the world. However seeing a larger scope of the world and multiple job experience contributes to well rounded job experience. It’s not as simple as the stereo type suggests, that they are just simply non-committal.

While millennials do embrace change, I think its unfair to suggest they they have no respect for previous generations as a whole….because that argument has been made against every young adult generation. “That’s not how we did it my day.” However, I will say, there is something to be said when generationally there are mentors for growing young adults. I’ve had several growing up and they have helped shape me and help me through life’s challenges.

The last stereo-type is the one I will take time to address. Is there truth to the statement that millennials don’t go to church, and do not value religion? For the remainder of my message we are going spend time addressing that question and if it is true, see if there are things we, as church-going Bible believing Seventh-Day Adventist Christians, can do to reverse this trend? Before we go any further, lets take some time to pray.

Pray

Body

If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to . Jesus, who was by all account a young adult himself, displayed many attributes that young adult millennials are ridiculed over. Some might say He was the anti-traditionalist. He always seemed to be moving. This man of Nazereth doesn’t have the life experience to be preaching with such moxy (that’s a word you won’t find in the King James). Jesus was discipling. If the gospel was to go out, disciples were needed. Young disciples, some who might still be teenagers. He chose disciples with life experience, no doubt about it, but Jesus chose 12 young adults, today they would probably be millennials. Verse 1 and 2 tells us he went up the mountain and was followed by the disciples, and seated himself. Maybe he was tired, maybe he was simply teaching them on their level. He begins the beatitudes. Verse 3

3

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4

Blessed are those who mourn,

For they shall be comforted.

5

Blessed are the meek,

For they shall inherit the earth.

6

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

For they shall be filled.

7

Blessed are the merciful,

For they shall obtain mercy.

8

Blessed are the pure in heart,

For they shall see God.

9

Blessed are the peacemakers,

For they shall be called sons of God.

10

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. 12 Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Sometimes I’ve wondered what was so appealing about Jesus to the disciples, and when you look in the scriptures and read his words, I understand. His words inspired movement. His words began a movement. Take for instance the first “blessed” statement, “blessed are the poor in spirit.” Some of you might have different answers as to what exactly that means. It means…blessed are ALL whom depend on God, no matter socio-economic status, drawing special attention to those in difficult circumstance both literal and spiritual. That inclusiveness is appealing to young adults today.

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That brings me to the troubling reality, according to Barna Research group, 59% of millennials that have grown up a regular attending Christian have dropped out. And before you suggest that research doesn’t apply to Adventists, I’m here to tell you it does. The Adventist church commissioned Barna to do an Adventist specific study on young adults and the percentages strikingly similar. What is even worse among Christians is that of millennials who are proclaimed as regular or active members, 52 %have not been to church in 6 months or longer. Essentially they still self-identify as Christians, but are not active in fellowship. 1/3 of those 52% say they do not see church attendance as important.

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Perhaps just as telling are the insights millennials who do say church is important which was actually only 20% according to the study, in their answers to the questions what do they believe is the point of church and why they felt it WAS still important, their top answers were,

“they go to church to be closer to God”

“learn more about God”

the lowest answers were:

the church is the hands and feet of God,

be part of a community

and the lowest: the church does good works in the world.

Those 2 top answers had most to do with a personal relationship with God, which tied to the fact that the answers of there parents and older generations who answered very similarly.

I want to be clear I don’t believe going to church to grow personally spiritually is a bad thing by any means. I hope each of us can grow closer to God through our fellowship with another and our worship to our savior. However if we look at the top answers of millennials no longer attending, I think you will see an interesting parallel.

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The top answer was

“church is not relevant to them personally.”

“they find God elsewhere”

“they can teach themselves what they need to know”

If people believe the most important reasons to attend church are to be closer to God and learn more about him, why would they keep going when they can find God elsewhere and teach themselves what they need to know? And if they no longer need the church to achieve their spiritual goals, it’s no wonder the church may not be personally relevant to them.

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Millennials have a plethora of resources at their disposal to help them find God and to learn what they need to know. Seriously, atleast topically, you can go on google and type in “what does the Bible say about?” and boom, your hit with 45 verses that address somewhat the topic you are curious about. It goes deeper than that, there are podcasts, blogs, books, worship albums, youtube videos, and musical concerts accessed at their/our fingertips. There are bunches of Bible commentary apps and devotional readings that are emailed daily. They/we can access inspiring quotes, verses, and thoughts that are shared multiple times over social media. What happens when, as is the case sometimes, when fewer than 1 in 10 say they learned something about God or Jesus the last time they went to Church? What happens when the vast majority of people say they did not gain new insights regarding faith when they last went to church?

