Want millennials back in the pews? Stop trying to make
church ‘cool.’
By Rachel Held Evans in the Washington Post
Rachel Held Evans is a blogger and
the author of “Searching for Sunday: Loving,
Leaving, and Finding the Church.”
Bass reverberates through the
auditorium floor as a heavily bearded worship leader pauses to invite
the
congregation, bathed in the light of two giant screens, to tweet using
#JesusLives. The scent of freshly brewed coffee wafts in from the lobby, where
you can order macchiatos and purchase mugs boasting a sleek church logo. The
chairs are comfortable, and the music sounds like something from the top of the
charts. At the end of the service, someone will win an iPad.
This, in the view of many churches,
is what millennials like me want. And no wonder pastors think so. Church
attendance has plummeted among
young adults. In the United States, 59 percent of people ages 18 to 29 with a
Christian background have, at some point, dropped out. According
to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, among those of us who came of
age around the year 2000, a solid quarter claim no religious affiliation at
all, making my generation significantly more disconnected from faith than
members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their lives and twice as
detached as baby boomers were as young adults.
In response, many churches have
sought to lure millennials back by focusing on style points: cooler bands,
hipper worship, edgier programming, impressive technology. Yet while these
aren’t inherently bad ideas and might in some cases be effective, they are not
the key to drawing millennials back to God in a lasting and meaningful way.
Young people don’t simply want a better show. And trying to be cool might be
making things worse.
You’re just as likely to hear the
words “market share” and “branding” in church staff meetings these days as you
are in any corporate office. Megachurches such as Saddleback in Lake Forest,
Calif., and Lakewood in Houston have entire marketing departments devoted to
enticing new members. Kent Shaffer of ChurchRelevance.com routinely ranks the
best logos and Web sites and
offers strategic counsel to organizations like Saddleback and LifeChurch.tv.
Increasingly, churches offer sermon
series on iTunes and concert-style worship services with names like “Vine” or
“Gather.” The young-adult group at Ed Young’s Dallas-based Fellowship Church is
called Prime, and
one of the singles groups at his father’s congregation in Houston is called Vertical. Churches have made news in recent years
for giving away tablet computers , TVs and even cars at Easter. Still, attendance among
young people remains flat.
Recent research from Barna
Group and the Cornerstone Knowledge Network found that 67 percent of
millennials prefer a “classic” church over a “trendy” one, and 77 percent would
choose a “sanctuary” over an “auditorium.” While we have yet to warm to the
word “traditional” (only 40 percent favor it over “modern”), millennials
exhibit an increasing aversion to exclusive, closed-minded religious
communities masquerading as the hip new places in town. For a generation
bombarded with advertising and sales pitches, and for whom the charge of
“inauthentic” is as cutting an insult as any, church rebranding efforts can
actually backfire, especially when young people sense that there is more
emphasis on marketing Jesus than actually following Him. Millennials “are not
disillusioned with tradition; they are frustrated with slick or shallow
expressions of religion,” argues David Kinnaman, who interviewed hundreds of
them for Barna Group and compiled his research in “You Lost Me: Why Young
Christians Are Leaving Church . . . and Rethinking Faith.”
My friend and blogger Amy Peterson put it this way:
“I want a service that is not sensational, flashy, or particularly ‘relevant.’
I can be entertained anywhere. At church, I do not want to be entertained. I do
not want to be the target of anyone’s marketing. I want to be asked to
participate in the life of an ancient-future community.”
Millennial blogger Ben Irwin wrote: “When a church tells me how I should feel
(‘Clap if you’re excited about Jesus!’), it smacks of inauthenticity. Sometimes
I don’t feel like clapping. Sometimes I need to worship in the midst of my
brokenness and confusion — not in spite of it and certainly not in denial of
it.”
When I left church at age 29, full
of doubt and disillusionment, I wasn’t looking for a better-produced
Christianity. I was looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic
Christianity: I didn’t like how gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people
were being treated by my evangelical faith community. I had questions about
science and faith, biblical interpretation and theology. I felt lonely in my
doubts. And, contrary to popular belief, the fog machines and light shows at
those slick evangelical conferences didn’t make things better for me. They made
the whole endeavor feel shallow, forced and fake.
While no two faith stories are
exactly the same, I’m not the only millennial whose faith couldn’t be saved by
lacquering on a hipper veneer. According to Barna
Group, among young people who don’t go to church, 87 percent say they see
Christians as judgmental, and 85 percent see them as hypocritical. A similar study found that “only
8% say they don’t attend because church is ‘out of date,’ undercutting the
notion that all churches need to do for Millennials is to make worship
‘cooler.’ ”
In other words, a church can have a
sleek logo and Web site, but if it’s judgmental and exclusive, if it fails to
show the love of Jesus to all, millennials will sniff it out. Our reasons for
leaving have less to do with style and image and more to do with substantive
questions about life, faith and community. We’re not as shallow as you might
think.
If young people are looking for
congregations that authentically practice the teachings of Jesus in an open and
inclusive way, then the good news is the church already knows how to do that.
The trick isn’t to make church cool; it’s to keep worship weird.
You can get a cup of coffee with
your friends anywhere, but church is the only place you can get ashes smudged
on your forehead as a reminder of your mortality. You can be dazzled by a light
show at a concert on any given weekend, but church is the only place that fills
a sanctuary with candlelight and hymns on Christmas Eve. You can snag all sorts
of free swag for brand loyalty online, but church is the only place where you
are named a beloved child of God with a cold plunge into the water. You can
share food with the hungry at any homeless shelter, but only the church teaches
that a shared meal brings us into the very presence of God.
What finally brought me back, after
years of running away, wasn’t lattes or skinny jeans; it was the sacraments.
Baptism, confession, Communion, preaching the Word, anointing the sick — you
know, those strange rituals and traditions Christians have been practicing for
the past 2,000 years. The sacraments are what make the church relevant, no
matter the culture or era. They don’t need to be repackaged or rebranded; they
just need to be practiced, offered and explained in the context of a loving,
authentic and inclusive community.
My search has led me to the
Episcopal Church, where every week I find myself, at age 33, kneeling next to a
gray-haired lady to my left and a gay couple to my right as I confess my sins
and recite the Lord’s Prayer. No one’s trying to sell me anything. No one’s
desperately trying to make the Gospel hip or relevant or cool. They’re just
joining me in proclaiming the great mystery of the faith — that Christ has
died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again — which, in spite of my
persistent doubts and knee-jerk cynicism, I still believe most days.
One need not be an Episcopalian to
practice sacramental Christianity. Even in Christian communities that don’t use
sacramental language to describe their activities, you see people baptizing
sinners, sharing meals, confessing sins and helping one another through
difficult times. Those services with big screens and professional bands can
offer the sacraments, too.
But I believe that the sacraments
are most powerful when they are extended not simply to the religious and the
privileged, but to the poor, the marginalized, the lonely and the left out.
This is the inclusivity so many millennials long for in their churches, and
it’s the inclusivity that eventually drew me to the Episcopal Church, whose big
red doors are open to all — conservatives, liberals, rich, poor, gay, straight
and even perpetual doubters like me.
Church attendance may be dipping,
but God can survive the Internet age. After all, He knows a thing or two about
resurrection.
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