Maybe about 2 weeks ago, the article "How to keep Millennial's in the Church?" started popping up on my newsfeed. It was a good read especially in light of the many conversations I've been having over the last few years about my views of the Church. If you're wondering what this means, millennial's and the Church, let me give you a brief overview. It's basically how the church is dealing with the youth of the church who have been born between the 1980s and 2000, which raises the question of how does the Church appeal to or handle the pre-teens to young adults? On our church discussion board, my pastor asked us to open up a dialog on this article. I will write more at a later time some of my views on different aspects of the Church, but I think this will give you a bit of an idea.
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Whatever happened to the Church just being Church- a place where people
can come to meet Jesus. A place that transforms lives, and cultivates
rich, deep community. A place that feeds the poor, welcomes the
stranger, protects the widow. And among many other things, a place that
is actually cross eyed. Instead, so many churches have become (or strive
to be) houses that boast of the thousands of "members" that warm pews
on Sunday mornings. Pastors, reverends, evangelists, psalmists,
prophets, (insert title here), have taken the Word of God to create
self-serving businesses, I mean ministries, that generate millions
though cool pop culture gimmicks, preaching prosperity over purpose, and
playing on the glitz and glamor, feel-good needs of a generation. So
many have turned the richness of the Bible to watered-down feel good
messages that attract the masses, but lack the transformative substance
of the Gospel itself. Sure, bread is filling, but what is its
longstanding nutritional value?
Lest we forget that Jesus only started with 12...
As someone who falls in this millennial category, what keeps me in
Church is the desire to connect to something real- substantive Word that
transforms and gives me the tools to navigate this life, rich loving
community that in essence serves as a second family, areas that I can
connect, serve, grow, and explore my gifts and talents, and a community
that works to live the message of the gospel to the world around them. I
think to ignore the needs and desires of the millennial generation
would be to isolate them and ignore the fact that society has changed
over time. The church needs to be sensitive to that. But, the same goes
for every generation in the church. With that said, the church cannot be
a ship tossed at sea, left to the winds of whatever fad blows through,
but rather an anchor that can withstand the fickleness of human nature
and keep its people Christ-centered.
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