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By Rachel Held Evans, S
pecial to CNN
(CNN) – At 32, I barely qualify as a millennial.
I wrote my first essay with a pen and paper, but by the time I
graduated from college, I owned a cell phone and used Google as a verb.
I still remember the home phone numbers of my old high school
friends, but don’t ask me to recite my husband’s without checking my
contacts first.
I own mix tapes that include selections from Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but I’ve never planned a trip without Travelocity.
Despite having one foot in Generation X, I tend to identify most
strongly with the attitudes and the ethos of the millennial generation,
and because of this, I’m often asked to speak to my fellow evangelical
leaders about why millennials are leaving the church.
Armed with the
latest surveys,
along with personal testimonies from friends and readers, I explain how
young adults perceive evangelical Christianity to be too political, too
exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile
to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
I point to research that shows young evangelicals often feel they
have to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith,
between science and Christianity, between compassion and holiness.
I talk about how the evangelical obsession with sex can make
Christian living seem like little more than sticking to a list of rules,
and how millennials long for faith communities in which they are safe
asking tough questions and wrestling with doubt.
Invariably, after I’ve finished my presentation and opened the floor
to questions, a pastor raises his hand and says, “So what you’re saying
is we need hipper worship bands. …”
And I proceed to bang my head against the podium.
Time and again, the assumption among Christian leaders, and
evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing
twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates
–
edgier music, more casual services, a coffee shop in the fellowship
hall, a pastor who wears skinny jeans, an updated Web site that includes
online giving.
But here’s the thing: Having been advertised to our whole lives, we
millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily
impressed with consumerism or performances.
In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more
thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular.
Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves
increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc.
–
precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious,
so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly
authentic.
What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.
We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science
and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are
against.
We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers.
We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God
over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation.
We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities.
We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it
comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the
poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care
and becoming peacemakers.
You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and
expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t
find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t
find Jesus there.
Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus.
Now these trends are obviously true not only for millennials but also
for many folks from other generations. Whenever I write about this
topic, I hear from forty-somethings and grandmothers, Generation Xers
and retirees, who send me messages in all caps that read “ME TOO!” So I
don’t want to portray the divide as wider than it is.
But I would encourage church leaders eager to win millennials back to
sit down and really talk with them about what they’re looking for and
what they would like to contribute to a faith community.
Their answers might surprise you.
Rachel Held Evans is the author of "Evolving in Monkey Town" and "A Year of Biblical Womanhood." She blogs at rachelheldevans.com. The views expressed in this column belong to Rachel Held Evans.
