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There are literally thousands of articles online about why the millennial generation is disillusioned with church, church culture and church politics. And while I applaud the attempt to wrap one's head around the issue, I've noticed that most of the articles seem to be written by people who know nothing about the millennial generation. Weird.
I've talked with thousands of young people over the years who have told me,"I'm just sick of church." I've heard everything under the sun when it comes to one's reasoning for leaving, and I believe many of them carry a lot of heavy truth. Here are some of them ...
1. "It's not authentic."
2. "It's too corporate."
3. "I don't like the political side."
4. "I feel like I can't be open about my struggles."
5. "I hate the cliques."
6. "It's too judgmental."
7. "Their attempt at being relevant comes off as cheesy."
8. "They don't spend enough time outside of their building."
9. "They aren't really welcoming of people who are different from them."
10. "They focus too much on what they know instead of whom they are showing love to."
And while I believe not all churches deal with the complaints I mentioned above, it's safe to say there are many who probably do. That's why I'm writing this. This needs to be discussed.
Authenticity Is Key
If churches want to see more millennials walk through their doors, they need to stop trying to entice them with free stuff, and instead allow their spaces to be filled with authentic relationships and transparent conversations. The Acts 2 church was a perfect example of this.
"They continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers. Fear came to every soul. And many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common. They sold their property and goods and distributed them to all, according to their need. And continuing daily with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart" (Acts 2:42-46).
Some people say there is a decline in millennial church attendance, while others say they don't see much of a change at all. We must realize that just because millennials aren't showing up to church buildings doesn't mean they aren't part of a thriving community of believers, or are without a biblical relationship with God.
Millennials aren't looking for brighter lights. Millennials aren't looking for more free coffee. They want Jesus-founded authenticity, a safe-place to share burdens, real answers to real questions and a community of action.
Jarrid Wilsonis a husband to Juli, dad to Finch, pastor, author, blogger, founder of Cause Roast. He's helping people live a better story. For the original article, visitjarridwilson.com.
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Would people consider your church a cool church, but lacking in spirituality? (Lightstock )
7 Types of Churches Jesus Did Not Die to Accommodate
I remember my wedding day so clearly. Standing at the front of a small church in Greenwood, Mississippi, with my legs shaking, I watched as the doors finally opened. There was my wife. I really couldn't believe she was marrying me.
When I think about the church being the bride of Christ, I picture Jesus presenting the church to Himself and God as His bride. I think of the feelings of excitement and the years of waiting, the excruciating death that was essential for the marriage to become official. What a moment.
In the years since, the church has changed a lot. That's not surprising (or bad). Things change. But the bride Jesus died for isn't the same one that exists in many churches today.
You see, when Jesus died for the church, He died for men and women who would function as His hands and feet. He died for sacrificial followers who would be driven by love, motivated by joy, equipped with a message and led by the Spirit.
The church desperately needs to rediscover the true bride of Christ. Here are seven churches Jesus did not die to accommodate:
1. The cool church. The cool church discussion starts with this: There's a difference between a cool church and a relevant church. Cool churches filter Jesus through the lens of culture. Relevant churches filter culture through the lens of Jesus.
Cool churches only hire worship leaders who look like models, avoid any message dealing with self-denial and build facilities that can be seen from space with the naked eye.
These churches don't understand that the message of Christianity is offensive. It always has been. It always will be. Any church that believes you must be cool to keep insiders or attract outsiders misses the whole point of the gospel.
Jesus didn't die for cool churches. It's time to let go of this idea that Jesus is pleased with any attempt to attract large crowds on the basis of anything other than the offensive message of the gospel.
2. The 1970s church. A few weeks before Tiffani and I moved to Jackson, we drove up to look at a few houses. We wanted to live in a culturally diverse area, so we targeted older homes in the mid-town area. Most of the ones in this area sell not long after being on the market.
But a few had been on sale for months, if not years. The reason?
When you walked in the front door, you stepped back in time 20 or 30 years.
The same is true of 1970s churches.
These churches were probably booming ... in the 1970s. But if you walk into these churches today, you won't notice anything booming. You will, however, notice bell bottoms and some kind of wood paneling.
Since most 1970s churches are unaware anything is wrong, here are a few signs to watch for:
a. Church leaders answer questions no one is asking. For example, should churches use the piano, the guitar or sing a capella? What's the proper attire for Sunday morning worship? You know who cares about these questions? 1970s churches. Everyone else is discussing things that matter.
b. Most conversations include some reference to "the way things used to be." "If we could just become the church we were 20 years ago? Man, those were the good ol' days." Instead of focusing on future opportunities, these churches relive past experiences.
c. There are very few millennials in the church. The average age is 69.35. One or two people occasionally babysit their grandkids. That's where the 0.35 comes from.
d. The word "change" lives in the same house with certain four-letter words. You know, the ones that would cause mom to wash your mouth out with soap? A slow death is viewed as a badge of honor. "We might not be growing, but at least we're not sacrificing 'the truth of the Scriptures' like those hippie churches. They're just trying to entertain people."
e. Everyone speaks in a foreign language. I'm not talking about Spanish. I'm referring to Christianese. Phrases like "transubstantiation" and "hedge of protection" are used often.
