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Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back

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DWill

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Re: Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back

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The level of commitment that millennials (actually including Gen Y and Gen X) are willing to demonstrate may determine whether the churches go forward. Put crassly, how much money will they be willing to pledge to a church? Will they want to make church a budget item, or will they think the benefits, although nice, are available from other lifestyle choices?
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Re: Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back

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There are two important responses to your questions, DWill.

The first is that millennials clearly will not be giving as much. Churches have seen the handwriting on the wall, so to speak, and are re-thinking the basis for supporting churches. The main appeal of mainline churches was always a clergy leader who could provide pastoral care to people in crisis, and who combined this with authoritative ability to interpret scripture, i.e. training in Biblical understanding. The latter is shifting more and more to "relevance" these days, rather than knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, as the whole structure of Biblical understanding changes.

Among evangelicals, much of the appeal of going to church and supporting it is the goal of "reaching the lost". Though more and more are shifting in the direction of supporting marriages and families with accountability groups and skill formation.

Catholics are supposed to go to keep down their time in Purgatory, but these days they also seem to be shifting toward more emphasis on the traditional works of charity and some community and skill building.

Now all of those bring value, and I would contend that the traditional idea that you go to church because you are supposed to, and the big guy upstairs will whack you if you don't, is pretty close to untenable these days. Any church I have attended that took such a line struck me as morose and even repulsive, as one would expect. Which brings us to my second point.

A proper understanding of church doesn't treat it as a consumption item. If you understand why you are there, then you understand that the point is to put into the goals and mission, not to get something from them. Not that the latter is useless or irrelevant, it just gets wrapped up in helping the member be a better influencer. One might compare it to going to the gym, except the result is not supposed to be a longer life and better physical condition, but rather is to make more contribution to the lives around you.

Viewed from that perspective the point is not to "get value for your money". But there is still a question whether supporting a building and professional staff is contributing meaningfully to these goals of helping people be better contributors to the lives around them. I think the vague consensus is that the traditional "spiritual leadership" role needs to work for more people at a time, not as in a mega-church but as in more congregants even if fewer show up on a particular Sunday. The pastoral care role then gets distributed among some lay leaders, some "paraprofessionals" and some mutuality, since one head pastor cannot visit all of the sick and all of the membership (to maintain relationship) all alone.

Only time will tell whether the traditional goal of raising children well will continue to sustain this kind of organization. I am betting that it will, but not with a lot of evidence on my side.
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Re: Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back

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Harry Marks wrote:Churches have seen the handwriting on the wall, so to speak, and are re-thinking the basis for supporting churches.
I recently started a new part time job managing the chaplaincy at the Australian National University here in Canberra. The chapel is a very good meeting area right in the middle of the campus. As an extremely secular institution, the ANU has an ambiguous stance toward faith. My approach is to seek to build community, with respect for the diversity of opinion. We have a multi-faith approach, and I am eager to promote dialogue on the legitimacy of faith.

I am also keen to promote discussion of indigenous spirituality. My church recently held a fiftieth anniversary celebration since its founding, and invited a local indigenous knowledge holder to provide a welcome to country at the main service, where the preacher was the National President of the Uniting Church. The indigenous speaker invoked the blessing of his ancestors as his main theme. One of our conservative parishioners later told me he objected to the church giving a platform to a non Christian voice. My attitude is that such a platform is exactly what the church needs to provide in order to actually be Christian, in the sense of seeing Christ among the least of the world.

I wonder Harry how many readers understood your reference to mene mene tekel upharsin.
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Harry Marks
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Re: Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back

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Robert Tulip wrote:I recently started a new part time job managing the chaplaincy at the Australian National University here in Canberra. The chapel is a very good meeting area right in the middle of the campus. As an extremely secular institution, the ANU has an ambiguous stance toward faith. My approach is to seek to build community, with respect for the diversity of opinion. We have a multi-faith approach, and I am eager to promote dialogue on the legitimacy of faith.
You should be able to find Christian theologians who can explain the many ways that faith itself has morphed into a more "legitimate" process. The synthesis that emerged 60 years ago may leave a lot of traditionalists cold, but it has become a much stronger foundation for building a modern, educated, energized church. I wish you well in your endeavor, and I hope a lot of creative dialogue comes of it. Campus ministry can be amazingly inspiring, I know from experience.
Robert Tulip wrote:I am also keen to promote discussion of indigenous spirituality. My church recently held a fiftieth anniversary celebration since its founding, and invited a local indigenous knowledge holder to provide a welcome to country at the main service, where the preacher was the National President of the Uniting Church. The indigenous speaker invoked the blessing of his ancestors as his main theme.
I think that's an excellent idea. I am no great fan of indigenous traditions, but they will always have much to offer if we don't insist on endorsing them per se, in entirety. I am sure that you have an interest in the richness of integration with nature, and that is one of the best reasons for listening carefully.

