I remember being so excited a few years ago when I heard Steve Veazey say that the church needs to be looking to the younger generations for leadership, and then so bothered when everyone then looked at me. I’m forty. I’m not young. I was getting excited by the thought of turning the church over to young adults – like actual adults who are young. Maybe late 20s into early 30s? But recently, I’ve come to realize that the church cannot just skip millennials and go to Gen Z, because it’s done such a poor job over the last few decades with understanding and integrating Millennials.
Millennials: The Missing Generation
People ask me where my generation went. They’ve been asking me that for more than twenty years. And sometimes, I ask the same question. Where are my peers that I grew up with in church? Where are the kids I went to camp with, and why aren’t they dropping off their kids for camp when I am? And there are a ton of reasons and discussions about this topic that have been happening over the last 20 years, but there are some core generational ideals held by millennials that the church just hasn’t responded well to, at the local and world church level, but also outside of Community of Christ as well. Millennials are the missing generation from pews across the country.
What are these core ideals for millennials? Genuineness. Authenticity. Experience. Transparency. I can hear the ‘buts’ starting from older generations as I write these words. I understand that these are important values for many people across the generations. But they mean something different to millennials, which is where the disconnect begins.
A big hurdle millennials have is that we don’t trust the authority of any institution unless it earns our trust – and that includes our churches. For older generations, church is an easily trusted institution that they put their faith in from the beginning, and then for some, trust is lost and they lose faith in the church later. Millennials begin from a place of no trust. But let’s look at it from our point of view: Millennials grew up with churches in the news for all the wrong reasons. The 1990s and 2000s were full of news stories about preachers embezzling money, sex scandals, child abuse, and more. But even worse, the institutions that knew wrongdoing was happening and covered it up – that was too far. I was 18 when the sex abuse scandal in Boston was brought to light. And then watching as news continued to come out about how widespread this problem really was, and how long and how far the Catholic church was willing to go to cover it up… and that it might be the same in other churches. It made us all lose trust in the idea of church and the role of ministers. As a culture, we still laugh at pedophile priest jokes. There was no longer a guarantee that “church” was the safe space we thought it was when we were in youth groups and caravans.
Some of us have positive experience to rely on. There is enough genuine experience built to help some millennials get over that hurdle of mistrust. But it is a difficult road. We watch how churches respond to current issues. How does a minister counsel a member suffering under domestic violence? How does a minister show acceptance to LGBTQ youth and adults? How does the church on a bigger scale embrace or refuse to discuss issues of acceptance of everyone? While Community of Christ may be ahead of other churches in some of these issues now, there were still too many examples when we weren’t ready yet, and every time we weren’t ready yet, Millennials lost faith in the church.
Moving Forward: No Answers and All the Answers
The answer was never a live band. The answer was never putting us in charge of making powerpoints for every worship. Really, there never was a single answer to keep Millennials in the church. But it all comes down to whether the church can practice what it preaches. We were raised with the strong example of who Jesus was. If the church or a minister does not fulfill that, why go? The genuineness of the church is lived out when we do what Jesus did. Our parents and church leaders put bracelets on us as children, asking “What Would Jesus Do?” But when we became adults, we didn’t always see the church doing what we knew Jesus would do. Millennials who were raised in the church still have many values that were imparted to them from their formative years. But those values are not dependent on a church to be lived out.
The church needs to treat people as individual people. The world continues to change and people bring complex issues with them to what they presume is the safe space of a church community. But so often, the ‘church’ or it’s representative minister will react out of fear and will choose to ‘stick to the rules’ or find some way to justify keeping the person at arms length. It can’t always be about the rules, if the rules are wrong or hurtful. I am a rule follower, for the most part. But when confronted with the health and wellbeing of another person, I will shove all the rules out the window. And if the church is going to choose the rules over someone I love, you can believe I will shove the church out the window, too.
You may notice I’m still here. I’m still attending church in the Community of Christ. I am even employed by them. That doesn’t mean this church hasn’t hurt my heart over the years. I am still grieving over the many times when the church chose rules over people. I am still cautious of the church’s ability to accept and welcome those who are too different. My heart hurts for the many who have left our pews because they were not allowed to be part of the community. I try to be as open and authentic as I can as a minister. There are times when I am sad, and tired, and upset – sometimes that comes out on my social media posts, or in my conversations or zoom calls. Even when there are feelings I want to hide, I remind myself that there are others in my life who might also feel that way. And if I share authentically, that gives them permission to do so as well. I am myself when I go to church – not my “Sunday Best”, although I do usually shower on Sunday mornings. But I come to you as myself, and I want you to do the same. For me, that helps. For me, that means there is still room for me to be here.
Honestly, this is probably going to have to be a post in progress. I’ve been writing it for a long time, and it doesn’t seem to ever be done. I know that each Millennial’s experience is unique, and what I can share is only a small part of what y’all have gone through. If you’d like to share your experience as a Millennial in relation to the church, please feel free to comment or email me (awhitham@cofchrist-gpnw.org). Do you know when you lost your place/faith/trust/respect for the church, and have you found your way back or not or some alternative?