Are Millenials Really Leaving the Church?

It’s happening again.

There’s another article going ‘round the internet—especially on Facebook—about how millenials are leaving the church in droves. I would go to all the trouble of looking it up and providing a link to it … but I’m not going to. The reality, as I’ve written before (see here), is that this article gets written at least once a year by some well-meaning person who thinks they’ve discovered something no one else has noticed or tried to address.

Quality millenial skiing at Red River, 2017

Now, to answer the question of the headline, “Yes.” Millenials are leaving the church. So are a lot of other demographics (see here). It is not a new phenomena. And no, I am not dismissing it as something that shouldn’t trouble us.

First off, I just want to make fun of all these people who think they’re the first person to write about this topic when they’re only about the millionth person (give or take) to write about it. [Insert pithy joke here.]

But secondly, I would like to address the concept in a somewhat serious way.

Remember back in 1 Kings 19, when Elijah was having his pity party following his participation in God’s incredible victory over the prophets of Baal? From Elijah’s perspective, it seemed like he was the only person faithful to God in the whole country. God tells him, though, that he (God) has 7000 people in Israel who have not bowed down to Baal, who are still faithful servants of God.

There are many lessons to be learned from this passage, but one of the ones I am frequently reminded of is that the number of people who follow God, compared to their surrounding culture, is often (maybe always) going to be pretty small. This isn’t to say we should stop evangelizing or working on faithfully tending to the people God has loaned us, but when we look around and see that many people have abandoned God, or are abandoning him right now, and that some of these people are folks who “should know better” we shouldn’t be surprised.

I’ve also read The Book, so I know for a fact that the church’s role in influencing the culture will diminish. I can wish it were not so, but I might as well wish the sun would stop setting or the politicians would stop lying.

If you go back and read one of the articles about why the millenials are leaving the church (or, go back further and read one of the ones about why Gen-X is leaving the church, or further back to why the baby boomers are leaving the church)—it doesn’t matter which article, they’re all about the same—you will find good and sometimes valid points: the music isn’t to our tastes, they aren’t taking care of the poor; there aren’t any millenials (or whoever the age group du jour is) in leadership positions, and on.

The thing is, though, for every one of the objections made that’s leading the group to exit the church en masse (I think that’s French for “a whole passel of ‘em”), with very little searching they could find a church in their town that addresses that very issue. Maybe not all of the issues on the list, but most people have one issue that’s the big, driving, force for them and—if that issue is addressed—they could put up with weaknesses in the other areas.

Just kidding.

Yes, there are other churches in their town that address those needs/wants/weaknesses, what I’m kidding about is that if they found one that addressed the most important one to them they could put up with the other areas. We’re not wired that way. When satisfied in one area, we quickly begin looking for other areas in which to be dissatisfied. Millenials appear to be more afflicted with this mentality than previous generations, but that may just be because they not only are afflicted, they want to make sure they take a selfie of themselves being afflicted.

The sad reality is that most of these millenials (and other people) who are leaving the church for whatever reason are not looking for another church that fits that bill, they’re just leaving. Some do find another church for a while, but—as stated above—they’ll soon find something that new church is doing wrong and leave it. Some will church hop for a while, and a rare one will even eventually light somewhere and stay, but most hoppers will either keep hopping or hop until they decide they’d rather just stay home. A little of this we can lay at the feet of denominationalism (“I’ve tried every Baptist church in this town and none of them met my needs!” [insert whatever denomination you want in there]), but not much.

Mostly, they’re not going to church because they just don’t want to go to church. They want to sleep in or play golf or they just don’t really see any value-added to their life by church, so they drift away and most don’t come back. (Some do. They hit middle age and realize they miss the church and they come back, which is great, but then they’re often a little depressed because their kids—who didn’t grow up in church—see no value at all in church.) And once away from the church, even if a “new” one comes to town that addresses the objections that led them to leave, they’re already in the habit of not going and aren’t coming back.

So, with all this said, why? Why aren’t they coming back? “You knucklehead!,” you say to me, “The dude just wrote an article listing 12 reasons why they’re leaving!”

Yes, but I just have my own doubts that any of those reasons are the real, the “meta reason” people are leaving.

The first one that comes to my mind is that we have an enemy who is actively pulling them away. He may use narcissism, he may use family dynamics, he might just use the allure of worshiping at St. Mattress … one of his more successful tricks lately is to convince people he doesn’t exist. Am I saying that pulling someone out of church can be equated with ruining their soul? No, but church is one of (one of!!) the tools God has established for the edification and equipping of the saints, so it’s to Satan’s advantage to separate us from it.

The second reason, which is tied on a micro-level to the first and—I believe—is the real, the meta reason, is that these people who are leaving the church have finally realized that the only church worth being a part of is one with standards and they don’t want that!! We live in a post-morality culture and here’s this group of people who gather in this old building, sing old songs (let’s face it: in our culture, any song more than a year old is an “oldie”), and proclaim that, “Yes! There is a God and yes he has standards!” The Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Pentacostals, et. al. may disagree on some of the finer points, but they/we all agree that God has established some standards that, even accounting for grace, we are behooved to try and walk in.

My third meta reason—which I know is really stretching the definition of “meta”—is that maybe one of the church’s problems with losing people—millenials, Gen-Xers, boomers, flappers, etc.—is that we have church all wrong to begin with. I’ll go into this in another blog, if I remember to, but maybe the church’s biggest problem is that we’re doing it all wrong!


