Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Ponder Anew

Home
Evangelical
Finally! A Simple (yet Effective) Way to Reach Millennials!

Finally! A Simple (yet Effective) Way to Reach Millennials!

Last updated on: March 15, 2016 at 6:39 pm by Jonathan Aigner

Finally! A Simple (yet Effective) Way to Reach Millennials! 2016-03-15T18:39:58-05:00 Jonathan Aigner

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The year is 1980. High school dropout rates are epidemic. I’ve got a solution I think will work. Let’s make school fun so that maybe we can reach these kids that are leaving and never coming back.

These kids are just bored. It’s our fault, really.

Let’s stop requiring that they learn anything they don’t want to learn.

Let’s put one of those weird Taco Bell/KFC combos in the cafeteria. Yes, they might get fat, but at least they’ll be happy. Happiness is better than health, that’s what I always say.

No more PE. They might decide all the running and climbing and lifting takes too much effort and decide to stay home.

No more fine arts. Who needs fine arts? They have their own art, anyway. It’s on their cassette tapes and it’s hanging on the walls of their rooms. Michael Jackson is really the Mozart of their day, anyway. We just don’t understand it because we’re old. They know better! Get with the times.

Math sucks.

Biology lab sucks.

Discipline sucks.

Dress codes suck.

Being silent sucks.

Let’s let them read Sports Illustrated and Cosmo, instead of Things Fall Apart or The Odyssey or The Catcher in the Rye. Tough concepts might scare them off. They need to read things they can understand at face value.

Let’s stop teaching them how to think critically. Let’s lop off the upper levels of the good old Bloom’s Taxonomy. Nobody needs to be able to evaluate. It’s all just preference, anyway. No more abstractions. Only feelings.

You know, emotions at their age are hard enough to deal with. They don’t need to worry about interpreting and understanding them.

Oh, and let’s set every lesson to the tune of a current Top 40 song.

Maybe this will attract them.

Let’s stop pushing them to be the best they can. They’re just fine as they are. What matters is that they’re in the building. Their butts are in the seats…

Let’s do these things, and check back in, say, 35 years to see how this generation is contributing to society.

Well, church, how’s it working for you?

Because that’s what many of you have done, and are still trying to do.

Check out this comment from a recent post.

I really don’t know what the point of your article is, but I do want you to know this, if we don’t attract the kids to church when they are young they will NOT come when they are older. Until the churched (religious) people understand that it is NOT about the music (no matter which style you like), it’s about worshiping the one who made us, and saved us. Whatever it takes to get the youth to that point is exactly what we should be doing. If you look out in your crowd and everyone has blue hair, you are doing something wrong. If that means bringing in a new method of music, what would Jesus do? He met people where they were at, we better do that too or the “church” will die! Literally! – Tim

Another Patheos Evangelical blogger wrote this week that the key to getting millennial butts in the seats was to change our “Sunday morning worship experience” into something that they’d actually want to come to.

So, in other words, we just need to make worship in their own image, and they won’t ever want to leave!

That reminds me of a good ol’ classic from that great American hymn-writer, Dewayne Blackwell…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEv7SDnSwa0

My guess is that plan didn’t save the guy’s marriage. Just a guess.

Participating in worship is hard sometimes. It takes discipline. It takes work. It takes effort.

But it’s necessary for us to be the church we’re called to be.

Enough with the preferences. Enough with the self-help. Enough with the “worshiptainment.”

Preferential, entertaining worship leads to reactions like this:

“I don’t like that kind of worship.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“That liturgy stuff is boring.”

“Those songs really speak to me.”

“Silence makes me uncomfortable.”

(These remind me of a few favorite movie quotes.)

It’s base. It’s self-referential. It’s absent-minded consumerism. Sorry, Matt, but it misses the heart of worship.

True, costly, beneficial, authentic, Christian worship leads to responses like this:

“God’s story is breathtakingly beautiful!”

“The love of God is a such a great mystery.”

“Where is my place in all of this?”

“What does ‘thy kingdom come’ require of me?”

But shouldn’t we meet people where they are? Yes. After all, Jesus did.

But as you said, Mr. Tim, they’re not in church.

So what do we do?

We tell and retell God’s beautiful story.

We preach it. We pray it. We sing it. We share it. We have symbols of table, font, pulpit and cross to remind ourselves of it.

We receive Jesus himself, broken and poured out, to nourish and strengthen us.

We join together, old and young, rich and poor, from every walk of life. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. We’re all in need of grace.

Week after week. Year after year. So that it becomes a part of us. So that we find ourselves in the story. So that our lives become less self-referential and more kingdom-referential. So that we remember who we are and whose we are. So that we begin to see God’s creation as it should be. So that we recognize the art from the kitsch, the real needs from the felt needs, the good from the evil, the just from the unjust, the real Jesus from the commercial American Jesus. So that we see the bigger picture of kingdom living. So we begin to realize how much our enemies look like us, and how much we all resemble our good Creator.

So that through our communal prayer, we become God’s prayer for the world.

And then we go.

We go.

We don’t stay.

We don’t hide.

We don’t rely on the “Sunday morning worship experience” to do our dirty work for us.

We don’t let music do our dirty work for us.

We don’t let our programs do our dirty work for us.

We stop preaching silly sermon series and singing feel-good love songs to Jesus.

We go and we love with kind of fervor that Christ’s love demands.

That is the heart of Christian worship. Not strategic marketing. Not following the trends. Not getting butts in the seats.

We have no other option.

I hated algebra. But I needed it. I’m better for it. I see the world more clearly because of it.

And here we are, trying to make church a cool place where young people WANT to hang out.

Well, it’s not the 1980s, and the church isn’t the mall. Start BEING the church, and they might see how much they NEED it, too.

Here stands the font before our eyes
Telling how God did receive us;
The altar recalls Christ’s sacrifice
And what His table doth give us;
Here sounds the Word that doth proclaim
Christ yesterday, today, the same,
Yea, and for aye our Redeemer.

-Nicolai F.S. Grundtvig, trans. Carl Doving

Photo
Flickr, Forsaken Fotos, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Uncategorized

Previous Post

March 13, 2016

Killing the Church with Sunday School

Next Post

March 20, 2016 Monday of Holy Week: A Service of Scripture and Song

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Church of St. YouTube congregational singing congregational song contemporary critiques corporate worship Hymn of the Week hymn singing hymnody and hymnology hymns masturbatory worship Uncategorized worship Worship Quotes

Select a Month February 2023 January 2023 October 2022 September 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 November 2019 September 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: James says that whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

Select your answer to see how you score.

FALSE TRUE