It’s kind of like how when I was child, I spent 8 years going on Wednesdays to take violin lessons. I think my mom was paying roughly 20 dollars a lesson. Now a days you can find the same instructions on youtube, or on DVD. I think some today are saying…why do I want to pay an extra 8-100 bucks a month on lessons and have to drive somewhere, that I can do right at home. Recently I invested in some home gym equipment because I felt I could get a similar workout at home that I was getting at the gym. However many successful gym memberships these days include things that you can’t get at home. Motivation from personal trainers, a variety of workout plans and classes and other things that were at times extra fees are now things you can get included in a regular membership. Essentially the message from the gyms are…we can give you more than what you are getting on your own at home. Can our church or others like that say…we can give you more than what you are personally getting at home? Are we relevant to you?

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One millennial commentator on this subject suggests, “if you ask what the point of church is, and the best answer is effective teaching, or worship—or even a very good purpose like helping people get close to God—then we’ve lost our imagination. We’ve lost something significant in our understanding of the breadth and depth of living, complex, responsive, self sacrificing body of Christ that is bringing God’s kingdom to Earth.”

If it is simply about inward focus, how is the church growing me in Christ? How much am I learning about God in church? Yes I think an argument can be made that a motivated follower of Christ can find those things at home in deep study of scripture. In fact I know there are plenty of examples outside of just simply millennials who have lost confidence in the church, whether it be in our institutions of learning, or the “worship wars” that exist in our church and/or for various other reasons.

The church does not simply exist to make individual better followers of Jesus. That’s part of it. It also exists for reasons that stretch far beyond the personal…the church exists to testify to a greater story than the world’s; through understandings of grace, mercy, and acceptance, and baptism, marriage, communion, healthy living, generous living, and most of all proclaiming the good news of Jesus soon coming. The church to me, exists, primarily because it is commissioned by God to tell the world of the good news of Jesus. Can millennials (and every other generation) embrace that vision? I think it can.

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Again according to Barna research group, millennials are skeptical about the role church plays in society….but their hope for the role church could play…that is something they are more optimistic about. When the church starts getting more involved in law-making in our society. People get uncomfortable. And I think they should be. But when it comes to what the church is seeking to do in outreach, community well-being, and mission work….basically humanitarian, and people (especially millennials get excited). Its because one the things they are seeking is genuine selflessness. That leaves a great taste in their mouths. Specifically within Adventism, the majority of those who have left and are in the process of leaving are not doing so because anything regarding doctrine. For genuine seekers of truth and following truth, the proof is in the content of the Adventist message. Adventist Millennials polled both active and non-active held strong views in support of the belief in the Sabbath, state of the dead, and Second coming. Some of you might be like myself and wondering, what is causing our young people to walk out of the church. I hate to tell you this, but its not a one size fits all answer that I can give you, because the reality is that there are various reasons for why millennials have left but understanding some of the factors contributing to their exodus can get the ball rolling for us as a church body, with God’s might, be able to reverse the trend.

Before we get into that, lets return to verse 13.

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13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

Jesus, of course, is speaking in metaphor. This is a verse many of you have heard countless times. Salt was used for flavoring, but also preserving (in a society without freezers and refridgeration. The metaphor was to be remembered by the early apostles, the early church leaders, their work must not grow stale. It was an evangelistic message to intermingle with the world and work as a transformer to it! It was a message to be used in revival as well. I know salt isn’t the greatest for you when eaten in great quantity. To much sodium is not good for you. But lets face it, if there isn’t salt on some veggies, it doesn’t taste good. Those veggies are good for you and we need them, but chances are we aren’t going to eat them if they don’t have some salt. Could it be church is often missing salt. But what is salt? What is the thing that is missing? Is it the flavor, or the preservation quality?