The church must strive to remain relevant. This includes altering the context of the message, but not the content of it. This means studying culture for the purpose of reaching it. This means updating the building. It means getting out of the building. And it means speaking in a language the current culture can understand.
Jesus isn't impressed with a 1970s church. He's saddened by it, and unless these churches make some renovations, they will eventually be empty.
3. The business-driven church. Plain and simple, the church is not a business. Does the church have business-like layers? Absolutely. Even Jesus had a treasurer.
But the church isn't primarily a business. Here are a few signs your church is run like a business:
a. Other churches are competition. Motivation for changing a worship style, ministry philosophies and so on is driven by changes from churches around them.
b. Success is primarily measured using numbers. What was the attendance in worship? Is the budget trending up or down? If numbers are up, things are moving in the right direction.
c. Vision doesn't expand beyond the physical location. To put it bluntly, building a huge physical kingdom in the form of large buildings and huge crowds is more important than expanding God's kingdom. The largest percentage of the budget is spent on facilities.
d. Pastors are hired hands. The staff is paid to do whatever they're told. They are the church's property. When outsiders or visitors ask about church ministries, the response is, "We pay the pastor for that."
e. There is no distinction between converts and transfers. A disgruntled family from the church across town deciding to place membership and someone hearing Jesus for the first time and deciding to be baptized are viewed the same way.
f. Words like "irresponsible" are used to justify playing it safe. Decisions that involve faith and risk are rarer than snow near the equator. Every decision is about protecting the bottom line and making sure the numbers add up.
A Spirit-led church can't be business-driven. Budgets aren't evil. Attendance records aren't bad. But the church Jesus died for can't be run like a Fortune 500 company. It must be unapologetically focused on people over numbers and the global commission over the physical location.
4. The social-club church. Recently, while staying with a good friend, I noticed a cup in his pantry that said "Junior League." On the opposite side of the cup was a list of requirements for membership. The list included things like volunteering in the community, attending monthly meetings, paying a small fee and registering to vote.
The list looked striking similar to the ones required for membership at many churches. Volunteer in the community during church-wide service night. Pay a small percentage of your income to the church. Attend weekly gatherings.
So the church is a social club? Some churches are, yes, but churches led by the Spirit—absolutely not.
Every pastor and church leader needs to ask this question: If the Holy Spirit left your church, what would be different? Would you even know?
Some churches are so program-driven that their church could operate for months (maybe years) without the presence of God.
Here's the scary part. It's possible to see "results" in your church without the presence of God. Just appeal to the crowds. Be cool and don't talk about the cross.
But it's impossible to be a church that values becoming more like Jesus unless the Spirit leads, prayer and fasting are integral, and a desire to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth is foundational.
5. The family church. This one is hard because I used to believe Jesus died for the family church. But after a few years in full-time ministry, I see the dangers. Here are a few:
a. Keeping everyone happy is given priority over challenging people to walk in the radical footsteps of Jesus. Keep the peace. Everyone should be happy. Cater to every complaint and disgruntled member. If someone leaves the church, you might as well roundhouse kick the leaders in the baby makers. It's that big of a deal.
b. There's no place for hard questions. This would violate point 1. Families want to remain happy and peaceful. So, any church gathering becomes a "no hard questions" zone.
c. Secrets are often buried because the family name must be protected. The reputation is given high value. If someone commits a sin that might bring shame on the name of the church, this person is asked to bury it.
d. Outsiders aren't accepted easily. If you're born into the family, you're accepted without hesitation. If not, the process for becoming part of the family is extremely difficult.
It's not that churches can't value a family environment. But churches can't value a family environment more than personal transformation, restoring hope to the surrounding community and equipping people for ministry, among other things.
6. The fighting church. Fighting churches get one thing right. They realize they are in a war. But these churches fight the wrong enemy. The church's fight isn't against homosexuals. It's not against the Supreme Court or the president. It's not against atheists, agnostics or Muslims. The church's fight is against Satan.
But don't say this to fighting churches. They will get defensive and ... you guessed it ... start a fight.
Fighting churches operate out of fear, and their primary weapon is manipulation. They indoctrinate their members, convincing them that everyone outside of their group, including other Christians, are wrong and misguided. And heaven forbid you decide to leave a fighting church. If you do, make sure you're chinstrap is buckled. You're now on the "other team." And fighting churches aren't scared to run over your name and reputation.
