Tag: Millennials

This post is a third post in a three part series on identifying who the next generation is and how the church is to reach them.

In order for the church to reconnect to the next generation, Kinnaman says the church will have to rethink relationships, rediscover vocation, and reprioritize wisdom.^[1] Kinnaman says that the church must (1) Cast out fear by discerning the times and embracing the risks of cultural engagement (2) Leave shallow faith behind by apprenticing young people in the fine art

of following Christ (3) Respond to today’s scientific culture by stewarding young people’s gifts and intellect (4) Live by a sexual ethic that rejects traditionalist and individualist narratives of sex (5) Demonstrate the exclusive nature of Christ by rekindling empathy for the other (6) Faithfully work through doubts by doing acts of service with and for others.^[2]

To change the perception the church currently has from being un-Christian to Christian, Kinnaman and Lyons say the church must (1) Respond with the right perspective (2) Connect with people (3) Be creative (4) Serve people.^[3]

The next generation craves community, depth, responsibility, and connection.^[4] The churches that are meeting these needs are (1) Creating deeper community (2) Making a difference through service (3) Experiencing worship (4) Conversing the content (5) Leveraging technology (6) Building cross-generational relationships (7) Moving toward authenticity (8) Leading by transparency (9) Leading by team.^[5]

To counter the prevailing Moralistic Therapeutic Deism that is running rampant in the church house today, churches must use the tools they have for “cultivating consequential faith.”^[6]

Dean identifies these practices as translation, testimony, and detachment.^[7] Rainer states that the “typical Millennial” wants a connected family, wants parental involvement, are diverse, believe they can make an impact on the future, are not workaholics, want a mentor, are green but not that green, communicate unlike any other generation, are financially confused, and are not religious.^[8]

In order to reach these Millennials and the unchurched today, Schultz says that church practice must return to (1) Radical hospitality (2) Fearless conversation (3) Genuine humility (4) Divine anticipation.^[9] To change the outsider’s perception of Jesus and His Church, Christ-followers need to act in grace and speak the truth in love. The church must embody service, compassion, humility, forgiveness, patience, kindness, peace, joy, goodness, and love.

Not all news is gloom and doom for the church’s next generation. “Lots of information abounds on young people leaving the church. But not all leave; many stay, thrive, and are impacting the world for Christ.”^[10] Dr. Alvin Reid has identified some ways that the church can reach and keep the next generation (1) Befriend and mentor someone of the next generation (2) Take students out of the Christian subculture to develop skills and knowledge for interacting with the real world (3) Help students to think and live missional lives now (4) Help young people see how the Bible relates to their career (5) Help students own their faith and see faith lived out in the real world so that they can beyond a check-list Christianity to a lifestyle of following Jesus that matters.^[11]

Though a new Pew Research survey found that the self-identified Christian share of the population declined almost 8% from 2007-2014, Evangelicals should not be alarmed. In a USA Today news article, Ed Stetzer, Executive Director of LifeWay Research, states that Christianity is not collapsing but is rather being clarified. Stetzer says that the church is not dying but is being more clearly defined and that churches are not emptying because evangelicals are attending church more than ever before. Stetzer asserts his belief because Pew Research does show that evangelicals in America have risen from 59.8 to 62.2 million in population over the past seven years and that those who self-identify as born-again have also risen from 34% to 35%. Stetzer says that “convictional Christianity” will continue.

Simply put, committed Christians who “value their faith enough to wake up on Sunday morning and head to their local church are mostly still going.” It is the nominal Christian­–people whose religious affiliation is in name only-who are becoming “nones” leading to the shrinking of Christianity in America. Though “Nones” have increased from 16%-23% of the total population over the past seven years, this increase is found to have come mostly from Catholics and Mainline Protestants.^[12]

[1] Kinnaman, You Lost Me, 202-212.

[2] Ibid, 205-206.

[3] Kinnaman and Lyons, UnChristian, 206-12.