Addendum: some of my earlier snarkiness aside, I think maybe the reason this article gets written every year is that every generation--and sub-generation--has to come to this idea on their/our own.

The Church Must Change

Recently, my attention was drawn, via Facebook, to two different blogs by two separate bloggers (can’t remember if I were sent them by the same person) dealing with the same problem: why the church is losing millennials.  In both cases, they were appended with notes that read something like, “Well-written article.”

And they were.  They both contained nothing but correctly spelled words, the grammar was impeccable, and the syntax was fully paid-up for the fiscal quarter.

They were also remarkably similar.

Not just with each other, but with articles that I was emailed ten years ago with a headline of “Why Generation X is leaving the church”, which greatly mirrored articles sent via snail mail from 30 years ago with titles like, “Why the baby boomers are leaving the church.”  Go back far enough, and someone was probably writing a missive on papyrus about why the Iron Age was leaving the synagogue.

Now, both of you who are still reading to this point, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that the articles are wrong, I just find it interesting that every generation has to get to the point where they think they’ve got it right.

Take these two articles I was recently made acquainted with (please).  The gist of both was that millenials (a term undefined in either article but we’ll let that slide for now) are leaving the church because they find it irrelevant.  That could be, but it’s also true that for the last few decades almost everyone leaves the church they grew up in between the ages of 18-25 and only a small percentage of them ever come back (to any church).  I do not deny the possibility that this is the church’s fault, but I also think the generation itself bears some responsibility.  And, let’s not forget, there is an Enemy who wants to keep people out of church and those years are an especially vulnerable time for everyone as we try to figure out our place in the world and where in it we go to get married, find a job, make meaningful friends, etc.

Getting to more specific charges (which were also the charges made 10, 30 and 2000 years ago), the millenials don’t want a superficial church (amen!).  They want a church that deals with real issues, like how to serve the poor (locally and globally).  They also (in both articles) want to be assured that the church will treat well their friends who are living in unrepentant sin.

That one bugs me.  It was in both articles, but neither offered a recipe or outline for what the author/blogger was hoping the church would do (just a vague fear that we would inevitably do it wrong).  As a person who fights cynicism on an almost daily basis (some days I just give in to it), what I am thinking when I read such blogs is that they want the church to welcome their friends in no matter what and ignore or rationalize the sin away.  I have a problem with half that statement (the second half).  At the church where I serve, our motto is, “Welcoming everyone, wherever you are, to be a growing follower of Jesus.”  I stand by that and we work hard to make it true.  We try to welcome everyone (and I think we do a pretty good job), but we’re not satisfied to let ourselves or anyone who worships with us stay where we are.  Is the sin in question sexual, verbal, physical, mental?  Doesn’t matter.  We want to provide a loving environment in which the Holy Spirit can help us work together not to embrace sin but to let that Spirit wash it away.  I hope this is what the Millenials want.

As to the poor, I agree that most churches aren’t doing as much as we can to help the poor.  And, if you read back through Jesus’s words—as well as the rest of the Bible—you’ll find that taking care of the poor and ministering to them is a high priority.  I appreciate that these Millenials want churches that will take up that mantel, but I wonder if they realize that most of these churches that they are leaving in droves are ministering to the poor already.  Maybe it’s not in a big way, and certainly, it can be done better, but it is being done.  These churches the Millenials are looking down on and walking out on, they are participating in a soup kitchen, gathering clothes against winter for the underprivileged and taking worship services to care homes and orphanages.

I would encourage any Millenial (or anyone else) who would like to see their church minister to the poor to a] jump in with an existing ministry, 2] strengthen that ministry, so that they can c] have the standing to suggest ways the ministry can be expanded and improved upon!  It’s a lot easier, though, to either just drop out or jump to another church that already has the program together and all you have to do is plug in.

Instant gratification.  That’s what’s really desired here, by Millenials, Gen-X’ers (which is what I think I used to be—or maybe I was Generation Y, as in, “Y do we keep coming up with these stupid labels?”) and everyone else.  We want what we want now.  No 40 years in the wilderness for me!

This is the real reason people of all ages have left and are leaving the church.  It really has very little to do with style of music, outreach to the poor, or the church’s stance on whatever the sin du jour is.  By it’s nature, any church worth it’s salt is going to provoke its members/attendees/adherents/whatever to be something they aren’t.  To minister to both the poor and the rich, to look out for orphans and widows, to love and good deeds, to take up your cross, to be holy.  But in a culture where we are each told our own personal hearts are the best and final arbiter of what is right or wrong, to go into a building where some man or woman points to an ancient book and says, “Jesus is the way and this is his map” … well, that just ain’t hip, dude.

I do think the church needs to change.  There are things we do only because we have always done them—not because they work (pragmatism), because they never did.  There are things we don’t do for the same reason.  And I want to keep asking questions about these things that are, in reality, just forms, not substance.  I want to find the substance, hidden though it may seem at times.  And I don’t want to leave the church to “find something better” because—from where I sit—it seems that most who do so quickly stop looking and settle for nothing.  I want to stay in the church and try to make it better—not by my standards but by God’s.

P.S.  My spell-checker really hates the first sentence of this blog, recognizing neither “blogs”, “millenials” or “Facebook”.