Are Millennials Really Leaving the Church? Yes — but Mostly White Millennials

Last updated on: May 17, 2014 at 9:56 pm by Guest Contributor

Are Millennials Really Leaving the Church? Yes — but Mostly White Millennials 2014-05-17T21:56:00-05:00 Guest Contributor

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Almost everyday, it seems, there’s a new story about how “Millennials are leaving the church.” But there’s a problem with these trend pieces: They aren’t true. American Christianity still has plenty of Millennials — they’re just not necessarily in white churches.

Instead, they’re found in places like Iglesia de Dios, a 3,000-member Hispanic megachurch in Nashville. The church was started in the mid-1990s by the Rev. Jose Rodriguez, a native of Venezuala who moved to Nashville in order to get better medical care for one of his children.

The early services drew a handful of people. But fueled by immigration, word of mouth, and a “come as you are” approach to worship, it’s grown slowly and steadily into a megachurch. Today Iglesia de Dios has six services on the weekends, including one in English, for second-generation immigrants and some of their English-speaking neighbors.

“Our church here — we are very young,” says 27-year old JosuéRodriguez, the church’s associate pastor. “There are very few elderly people. And our youth services are the biggest services we have.”

Transformation Church, a multiethnic congregation in Indian Land, South Carolina, has also grown by attracting young Millennials to worship. Started four years ago by the Rev. Derwin Gray, Transformation Church now draws about 2,500 people to its weekend services.

“What I see among Millennials are African Americans, and Asians Americans, and Latinos who are vibrantly growing in faith and leading the future of what the church will become,” says Gray.

About a third of young (18-29 year old) Americans — and more than half of younger Christians — are people of color, according to data from the Public Religion Research Institute. White Christians, on the other hand, make up only a quarter of younger Americans. In fact there are more Nones — those with no religion — than white Christians in this age group.

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