If you hadn’t already heard, millennials are
leaving the church in droves leaving many church leaders scratching their heads
as to what to do about it. Rachel Held Evans came out with a piece on CNN.com stepping into the gap to
explain why they are leaving. Apparently it struck a nerve; it was shared over
170,000 times. Speaking as the voice of a generation, she raised issues like
our exhaustion with the culture wars, poor handling of teaching on sexuality,
gay marriage, science and religion, and putative weakness on social justice.
Instead, millennials want, and need, a deeper encounter with Jesus.
Of course, as the college and young adult guy at
my church, as well as a millennial myself (freshly 27), I read her piece and
the follow-up with great interest. I saw a
number of those 170,000 shares in my Facebook feed, with loud cries of “Amen!”
and some disgruntled nay-saying. I probably uttered both as I read it. While
there were a number of insightful, reassuringly critical, and helpful interactions with her piece,
addressed to the churches and readers in general, I wanted to briefly address
myself more directly to my fellow millennials here.
We Were Failed
I’ll be honest, my initial instinct when I come
to pieces like these is to balk a bit. I worry that we can tend to come off as
whiny, demanding, or entitled. Even worse, there’s a sort of myopia involved in
thinking Christianity must change or die every 30 years or so.
We’re not the first group of young’uns frustrated with the church and
maybe we need to question ourselves a bit more here. That
said, I want to acknowledge that I think we were failed. This
failure was more than weak, harmful teaching on sexuality, or false
science/religion dichotomies. Those errors are there, to be sure, and ought to
be dealt with, but the failure I’m thinking about goes a bit deeper.
One thing I think the pop Evangelical church
has truly dropped the ball on is talking to us about the
Church. I mean, honestly, during all the Sunday School lessons, high
school talks, and special Bible studies, I’m not sure I heard any solid teaching
about the Church until I hit college. This was a problem because once I hit my
bitter phases, I didn’t have really have much of a doctrine of the Church to
fall back on; to me the Church wasn’t really the beloved bride of Christ; I
hadn’t been forced to consider the import of Christ’s body to which He has
inseparably bound Himself as its head; there wasn’t really a people of God,
elected to be spotless and pure in Him; instead of understanding myself to be a
part of the corporate Temple of God, I saw each of us as our own little
dwelling of the Spirit, responsible to keep our own act clean.
Have You Prayed For it?
Early on in my own college-aged angst over the frustrations of church
life, I got a piece of sage advice from an older Christian mentor. I think I
had been complaining about all the ways my church, or the church, didn’t
“get it”, or something like that, when they asked me, “Yes, that’s probably all
very true, but have you been praying for it?”
Had I been praying for it? To be honest, I don’t
think I had. I thought the church was there to pray for me, not really the
other way around. Still, I found myself gently challenged in that question, so
I started to pray for the church. Not perfectly, of course, but regularly. And
actually, I not only prayed for it, I decided to commit myself to it, and serve
it more diligently. And you know what? It made it worse in a lot of ways.
By praying for it and serving it, I began to love it
like I never really had before. Instead of viewing it through the
non-committal, arm’s distance, American, semi-apathy I had settled into, I
saw its weaknesses and failures in the stark, glaring light of love. The thing
about that love, though, is that it didn’t drive me away, but drew me deeper
in. I came to the point where walking away from it wasn’t even an option.
Even more, in light of prayer, and time spent serving her, I began to
realize that, in fact, some of my earlier frustrations with her were more to do
with my youth and haste, than her flaws. She turned out to be more holy and
beautiful than I gave her credit for. I began to see all of the wonderful works
Jesus was working in His Bride that I’d simply been too jaded and
frustrated to notice before.
It’s not so much that I found out that she didn’t really have any
flaws, it’s that I found out I had some too. I saw all the ways I could be
loved and give love, to know and be known, receive and give myself away in
imitation of my Savior. In spite of it all, I became conscious of my deep need
for the Church. In fact, following Jesus without her didn’t really make any
sense. If I had walked away, it wouldn’t have been just her problem, but
mine as well. It wasn’t an issue of the church getting better to fit my wants,
needs, and expectations, but realizing how skewed and myopic some of my wants
and judgments really were (and still are.)
And this brings me to my “plea” to fellow millennials. A lot of us are
leaving the church. For some of us, this is simply finding out we never really
had anything more than a superficial “faith” in the first place. Others of us
really love Jesus, but are fed up and frustrated with the church we grew up
with. My question for you is: have you prayed for her? Have you really served
her? Do you love her? Have you struggled to see her the way Christ sees her, as
the bride He was willing to lay Himself down for, even to the point of death to
cover her sins and make her whole?
If you haven’t, try it. Pray for the church.
Pray for her health, her life, her forgiveness, her sanctification, and mission
in the world. Then, find a half-way decent church that preaches the Bible,
prays, and tries to be neighborly, and commit yourself to it. Risk being
wrong about the church in the best way possible. Continue to show up, be
present, graciously challenging, as well as submitting, enough to have an
actual voice in your community. Whatever you do, don’t simply leave.
If you do, you’ll rob yourself of the chance to see what Jesus is doing in that
community He’s covenanted Himself to. Instead, commit yourself and risk a bit
of hope. Generations before us have found that God comes through on His
promises to preserve the church He obtained with His own blood (Acts 20:28).
Dare to believe that Jesus is still sanctifying His Bride, until that day when
she is presented to Him in glory. I know for myself, I wouldn’t miss it for the
world.
Source: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2013/07/a-plea-to-my-fellow-millennials-about-leaving-the-church/
Source: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2013/07/a-plea-to-my-fellow-millennials-about-leaving-the-church/