Being Young in the Church

I'm posting this because it came up in Modern Church History. This is taken from a project I did last year on internship

Being young in the church

• What young people want is not necessarily what older people think they want.

We want to be valued, known, and appreciated for who we are. We wonder: if you won’t invest in us why should we invest in you? We don't want to be told how young we are. We get it. We know it. Take time to get to know us, listen to us, just because we are young does not mean that we have no wisdom or experience. Separate us from our family and remember what we do, what we value, what our struggles are, and ask us about us and those things about us. We tend to like Jesus, but sometimes we are disappointed and embarrassed by the church. We wish the church was more like Jesus.

• Church is a very scary place for young people to go

This is not because we don’t feel welcome but because we don’t want to stand out; we often are growing in our faith and we don’t want to have to answer questions about it. We want to ask questions; we don’t want to have to explain ourselves, because we don’t feel we have adequate answers yet. The idea of being asked to articulate our faith would scare most young people away; it’s like being called on in class, except instead of one teacher there are hundreds of teachers in the congregation and we feel like we are the only student—that everyone else understands what’s going on but we don’t.

Don’t assume we understand what is going on in communion, don’t assume we know why the pastor is wearing a robe (or not wearing a robe), don’t assume we know why we say the creeds (or don’t say the creeds). These are things that put us off—not because they are bad—but because we don’t get it. These are all things that make us separate. We don’t want to be separate; we want to understand and be included. Just because you say the service is open to all does not mean that we feel welcome, just because we say the creeds every week does not mean we feel comfortable saying these things out loud. If we are new to your church, we have no idea what anything means in worship and we are curious, but we won’t ask.

• The #1 thing that puts young people off from a church is being unauthentic.

We can smell inauthenticity from a mile away. Churches that try to change for the sake of bringing in younger members are not as attractive as churches that have younger members who have created something from within. The vision cannot be some on-high model; young people love grassroots ministry. Many of us value traditional worship, many of us value contemplative worship, many value praise-style worship. It’s a big mistake to lump all of us into the “contemporary worship” niche.

Our idea of modern worship is not the same as the generation before us—not many of us want to hear music from the 60s and 70s played by a worship band; we either want new music or traditional-sounding music. Some young people like to sing and raise their hands, many don’t. We want an atmosphere where it’s ok to experience worship in our own ways. We struggle with corporate singing—it is not a part of our society any more. The hymns may be lovely and meaningful, but we miss the beauty and the message if we cannot figure out how to sing them. We like to experience something deeper and mysterious—we tend to like Taize, Holden Evening Prayer, Matins and Compline—but many of us also don't know what the heck those are.

• We want a pastor who can relate to us

We don’t want a pastor to embarrass us. We want someone who treats us as equals, someone who values our opinions on things. The two things all pastors should know: we admire you and we are scared of you. You don’t need to know what happened on this week’s Jersey Shore, but you need to know that we have no idea who the Lone Ranger is, we weren’t alive for the Vietnam War, we don’t tend to know much about the agrarian lifestyle, and we tend to have little experience doing things with our hands (unless you’re talking about video games). But just because our generation values different things does not mean that we are all that different. Many of us are just as frustrated with our culture as you are. It doesn’t help to tell us that things were better back in your day. First, we know it’s not true. Second, it just isolates us.

We know boring when we experience it. Many sermons are long and don't relate to our lives. We don't need flashy media but if you could put a little humor into your message, pick one point and present it well that would help immensely. A short but well put-together message is more powerful than a long, theologically packed one. While you're at it, could you use language that we understand? “Eschatological” is not in our vocabularies. Let us know that God is relevant to our lives and that what happens Sunday matters on Monday.

• We are all heretics

Our beliefs will not fit into one denomination’s theological box. We respect what you believe but we are not there—not yet, at least. Our beliefs are genuine but fragile. We sometimes question everything. Science classes, even if they are taught by somebody who is Christian, make us think that religion is bogus… or they make us think that science is bogus. We tend to read the Bible as an instruction manual. We are curious about other religions and skeptical that there is only one way. We tend not to believe God would send someone to hell just because they don't believe in Jesus.

Even if our thinking is incorrect we don’t want to be told that; we want to discover it for ourselves. We often think that there is only one way to be Christian—which is either the way we grew up with or the way that our friends are Christian. We mostly don’t know what Lutherans are… or Catholics… or Non-Denoms… or any denominations for that matter.

• Many of us are post-Christian

It is a very tough thing to admit to our friends that we want anything to do with Christianity. We are told that the church is intellectually outdated. We tend to see members of the church as hypocrites and short-sighted. Also off-putting is the idea that a faith that is questioning isn't good enough... or the idea that struggles with worldly thought aren't worth it or are somehow just a passing phase. If we do attend church we will often hide it from the people we work and hang out with. We're not going to go to church just because we should go. Honestly, sometimes we get more out of hiking or sleeping or talking to a friend than we do going to church. We are craving ways to talk about our faith intelligently, but we don’t have those resources. We tend to either become true believers or atheists because we can’t put words to the struggle of faith going on inside of us.