millennials and religion

In the past six months or so, several of my friends shared an article on social media inviting churches to consider why millennials are dropping out of church attendance at alarming rates.  The author listed his own 12 reasons for this phenomenon.

I read the entire article.  I considered it.  I found nuggets of wisdom within, good suggestions for ways to approach millennials and make church more palatable for them.  I agreed with several of the criticisms of the way in which churches go about things.  There’s always room for improvement in any institution, religious ones not excluded.

And yet I couldn’t ignore the nagging irony of the author’s complaints.  He claims that church isn’t doing enough to woo millennials into coming while simultaneously bemoaning their lack of commitment to “making a difference”.  He believes they spend too much time crafting “mission statements” and not enough time helping the least of these.

While I agree that churches should allocate the majority of their time to making a difference in the lives of the most needy, it seems so self-centered (so… millennial, shall we say?)to suggest that churches go about business your way instead of just doing it yourself.  If the author were truly altruistic, he wouldn’t be asking the church what it can do for him, he would be asking what he can do for the church.

For example, in his words:

“My heart is broken for how radically self-centered and utterly American our institution has become.  Let’s clock the number of hours the average church attender spends in “church-type” activities. Bible studies, meetings, groups, social functions, book clubs, planning meetings, talking about building community, discussing a new mission statement… Now let’s clock the number of hours spent serving the least of these. Oooooo, awkward.”

First of all, not true.  Not in my church at least.  Second, the very suggestion that a church bend over backwards to attract more millennials is self-centered not to mention contradictory.  Perhaps the author meant to say that “the least of these” that churches should serve is millennials?

There are plenty of religious institutions with a deep commitment to aiding the poor.  Feel free to do your homework and throw your energy behind those causes.

The author claims that “Millennials value voice and receptivity above all else. When a church forges ahead without ever asking for our input we get the message loud and clear: Nobody cares what we think. Why then, should we blindly serve an institution that we cannot change or shape?”

The very nature of most religious institutions, in a way, is to tell people what to do.  Religion gives people a framework by which they can evaluate their lives and offers a path that (presumably) leads to joy, happiness and greater meaning.  To suggest that a religion should change based on the whims of the rising generation devalues the tenets long-established as true by a particular religion.

That’s not to say that institutions don’t adjust based on the circumstances of the world.  But core beliefs and doctrines aren’t typically ones that anyone can reasonably expect to change simply because they don’t sit well with him or her.  Perhaps the better attitude would be to decide whether or not one believes a particular religion to be true or right(or of God), then humbly evaluate what adjustments the individual can make to come to better understand more challenging doctrines or tenets.

As much as millennials complain about the stereotype that “it’s all about them” some of them certainly make ample demands for everyone else to change to accommodate them.  Case in point: another quote from the article: “We need a church that sees us and believes in us, that cheers us on and encourages us to chase our big crazy dreams.”  And also:

“You see, church leaders, our generation just isn’t interested in playing church anymore, and there are real, possible solutions to filling our congregations with young adults. It’s obvious you’re not understanding the gravity of the problem at hand and aren’t nearly as alarmed as you should be about the crossroads we’re at.

You’re complacent, irrelevant and approaching extinction. A smattering of mostly older people, doing mostly the same things they’ve always done, isn’t going to turn to the tide.

Feel free to write to me off as just another angry, selfy-addicted millennial. Believe me, at this point I’m beyond used to being abandoned and ignored.”

It’s laughable, really.  The petulance in his attitude makes it sound like attracting millennials is the “be all and end all” and that somehow the older generations are irrelevant.  To be sure, I believe that all religions should be concerned when a generation is dropping like flies.  But not because that generation is any more important than another, as the author seems to believe.  It’s not helping his cause to frame his argument with obvious disdain for older generations.

Perhaps religion isn’t the problem.  Perhaps it is, in fact, the individuals who leave them who are the problem.  Should religions care about those people?  Yes, they should.  And, in my experience they DO.

But most people who disdain religion have already made up their minds that they don’t want to be preached to. They want to do things their way. They expect a certain standard from the people who inhabit those religious institutions and are disappointed when those people fall short.  They believe that instead of being organizations that contain truths that have stood the test of time, those “truths” should be dusted off and reshaped to suit their own purposes.

It’s simply contrary to the very nature of absolute truth to do so.  While I acknowledge the need to differentiate between truth and tradition, I also reject the idea that churches should change drastically to suit a largely impatient, demanding generation.

To be sure, not all millennials fall into this category.  There are plenty of millennials who believe in God and want to do His will.  I know many such millennials personally.  The characteristics that seem to define their generation are equally suited to religious involvement as they are rejection of it.  I simply take issue with the theory that religion is the problem.

I expect we will see many millennials add value to religious institutions for years to come.  Most millennials I know are faithful, energetic and service-oriented.   Whether they channel those traits into religious service is entirely up to them.  It’s not the job of a religion to baby them into joining the throng.  Anyone who has to be cajoled into participating in religion is probably missing the point.  But those who participate selflessly are pretty much as good as they come.