losing the young
Slice recently posted this short article
This USA Today article says that young adult protestants, mainline and evangelical, are dropping from churches in “sobering†numbers. Is it possible that Cirque du Soleil-style worship and church sponsored hookah bars are not enough to hold young people these days?
I don’t mean to be overly cynical, but I don’t think that hymns and man-made tradition are what the 18 – 30 year-old crowd is looking for either. I recently was meeting with a group of leaders from a dying church that was trying to transition to a more modern method of ministry. Of course they upgraded to some more modern sounding music and redid some of the outdated furniture. One lady I spoke with said “My son just got out of prison, and has actually really been enjoying the church services here. He is not a believer and seems to have been connecting really well here.” her next line shocked me. She said, “But we are leaving because I really miss my hymns.”
Now, I really could care less if a church sang How Great Thou Art every week or worshiped to Heavy metal. The symptoms go far deeper than music with this issue. It is a selfishness in the church, and an unwillingness to change and do what it takes to reach a generation that is leaving the church in droves. It is an unwillingness to connect with the powerful Spirit of God and ask what HE wants to do with and in this generation, not what have WE always done with our generation. Call me crazy, but I think the problem is not found in “Cirque du Soleil-style worship and church sponsored hookah bars”
![Image of The Prodigal God (An Unabridged Production)[2-CD Set]; Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31Jl6fhDLxL._SL75_.jpg "The Prodigal God (An Unabridged Production)[2-CD Set]; Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith")
9 Comments(+Add)
It goes to show that no matter how much the watchdoggies claim that style is the only thing that matters to the people they criticize the reality is that style is the only thing that matters to them. Notice that there’s nothing else the finger is pointed at except style. As far as the watchdoggies are concerned if you change style, then you change the church.
“Losing”, not “loosing”.
I once watched an interview with a saved gay man and they asked him where he found the power to overcome temptation. He replied, “The victory is in His presence. When I walk in His presence I find victory, when I don’t I have a struggle”.
That applies to us all, no?
Wow. How do they make the leap that emergent style churches are the cause of young people leaving church? The FACTS of the survey would indicate otherwise…the math just doesn’t support Ingrid’s asumptions…
The survey reports that “Seven in ten…quit attending by age 23.” So, assuming you are 23 and just now quit attending church, then you were attending church in high school (their qualifier) five to eight years ago. How large were the emergent/ing churches five to eight years ago? Now, the survey did not mention that the respondennts had switched TYPES of churches, so either they were attending an EC that long ago (and again, how large was the movement then?) OR, they were attending a traditional church, and it no longer attracts them. You decide.
Its even more revealing if you consider the 34% that had not returned to church by age 30. Those people were attending church 12 to 15 years ago (in high school) in the early to mid nineties. If the ECM was THAT large in the early nineties then where were the ODMs back then? Remember, even PDL wasn’t published until 2002.
Again, I argue that it is traditional churches that are not adapting how they preach the timeless message to the changing times. And, in the case of the Gen Yers and the Millenials, it is even more about how people (and churches) ‘live out their faith’ more than what type of music is sung and in what type of building they meet.
But if the ODMs want to argue that its the music and the style while Rome burns, more power to them. Me, I’m going to be out among the lost, telling them about my Jesus.
S4M
Your spiritual blindness is simply astounding. These young people need more of God’s Word, not more of the fads.
Something like that.
How am I doing, Ken?
S4M,
Well said. It takes a lot of chutzpah to blame a movement that wasn’t yet started when the seeds were sown for not planting them well enough… Add to that the growth in the ecm and in a number of larger growing churches which have been able to discern true ‘relevance’, which separates message from method, rather than just carping and tossing hymnals from the sidelines…
Is “losing the young” better than “eating the young”? It seems to me that that’s the real issue.
Sometimes I get the feeling that the ODM ministries are content to eat the young and complain about how few there are left around.
I think it’s very short-sighted of the watchdawggies to think that the reason mainstream evangelical churches are losing young people is all stylistic. That may be a part of the issue, but I think it goes deeper than that.
I think a lot church members treat a church like a “sanctified” country club, actually. There are people who are welcomed as members of the club, others that want to get in but can’t, and others who don’t want anything to do with it. Until churches as a whole are willing to re-examine the core of what they are and make the radical changes necessary, I believe many will continue to see their membership get older and older, and eventually we will see many churches having to shut their doors.
I think what young people are looking for, especially ones that grew up in the church, is a genuine spiritual experience, not a religious sub-culture. I think that’s why things like the Eastern Orthodox church (and Catholic to some extent) are attracting more young people than before. People see the lilturgy and practices in these churches as inherently spiritual compared to a lot of the fluff that goes in some Evangelical churches.
Well, actually, there are people like Tim Keller and David Wilkerson in NYC who are very traditionalists and are raking in the young people by the carloads. And of course there is Mark Driscoll with his hour-long reformational sermons.
I do agree though that many people who criticize the emergent village do not understand that postmoderns don’t just like other types of music and stuff. They actually think differently. Many of them by the way do like hymns. I don;’t know if you’ve heard that but those who work with them are reporting this fact.
But I hope that critics begin to understand how these younger people think. Then they can reach them. Changing the service elements drastically IMO will fail in a few years because this has been tried before historically where the gospel has been left out. Just check the attendance at most liberal Protestant churches. Emergent–that could be your future too.