This was partly my story. I wasn't taught a message of love and acceptance. I was taught a message of exclusion. My group was right. Everyone else was wrong. And I was armed with a lot of Scriptures to back up my convictions. You didn't want to debate me. You would lose. Plain and simple.
But while I debated other Christians and tried to convert people from other denominations, bitterness and pride built up in my heart.
You see, many churches would rather be right than righteous. They would rather convince than convert. They would rather learn doctrine than love people.
The church should be more concerned with loving people than convincing people.
The church should be a place where people say, "I'm not sure about their practices or their God, but I know one thing ... those Christians sure know how to love people."
Can that be said about your church?
7. The white and black church. I grew up in the Deep South. In my hometown, there were white churches and black churches. No one asked questions. No one saw it as alarming.
White and black churches would get together once a year to worship and gorge themselves on food. Even during my teenage years, I saw this as odd. Every segment of society had moved passed the racial barrier ... except the church. What Martin Luther King Jr. said years ago is still true: "Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America."
I went to school with black people. They were my good friends. I played sports with people of other races. My parents worked with people of other races. But I didn't go to church with people of other races. On Sunday morning, white people went to white church. Black people went to black church.
Why?
To this day, the only legitimate response I've received is: "It's not about race, Frank. It's about preferences and cultural differences."
Accepting racially or socio-economically divided churches is sin.
If your church is almost exclusively white, black or Latino, I'm not saying you should trash your church and start over. You should, however, work toward reconciliation. Pray for it. Preach on it. Practice it.
Jesus didn't die to accommodate white churches and black churches. He died to create the church, a beautiful reflection of God's perfect love for all races and nations.
What are some other types of churches Jesus didn't die to accommodate? Leave a comment below.
Frank Powell serves in the Campbell Street Church of Christ in Jackson, Tennessee, ministering to college-age and young adults. For more from Frank, visitfrankpowell.me. For the original article, visit churchleaders.com.
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A group of several hundred deliver petitions to the U.S. Capitol in support of the Iran Deal. This generation of believers will not join the church if all they hear is gloom, doom and panic about the future. (Reuters)
It never fails: If the office goes quiet for more than five minutes, I start to look around. If everyone's missing, I have a slow sense of panic that creeps along my spine.
"The Rapture," I think to myself. "It's happened. Uh oh." And then my brain proceeds to remember every terrifying moment of the 40 Kids Left Behind books I read growing up.
As a Christian, Pentecostal millennial, I feel like I am floating between two worlds: One world begs me to look at what's going on in current events—the Iran Deal, ISIS, earthquakes, gay marriage—and take an attitude of godly fear as I steel myself for what's ahead.
The other world takes those same events and begs for an intrinsic analysis: How does the Iran Deal affect my politics and voting choices? Should I send money to help relief work in Nepal? How can I let my gay friends know that I don't hate them for their choices but want to show them the love of God?
It's hard to balance both. On the one hand, I look at the earth literally trembling and think to myself, "Well, won't be long now!"
But on the other hand, I remind myself that persecution and natural disasters have happened for millennia, and we're just more aware now because of the advent of the Internet and social media.
Imagine being alive during the Roman reign, Spanish Inquisition, Bloody Mary, slavery, any of the World Wars—I'm pretty sure those felt like the end of the world to Christians then.
Yet, we remain. We move on as countries, as people. We build our families and live our lives.
However, I'm from a generation that's looking to our future, and days to come can be intimidating when the headlines are full of despair. The more stories I read about the gut-wrenching attacks against Saeed Abedini, unborn children, Coptic Christians or even U.S. citizens who didn't want to bake cakes for someone they didn't agree with, the more I wonder just how close we are to Christ's return.
Tack those observations on to the blood moon and Shemitah patterns, and my head starts to spin.
Whether or not we are in the end of times, what I do know is bemoaning the state of affairs without an appeal to Heaven with a sense of hope will do nothing to improve our condition.
When we talk about end times, I think there's a sense of fear mongering that exists in the form of warnings. Someone close to me once confessed she grew up believing she would never get married, have children or live to even to her 20th birthday because the Antichrist was coming.
Trust me when I say this friend is alive and kicking, well past those milestones and looking forward to many more. But until she conquered her fear and realized that Christ is still on the throne, she couldn't live the life He planned for her.
When we live in a state of fear about the future, we hinder ourselves from celebrating what Christ can do in the now and how we can affect the future for His glory.
Are we so caught up in warning about the downfall of the American church and the eventual return of Jesus that we forget to serve the poor, to encourage one another, to spend time just loving on the Holy Spirit? The early church was founded on these attributes, and it transformed the world and enabled the gospel to spread further than anyone could imagine!