Lets first examine the preservation. My wife believes in freezing food to preserve it. We know that artificial preservatives can be bad for the body as they make it challenging for the body break down and digest fully. Preservation is a good thing. There are some out there that see preservation is preserving the ideals of the church from becoming rotten at the hands of the younger incoming generation. I don’t mean that as an attack on traditions that emulate the teachings of the Bible. I mean that to be a statement of priorities. Preserving youth and young adults takes priority over preserving traditions. Every generation is going to do a few things differently. Hopefully through the mentorship and discipleship of the previous generation. Mentoring and discipling does not include “Do as I tell you and don’t change a thing.” Our church would not exist, if our founders had held that view. It means telling our current and future generations to learn from the successes and mistakes made in the past and encourage them to be better and different when necessary.

Then there is the flavor. I, a millennial, like other millennials grew up in a time where there was something very much poisoning the flavor of worship in the church. I’m here to tell you it was not drums, and it was not hymns. It was the rampant arguing about drums vs hymns. Contemporary worship versus traditional worship. Folks were, still are, from an appearances standpoint concerned over the morality over worship styles. People get very opinionated and often angry over worship styles and methods. I am not saying those things aren’t important and conversations on those subjects should not exist. I’m saying as a youth who had grown up in mostly pretty conservative churches, I had grown to have a great appreciation for hymns, but I had also had moments where I was bored and felt the worship and music was for the adults. I admit there were times and still do feel at times closer to God through praise songs that we hear outside of the hymnal. However, I must tell you, music styles never left me with a flavorless after taste. What did was with the nastiness that I witnessed well meaning Christians talk, chastise, and condemn each other over worship styles. To me, as a young adult seventh day Adventist pastor, that still tempts me into unrighteous anger. When that sort of thing begins happening the devil knows he has an in with the young people who are earnestly seeking a loving God. The devil says, “these churches can’t be that loving if they are that quick to slander someone over.” I am referencing folks from both sides of that sort of “conversation.” The flavor Jesus is referring to does not come soley from music styles and worship themes. It doesn’t come from just simply turning your church into a coffee house and playing contemporary music. Those are cosmetics. Organs versus guitars and drums are cosmetics. Remember how I was talking about stereo types. It’s a stereo-type to suggest Young adults will only come and worship in a contemporary worship environment.

A pastor acquaintance of mine recently wrote a blog entry I found very important. I thought I’d share with you a little from it.

“I grew up in a traditional church that was more interested in hanging on to its formalities than it was in open-mindedly assessing why it was losing its youth. My own youth group was quite large but by the time we had reached 18 the vast majority of us had walked away from the church. As a result of these experiences I have, for a long time, been quite interested in the topic of youth and church.

Enter the modern church. Among many other things, the modern church was an attempt to create a church culture that was both attractive and retentive of its youth. However, after many years of going down that road we are still publishing books on how youth are leaving church in droves. It appears the modern church has failed.”

He then breaks the church into 3 areas, the heartbeat (the purpose and life of the church), the muscle, what enables the church to live out its purpose, and the cosmetics…the visibility of the church, what everyone sees when you walk in or by a church.

Then he begins to speak not in absolute terms but out of perception through his own experience. You can agree or disagree with his assessments, but like it or not there are young adult Christians out there who have or have had similar feelings…a couple statements might make some ready to jump up and defend, the church…I’ll use the old statement “Let me finish” J…

“Now that we have divided the church into these three chunks allow me to introduce what I believe is a major problem with the church today. Jesus gave the church a heart beat: the great commission. This task to make disciples of all nations is why the church exists. It is its purpose. The muscle of the church is thus fully employed in bringing this purpose about. And the cosmetics of the church adapt to the different cultures and generations that that particular local church is speaking into. However, at some points in history the church seems to have lost its heart beat. Once it lost its heart beat (making disciples of all nations) it became obsessed with itself. As a result the muscle of the church switched from an outward focused system set up to facilitate the accomplishment of the great commission to an inward focused system set up to keep the church members happy. The end result of this was churches that cared little of how they were perceived in their communities and instead focused on keeping one another happy. The cosmetics of the church thus evolved, not as a tool for speaking into culture, but as a celebration of nostalgia. (again…that is a perception, may not be 100% accurate but a perception some young adults hold)

He goes on to make the point, out of this disgruntlement or the perception that to retain youth and young adults…a more modern church must arise. A church that is hipper. Esssentially, the model may have been something like this, to retain young people, we have to make church cool for them once again. I’LL continue from his article: Most of the modern church is ultimately concerned with being "cool" enough so that its youth feel comfortable and perceive the church as relevant. But it hasn't worked. We are still publishing books and funding research on the "youth exodus issue" and church leaders across the board know that youth are still leaving. In addition, the modern church's attempt has become the object of scorn both in the church and in the culture the church is supposedly reaching.

