So this blog has explored a variety of subjects the past
month, but one I have focused on as much as any has been the plight of
millennials, especially the question of why young people are leaving the church
(or perhaps more accurately why they never started attending). Starting today,
I want to do an overview of my views on millennials and what I think a better
vision for the church and millennials might be. This examination will draw upon
the previous posts that I have written, experiences I have had in church,
books/articles I have read, conversations I have had, and my own intuition.
So here it goes. I will start today with my observations on
the current problems with millennials and the church. There are two primary
problems that I will cover.
The first problem is a fundamental problem with people as
they interact with Christianity. Namely, people
don’t see the need for church and Christ. Christianity starts with the
realization that we are sinful and fall short of the glory of God. No matter
how good we are and how hard we try we will always fall short. Because of this,
we are doomed to eternal separation from God. However, because of Christ dying
for us, He has atoned for our sins and allows us to maintain our relationship
with God. His Resurrection is the promise of eternal life.
People tend to downplay or ignore this reality. The general
attitude is that an individual can be a good and moral person without the help
of Jesus and that they are fine without Him, and the church is something they
are not interested in for a variety of reasons (hypocrisy, political stances,
etc). I actually agree with the first part, people can definitely be moral
people without Jesus. And I am certainly sympathetic to the second part, for
all the reasons that have been covered in previous points.
That said, I certainly believe there is more to faith in
Christ and more to the church than is covered here. I don’t want to go too deep
into that other than to say that people are not interested in what the church
is offering. Part of that is a general hostility, but part is surely a poor job
by the church of presenting exactly who Christ is, lacking confidence of what
the church should stand for, and doing a poor job of communicating what the
church and Christ are about.
This leads to the second problem. The church does not focus enough of its primary mission. The
primary mission of the church (God’s people) is best presented in the Prophets
and has two parts:
1. To put the Lord God first, above all other gods.
2. To serve the poor, defined primarily as the widows,
orphans and foreigners.
Both of these can be hard to define and can adjust depending
on the cultural context. To put the Lord God first is to put Him above all things.
There are many quotes that can help with this.
-where you spend your time and money is where your heart
truly is
-you cannot serve two masters, you cannot serve God and
money
-you have to serve someone (Bob Dylan)
When we think of the church, is it clear that the focus is
first and foremost on God. Is it possible we are concerned more about growing,
or young families, or making budget, or having the right kind of people, or
right political beliefs, or being relevant, or being cool, hip, with it and wow.
And what exactly is being preached? There is a problem when
it strays too far from Christ crucified and resurrected. Too easy to slide into
health and wealth gospel or pop psychology or good feelings. Certainly there is
a place for some topical sermons, but the ethos of the church needs to be on
putting Christ first always.
The second issue is much more difficult, but just as
serious. The judgment that God brought upon the people of Israel during there
time was because they were blending gods, but also because they did not care
about the less fortunate around them. There is extremely colorful and powerful
language used by the prophets in damning the people of Israel. Jesus, in his
teachings, takes it even further, with demands far and beyond what was found in
the Torah.
This is the calling of the church, this is what our fruit
must be, and too often this is not what it is. We get too caught up in the machinery
and bureaucracy of the institution that we fail to fulfill the primary mission,
the primary calling, of what God wants from His church. Jesus said to love God
and to love your neighbor.
So who is your neighbor? Who are the widows and orphans and
foreigners of today? This should be question that the church wrestles with more
than any other question. I have my own answers, but I will hold off on them for
now. But I will say that for someone not in the church I doubt that they think
the church is doing much to stand for these people. And for those within the
church, I suspect they are not expending much of their energy debating these
topics and pushing them as energetically as possible in the church.
This is not to condemn all churches and all Christians by
any means. There are people humbly working in these fields that do work that is
beyond comprehension. But the key is to get the whole church to focus primarily
on this, and to make the church known primarily for doing this work.
My next post will be on a new model for millennials.
The post after that will be on what some of the fruit that
should flow from that model.
No comments:
Post a Comment