Friday, September 14, 2007

An Honest Question

One of the more interesting things to note about the latest issue of Baptist Bulletin (as recently critiqued on my post here) is the back cover. It asks a very important and honest question. I've tried to find a picture of the spot online but can't. It shows a group of high school kids leaving a building, and reads:

They're Leaving... 2 out of 3 kids QUIT going to church after high school... What are YOU going to do about it?

Good question, eh? There are a few different answers I've seen tossed around in the marketplace of ideas...

There are, for example, a group of anachronistic folk out there that long for us to return to the good ol' days. The "old paths", they often call them. They point to pop culture, with it's sarcasm and informality as problems. They can't understand why kids don't graduate from high school, don a tie and continue coming to church! After all, they've given them a great "youth group" experience, right? All the bells and whistles - pizza parties, Super Bowl parties, alternative prom parties, parties for the sake of parties, etc...

The problem is much deeper than I'm about to characterize it, but part of the problem is surely the notion that "youth ministry" (and "children's ministry", too - but don't get me started on that one just yet!) exists on an entertainment platform. We've come to believe that if we don't entertain high school kids, they'll never come to church services. And then they graduate from these anachronistic churches and suddenly find no one willing to entertain them anymore. That's a very hard transition for most kids to make. Poof! - you're an adult and should be prepared to come dressed as one, listening to organ music and 45 minute (boring) sermons. I'm stereotyping, of course, but you get the point.

On the other hand, there are churches that have adopted the entertainment model for all ministry, whether youth or adult. Often, these churches seem to have a bit more success at retaining their high school grads, at least for a while... But then another factor tends to come into play. Your average postmodern (which likely includes virtually everyone graduating from high school these days) has their internal "poser/unauthentic" sensor set on turbo! They quickly begin to see through the shallowness of a consumerist/materialistic church culture. And - not surprisingly - they rapidly decide they want nothing to do with it.

Hence the mass exodus of 20-somethings from churches lately.

So we're right back to the question: what are we going to do?

Two things are for sure:

a) The 1950s are never coming back.
b) The entertainment/consumerist model is dying.

For both of these facts we can offer praise to the Almighty. But we have to move past this stage and actually address the question itself, eh?

I'll try ... just not right now!

In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts - especially those of you that are in the 20-something crowd right now.

More to come,
Hatushili

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I have lots of jumbled and incoherent ideas on this topic. As a humble member of the 20-something crowd I’ll try to share a few of my thoughts in a somewhat organized fashion.

A. Preaching – Yes, the Gospel will offend some and I don’t believe we should alter the message to keep from offending. Having said that I’m pretty sure we are offending lots of people unnecessarily with the preaching in a church service. But what I have found offends people of my age group more than anything is not the Bible or its message of God’s grace through Christ. What appears to offend people of my age group more than anything falls into two general categories:

1. Anti-pluralism: With pluralism at an all time high, most people of my age group are offended by anything or anyone who tells them that there is only one way to do something (for example getting to heaven). Of course in this area we cannot cater to them.

2. Dumbing down the message: The second thing that offends and annoys most 20-somthings, including me, is moot preaching. Just recently I visited a new church (not yours Nathan) where the preacher used various verses in the Bible to show the congregation why doing good is cool. The complete lack of depth and talking to the congregation like they probably never knew they were supposed to be good was very offensive. People of my age want to chew on something. They are okay with studying the Bible and with tackling hard subjects. Just don’t spend 9 weeks teaching us why it’s cool to be good! This is something that we should eagerly embrace and should be willing to change. I’ve seen a lot of high school S.S. curriculum that is bloated with moot points…of coarse by the time they graduate to “adult” church they are ready to leave seeing as they already know it’s cool to be good…

B. Worship – the worship that the emerging generation is seeking is not a rock concert, they can see a rock concert anytime. Nor is it a 1950’s organ sing-along, they can see a museum anytime too. In worship I think we can more easily cater to their pluralistic and eclectic taste. We should be willing to use different styles to portray different moods for various services. Emerging generations love the ancient but not at the expense of banishing guitars and drums. With their heightened sense of spirituality, they are seeking intimacy and awe…use candles, use incense, use guitars, use liturgy, use it all as long as it fits and is glorifying God. I could write about worship for a long while but my comments are already way too long.

C. Community – This is another big one. They hate being placed into little categories by demographics. They want to experience Church with everyone else and to learn from their elders. They want to be real and desire a place where they don’t need to put on a mask or a front. This age group is leaving by the boat load after high school because they no longer have an identity and to be honest they don’t want their identity to stem from their age bracket. Once again I have gobs more I’d like to say, but I’m finding it hard to write about such a broad topic. Hopefully we can pick a smaller subcategory and discuss it.

Hatushili said...

JB, feel free to pick a smaller subcategory and we'll run with it, eh?

Hatushili