The author’s major point is that just simply changing a church to contemporary style is just really just changing the cosmetic appeal. Youth and young adults don’t take very long to see through this, that fundamentally this new modern church has the same problem of an inward focus, or lack of heart beat that the church they ran away from was missing to.

We have to stop trying to trick young people, manipulating people into believing whether it be traditional or contempory method and gain back a genuine heartbeat that keeps the church alive. What makes the church come alive…it has nothing to do with worship styles or music wars. It is when we begin to be a movement once again. We’ve talked about it in prayer meeting, as we’ve been studying acts. We saw it when watching the Tell the World movie, as we watched the Adventist movement begin.

Without a heart beat you can change your cosmetics all you want and you will end up with nothing more of than Christianity that hardly resembles the world changing movement Jesus intended us to be…it is one that is surely not salty. The cosmetics should be the result of having a heart beat. They are not the thing that causes it. We can change them all we want, but it wont explicitly revive our church in the long run, keep our youth, or attract our neighbors. But a church with a heart that beats for the broken and lives to share the gospel to its community by acts of mercy, justice and service is a relevant church that will impact our sphere of influence for decades to come.

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Challenge

What I’ve been suggesting mostly has not been what CAN we do to retain our young adults and inspire others to come back, but what doesn’t work. Lets look at what should be happening.

· We should be actively listening to our youth and young adults.

· According to Barna’s Adventist specific millennial study: Most of those who were negative toward the church, and who had tempered their involvement, did not see themselves as rejecting the teachings or fundamentals ideals of the church—rather they did not see a clear path for them to engage with and interact with the church. In some ways they felt that the church had left them.

· We should be involving our youth and young adults.

· One of the strengths of the Adventist churches is that they have many opportunities for their children and youth to be involved. But there is a difficult transition from child to adult. Young adults have many fewer opportunities. As one person in our post-college discussion groups said, “If you aren’t a child and don’t have a child, there’s nothing for you.”

· We should be actively mentoring and befriending millenials in the church.

One key aspect of intergenerational relationships is that they are already happening. The objective isn’t to facilitate intergenerational interaction, because it is already going on; the objective is to make these interactions positive. Because for every positive interaction there seems to be a negative one as well. These will be addressed in the section below on forgiveness and acceptance.

· We must be more open-minded to Millennials leading in different ways than traditional methods.

· Whether they should feel this way or not. Many millennials are perceiving that the Adventist church is repressive of new or different ideas. This leads to a strong risk of alienating young adults, some losing loyalty, and worse some feeling they do not belong or do not have a place within this church.

· We should take time to analyze why the Millennials who are staying active, remain that way.

· The local churches should also investigate how they can challenge their young adults to have such experiences in the first place. Camps were often mentioned as vehicles for such experiences, as were Pathfinders and Adventurers. But these are designed for youth. What are the young adult parallels that can provoke the kind of transformational change that deepens the relationship both with Christ and the Church?

· We must go after the Millennials we have lost!

· One challenge for the local churches to consider is how to leverage negative experiences. Instead of discarding the person or putting up barriers to “protect” others from their influence, how can the church not only embrace them, but also find a way for them—and others—to use their mistakes as learning opportunities?

Lost millennials are not all that different from any others who are lost. Some are gone just to see if anyone notices. If they wanted me there, they would do what needed to be done to have them come back.

Again there is no one size shoe method that fits all for retaining our young people, Our Millennial generation. But one thing is for certain Millennials are now the most able bodied persons alive to do what the gospel demands. If we continue this trend of losing our younger current and future generations, what church is there left? Are we further delaying Christ’s coming?

I for one have a great confidence in the Millennials who are active in the church. I had an amazing seminary experience, whom I keep in touch with. Some are stationed as pastors as far as Japan and as close as this very conference. We Millennials aren’t any different than other generations in the sense that we don’t agree on every single little matter. We are united in seeking the lost and soul-winning! I do believe the church is in good hands and will remain in good hands when our heart beat comes from the great commission. I’ll close with Christ’s words to his disciples (which was the future generation of the church) in verse 14.

14 “You are the light of the world.

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

My friends let your light shine and empower young people to let theirs shine too!