The Church vs. Generation “Why?”
In a culture of inclusiveness, international connectivity through social media, and a plethora of mediums by which to engage in contemporary worship and community, churches today are losing young people more than ever before. As the cultural paradigm has shifted with the rise of the LGBT movement, a graspable worldwide community, and postmodernist ideas infiltrating every area of life, churches have seen a growing demographical gap in their congregations. Where are the young people? Where is the representation from the up-and-coming generation to be found? The fact is, Millennials are leaving the contemporary American church today due to the church’s departure from unapologetic Biblical teaching, and overemphasis on fabricated emotional experiences.
Are young people, particularly Millennials, actually leaving the church? In a recent study conducted by Pew Forum, the numbers grossly reveal that the Millennial generation is by far the most religiously unaffiliated, displaying that twenty-six percent define themselves as religiously unattributed in contrast to thirteen percent of Boomers¹. While Millennial religiosity marks itself lower than previous generations, the contrast between generational church attendance is far greater. Only eighteen percent of young people attend a weekly church service, as opposed to thirty-two percent of Boomers and over forty percent of those attributed to the Greatest Generation¹. Church attendance is continuing to drop, that much is certain, but why?
Why? That is the question attributed to this Millennial generation who refuse to take any given statement at face value. In an article for Relevant Magazine, Tyler Francke expanded on this:
“You hear Millennials being called the ‘Why?’ generation, and it’s hard to deny that the nickname fits pretty snugly. It also reflects their tendency to be wary of institutions, political parties and even other people in general — Such radical skepticism may seem distasteful or inherently combative, until you remember the high premium Scripture places on ‘shrewdness’ (Mathew 10:16, ESV) and ‘testing everything’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21).”
In fact, another poll by Pew Forum confirmed that only nineteen percent of Millennials consider the average person trustworthy, while the remaining eighty-one percent have either some or great reason to doubt anything or everything². A Barna Group study revealed that over half of all practicing Christian Millennials will research a church online before attending, sifting through church beliefs while examining sermons and worship through multi-media to discern whether it is worth taking the time to attend in person³.
The fact-checking does not end online however; with technological leaps and the ability to have both the Word of God and Google in the palm of one’s hand, seventy percent of Millennials, more so than any other generation, are following their pastor’s sermons on their phones to examine the scriptural references. As wonderful as these technological advances are for a layperson, pastors best beware. Generation “Why”, the generation who refuses to take any piece of information at face value, also thrives on fact-checking their pastors³. The numbers reveal that a staggering thirty-eight percent of practicing Christian Millennials fact-check sermons to see how they measure up to the written Word of God³. It is clear that the Bible is held in high esteem by the up-and-coming generation, and that they aim to hold their pastors accountable to sound Biblical teaching. In yet another poll it was revealed that among practicing Christians, eighty-seven percent of Millennials are engaged with the Bible⁴; more than any other generation to date, Generation “Why” spends more time engaged with the Word of God. While engagement may differ from application, professing Christian Millennials believe the Word is to be taken seriously and ought to be preached rightly by those teaching from the pews.
If practicing Millennials are more focused on the Word of God, why are churches still lacking them in their congregational demographic? To regain the lost generation, many churches have sought to change and adapt, hoping to fill the gap presented by the absence of young Millennials. Despite the changes, however, the gap remains. In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Millennial Rachel Held Evans bluntly informs the church how they may be able to fill the generational void in the pews through her title, “Want millennials back in the pews? Stop trying to make church ‘cool’”. She goes on to write that:
“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 worse⁵”.
Newer and “cooler” are not what Millennials are looking for. In fact, in a recent poll asking why Millennials both stay and leave the church, “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’⁶”.
Contrary to current rhetoric surrounding Millennials, they are not looking for “cool”, new, trendy churches; rather the statistics reveal that sixty-seven percent prefer traditional church services with an emphasis on the Word of God and community⁵. As the evidence reveals, the church’s withdrawal from traditional and Biblically-based Christianity, and overemphasis on the “cool factor” is the cause for the growing generational gap left by disgruntled Millennials who expected the church to be church, not another marketing firm vying for their attention. Further elaborating on Millennial’s frustrations with the state of the contemporary American church, 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 community⁵”.
Millennial blogger Ben Irwin also 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 it⁵”.
The sad truth is that Millennials are searching for the church while the church as a whole is not properly addressing them. To engage with the new generation, the church has opted to forsake biblically based service for “entertainment-based”, trendy, and fabricated emotional experiences. When churches look more like Starbucks coffee shops, aesthetic fashion centers like ZARA, and entertainment venues like Lalapalooza, what makes the church otherworldly? That is the issue at hand. The church no longer looks like a church, and Bible-checking Millennials have seen through the shallow charade. If the contemporary American church longs to fill the generational vacuum found in their pews, they ought to drop the fabricated experiences and refocus on proper Biblical exposition. Until the church reverts to being the “Biblically modeled” institution built upon preaching the very Word of God, Millennial pews will continue to acquire dust.