The beautiful thing about the millennial generation is our tenacity, our desire to work to make the community we live in better. We aren't looking at the coming days with a sense of trepidation or fatalism about the downfall of America.
Rather, we're looking for answers to reconstruct the building blocks of society. Some may call us spoiled, ungrateful, addicted and selfish. But those "weaknesses" can also be strengths, because we've seen the good and want to improve upon it.
We don't settle for tradition because someone told us to. Instead, we're searching for answers, and that includes diving into the Bible to fill that God-shaped hole in our lives.
When Christian headlines scream about the negative, we tune that out because it doesn't enhance the world we live in. Christians have an incredible opportunity to walk out their lives like Christ did. Yes, Christ got angry, but He sought justice in His indignation. We need older generations of Christians to show us how to do this.
If we are in the end times, I think I would rather have a mentor guiding me to show others how they can be one with Christ rather than someone who goes, "There were signs! Look at the signs!"
Let's take those signs and turn them into practical steps, sharing the gospel so that none shall perish, as is God's wish in 2 Peter 3:9.
If all millennials hear about the future of the church is gloom and doom that's decaying because of society, how can we expected to join the cause? Just like a flower will not grow if you yell and stomp on it, saying, "Look at all these thorns, you won't be able to survive these attacks," you can't tell this generation of believers that we won't survive what's to come.
In such a time as this, I feel called to be a peacemaker. I want to be known by my fruit—by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—not by my fear.
The first thing a messenger of the Lord will tell those he visits is "Fear not." In all this talk of the end times, I feel like we've forgotten that element, and in doing so, we are scaring off believers who want the simplicity of the gospel: For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son.
In such a time as this, it is vital that we seek first the kingdom of God, as the Bible says, and His righteousness. Then, and only then, will our clarity come.
Jessilyn Justice is the assistant news editor for Charisma. Born and raised in a pastor's family in Alabama, she went to Lee University and the Washington Journalism Center. She's passionate about the church, jogging, news and cupcakes—not necessarily in that order. Tell her what you think of this story on Twitter @jessilynjustice.
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Franklin Graham: Praying for the Next Great Awakening
Franklin Graham (ABC News)
Hardly a day passes that I don't hear someone say, "We are losing our country; we are losing our churches."
While doomsday appears to be knocking at our door, let me take you back to the early 1800s. Many think of it as "the good old days," but history tells us that society, even then, was as bad as it could get at that time. John Marshall, chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, wrote to President James Madison and said, "The church is too far gone ever to be redeemed." When we examine why, we find that preachers had stopped preaching the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the people were not hearing God's Word.
What changed? Christians began to diligently pray for revival—and the result was the Second Great Awakening. When people's prayers stormed the heavens, and when the Bible was opened in the pulpits and the Word of God proclaimed by passionate preachers, the church was awakened from slumber by the Holy Spirit, who moved in hearts, spreading revival throughout the heartland of America.
There have been several Great Awakenings in our nation's history. When I read about them, I always go back to the Old Testament, to a time in which Israel had once again turned its back on God. When its people came to their senses, they gathered and asked Ezra the scribe to bring the Word of the Lord to them. The Bible tells us that Ezra stood upon a pulpit of wood, and he opened the book in the sight of all the people (see Nehemiah 8).
Our hope and desire—and our prayer—here at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is to stir up followers of Jesus Christ to pray and ask for a great awakening of the church. Through the My Hope America outreach, we have already seen the results of what happens when God's truth is proclaimed. Just last year, multiplied thousands of souls were won to Jesus Christ, and Christians across the country have asked us to continue providing more My Hope evangelistic programming and resources.
This year, as part of My Hope 2014, we are preparing a brand-new film, including a never-before-released message from my father. While he is no longer able to stand in the pulpit to proclaim the Word of God, we have captured on video God's Word that burns in his heart. Last summer as he was taping his message on The Cross, which was released on his 95th birthday in November, he also shared his thoughts on Heaven, and we are excited about bringing it to you this fall. We had no idea at that time how God would direct us to use this message on Heaven, but it is now being developed into a powerful new program that also includes compelling testimonies of changed lives. Please pray with us that the Holy Spirit will use it to transform the hearts and lives of countless people who will realize the hope of eternity in Heaven.
The new 30-minute film will be made available, at no charge, to churches for use across the country as we did last year. Please encourage your church to get involved in praying and planning so that this message can be used effectively in your community. The program will also be televised as well as available for download via the Internet.
We plan to do a new evangelistic My Hope film every year for the next several years and make it available for churches and individuals to use to win souls.
Prayer is the key to reaching lost people for Christ, and I hope you will begin praying now for neighbors, co-workers, friends, and family who do not know Jesus Christ as Savior. Make a point to pray for your church and other churches in your community, asking God to stir up an ever-increasing urgency for evangelism.