[4] Stetzer, Stanley, and Hayes, Lost and Found, 67-68.

[5] Ibid, 143-44.

[6] Dean, Almost Christian, 106.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Rainer, The Millennials, 30-48.

[9] Schultz, Why Nobody Goes to Church Anymore, 68.

[10] Reid, Blog, “Thursday is for Training: Keeping the Next Gen in Church,” March 12, 2015.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Stetzer, USA Today, “Survey Fail: Christianity isn’t Dying,” May 14, 2015.

This post is the second post in a three part series on identifying who the next generation is and how the church is to reach them.

In describing the religiously unaffiliated, James Emery White prefers to use the term “none.”^[1] White claims that a snapshot or portrait of the average none shows that a none is (1)

Male (2) Young (3) White (4) Not necessarily an atheist (5) Not very religious (6) A Democrat (7) In favor of abortion and same-gender marriage being legal (8) Liberal or moderate (9) Not necessarily hostile toward religious institutions (10) Most likely a westerner.^[2] According to Pew Research, the percentage of nones rose from 5 to 15% from 1940 to 1990 but exploded from 21 to 34 % between the years of 2008 and 2012.”^[3] White believes this marked difference is due to the secularization, privatization, and pluralization of the modern world.^[4]

Why is it that the next generation is shying away from church in larger numbers than years past? The unchurched offer many reasons as to why they avoid church. The unchurched claim church is boring (15%), they are not sure why they do not attend (13%), or that they are too busy (11%).^[5] The unchurched perceive church people to be anti-homosexual (91%), judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashion (78%), too involved in politics (75%), and out of touch with reality (72%).^[6]

In You Lost Me, Kinnman says that the disconnect with the church that the unchurched experiences is due to the fact that the unchurched perceive the church to be overprotective, shallow, anti-science, repressive, exclusive, and doubtless.^[7] “The younger unchurched believe the church is too critical about lifestyle issues, full of hypocrites, and not necessary for spiritual development.”^[8] Church refugees also claim they dropped out of church because they wanted a break, they moved to college, or they did not feel connected to the people in their church.^[9]

Finally, other reasons given for not attending church come from those who say they do not want another lecture or that God is irrelevant in their life.^[10] Katie Galli speaks for many younger adults when she says, “We’re especially disillusioned with the church.

Somewhere between the Crusades, the Inquisition, and fundamentalists bombing abortion clinics, we lost our appetite for institutionalized Christianity.”^[11]

The first step for any church that is even mildly interested in next generation ministry is to identify who the next generation is. The second step is to seek to understand what appeals or methods are best utilized for successfully reaching the next generation. Gabe Lyons believes that the next Christians will be (1) Provoked, not offended (2) Creators, not critics (3) Called, not employed (4) Grounded, not distracted (5) In community, not alone (6) Civil, not divisive (7) Countercultural, not relevant.^[12]

The idea that Lyons presents concerning the next Christians is one of restoring the culture and the cosmos. The idea of creation restoration is appealing to the next generation not only because they are taken up with social issues but because creation restoration explains in a fuller sense the intent and scope of the gospel and the kingdom of God.

But before the next generation can be creation restorers as God originally intended them to be, they must first be Christians. And in order for one to have his or her soul restored, he or she needs a Christ-follower to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ with him or her. The church calls this event and process evangelism.

Unfortunately, White says that the church is avoiding these spiritual conversations thus figuratively closing their front door.^[13] “Evangelism is fine in theory but not in practice.”^[14] This amounts to the church saying we want the unchurched in heaven but we act like they can go to hell.^[15] White claims that a church’s evangelism approach to reach the unchurched must be like an incubator: “Every approach, every program, every service furnishes a particular environment that will either serve the evangelistic process or hinder it.”^[16] In reaching the next generation, White also believes the church must offer a cause, be full of grace and truth, establish a new apologetic, be unified, invite the unchurched to church, and renew their own commitment to church.^[17]

[1] White, The Rise of the Nones, 13.

[2] Ibid, 22-23.

[3] Pew Research, “Nones on the Rise.”

[4] White, The Rise of the Nones, 45-46.

[5] Ibid, 53.

[6] Kinnaman and Lyons, UnChristian, 34.

[7] Kinnaman, You Lost Me, 92-93.

[8] Stetzer, Stanley, and Hayes, Lost and Found, 65.

[9] Rainer, Essential Church, 3.

[10] Schultz, Why Nobody Goes to Church Anymore, 23-27.

[11] Galli, “Dear Disillusioned Generation,” Christianity Today, April 21, 2008.

[12] Lyons, The Next Christians, 67.

[13] White, The Rise of the Nones, 84

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, 93.

[17] Ibid, 99-165

 

If you hang around long me enough, you will hear me say, “to reach the next generation, you must know who the next generation is.” This task is easier said than done.

The next generation, also known as Generation Z, the iGeneration, or the Centennials is a complex group that can be divided and appropriated into various subheadings. As it pertains to church attendance, the next generation can be classified into the unchurched, de-churched, re-churched, never churched, or found faithful to attend church.

In their book UnChristian, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons claim that unbelievers are a set that “includes atheists, agnostics, those affiliated with a faith other than Christianity (such as Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Mormonism, and so on), and other unchurched adults who are not born-again Christians.”^[1]

Lifeway’s research concludes that “more than two-thirds of young churchgoing adults in America drop out of church between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. Thom Rainer in Essential Church says, “the church is losing this generational battle on two fronts: (1) An increasing amount of young people are deciding to live according to a secular mindset, thus dropping out of church and not returning to church as previous generations did (2) An increasing amount of young people are deciding to drop out of church and not claim the Christian faith of their parents or their grandparents.” ^[2]

Kinnaman categorizes generational dropouts into three groups: (1) Nomads (2) Prodigals (3) Exiles.^[3] Kinnaman describes nomads as those who walk away from church engagement but still consider themselves Christian. Prodigals are those who lose their faith, describing themselves as “no longer Christian.” Exiles are still involved in their Christian faith but feel stuck or lost between culture and the church.

What possible explanation exists for why so many young people are leaving the church today? Perhaps it is because the church has presented the next generation a false gospel. In Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling The American Church (written by Kenda Dean), Christian Smith and Melinda Denton are given credit through their National Study of Youth and Religion (NYSR) in stating that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is “colonizing many historical religious traditions and, almost without anyone noticing, converting believers in the old faiths to its alternative religious vision of divinely underwritten personal happiness and interpersonal niceness.”^[4]

Smith and Denton conclude that “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is supplanting Christianity as the dominant religion in the United States.”^[5] If this takeover is happening, what are the guiding beliefs to this new religion? Dean lists these beliefs in five summary statements: (1) A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life (2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as taught in the Bible and by most world religions (3) The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself (4) God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem (5) Good people go to heaven when they die.^[6]

To follow up on groundbreaking research released in SoulSearching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Teenagers, Smith wrote Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults revealing that 18-24 year-olds comprise six religious types; (1) Committed Traditionalists – no more than 15% (2) Selective Adherents – perhaps 30% (3) Spiritually Open – about 15% (4) Religious Indifferent – at least 25% (5) Religiously Disconnected – no more than 5%, and (6) Irreligious – no more than 10%.  These findings show that 40% of all “emerging adults” (meaning prolonged adulthood) are clearly distanced from religion. Practically speaking, adults are not coming back to church once they marry and have kids  like they once did.

Believe it or not, I am only scratching the surface of who the next generation is and how the church can reach them. This is why I am making this post into a three part series.

[1] Kinnaman and Lyons, UnChristian, 17.

[2] Rainer, Essential Church, 8.

[3] Ibid, 25.

[4] Dean, Almost Christian, 14.

[5] Ibid.

 [6] Ibid.