Another is that all of the ways the church has overcome silencing of people have ended up liberating the church itself from repressions that should not have been there in the first place. The wave of feminist theology that gathered momentum in the 70s has given us a direct, head-on confrontation with authoritarian dictatorial approaches within the church, and woken up the people in the pews to how un-Christian that all was. The acceptance of gay and lesbian sexuality has not only eased up some of the repression over sexuality in general, but more importantly has brought the people in the pews to actively question how scripture should be used and what kind of gift to us it is. I can tell you from my experience that understanding has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 30 years.

Obviously indigenous people have a lot to teach us about harmony with nature and bringing the wildness of nature into our spirituality. I gather you are more interested in the regularities and dependabilities of nature, and that's valid, but I suspect that if that's all we find worthy of worship in nature that we will continue to think in terms of dominion over nature, and that will not only make exploitation too easy but will also blind us to the ultimate poverty of a materialist worldview. False dichotomies, such as between practicality and mutuality, will grow like Spanish moss over every branch of spiritual thought.
Robert Tulip wrote: One of our conservative parishioners later told me he objected to the church giving a platform to a non Christian voice. My attitude is that such a platform is exactly what the church needs to provide in order to actually be Christian, in the sense of seeing Christ among the least of the world.
Well, Jesus is reputed to have said something like "that's not who I was sent to" when asked about "outsider" spirituality, but I agree that a healthy sense of mission also implies the humility to listen to what people from other traditions have to say for themselves. Every tradition has elements of grace and forgiveness, and I suspect every tradition has elements of finding meaning in goodness. Thus there will be sources of mutual enrichment.
Robert Tulip wrote:
Harry Marks wrote:Churches have seen the handwriting on the wall, so to speak, and are re-thinking the basis for supporting churches.
I wonder Harry how many readers understood your reference to mene mene tekel upharsin.
Good question. I run into the phrase now and then, so it hasn't died out of culture, but the roots in Daniel and its contempt for empire may be unfamiliar. "Numbered, numbered, weighed and divided" is how the internet renders the literal words, but that sounds close enough to Daniel's "You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting" or something like that. And of course that is the situation of all of civilization these days. We are so proud, so full of our accomplishments, and yet we cannot manage the effort to stave off ultimate disaster.

Of course that is not how I was using the reference, but you could make a case that the church strove too long to be an instrument of control over the masses rather than striving to turn hearts to the good, and Millennials are providing some comeuppance to that arrogance.
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DWill

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Re: Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back

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Harry Marks wrote:There are two important responses to your questions, DWill.
Harry Marks wrote: A proper understanding of church doesn't treat it as a consumption item. If you understand why you are there, then you understand that the point is to put into the goals and mission, not to get something from them. Not that the latter is useless or irrelevant, it just gets wrapped up in helping the member be a better influencer. One might compare it to going to the gym, except the result is not supposed to be a longer life and better physical condition, but rather is to make more contribution to the lives around you.

Viewed from that perspective the point is not to "get value for your money". But there is still a question whether supporting a building and professional staff is contributing meaningfully to these goals of helping people be better contributors to the lives around them. I think the vague consensus is that the traditional "spiritual leadership" role needs to work for more people at a time, not as in a mega-church but as in more congregants even if fewer show up on a particular Sunday. The pastoral care role then gets distributed among some lay leaders, some "paraprofessionals" and some mutuality, since one head pastor cannot visit all of the sick and all of the membership (to maintain relationship) all alone.

Only time will tell whether the traditional goal of raising children well will continue to sustain this kind of organization. I am betting that it will, but not with a lot of evidence on my side.
Even while the more conservative churches insist officially on following the Bible, they move further toward serving practical needs and forming networks of caring, really de-stressing doctrine. They seem to retain a few politically charged issues, though, such as abortion and "religious freedom."

I was thinking of money matters because our UU group is trying to get back to financial stability after falling short on pledges last year. It's a small congregation (61 members) with a budget of about 70K, more than half of that going for the half-time minister who drives 75 miles from DC. A few of the other board members were contemplating him retiring or going to quarter-time. I was concerned about that, because I'm still seeing that role as essential to any church, and I like this minister a lot. What you say, Harry, has me thinking that there could be another way forward that doesn't have a minister as the hub of a wheel. Such a new structure would call upon members to do more, which could be beneficial for us all. There probably are resources available from the central office in Boston to help congregations with weathering changes that will shrink budgets.
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Re: Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back

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DWill wrote: Even while the more conservative churches insist officially on following the Bible, they move further toward serving practical needs and forming networks of caring, really de-stressing doctrine. They seem to retain a few politically charged issues, though, such as abortion and "religious freedom."
I go to my father-in-law's church now and then, and to my mother's now and then, and yes, I would say the evangelical churches are moving toward some of the community-building that is so central to current mainline Protestantism. The anger and moral condemnation around abortion seems to be more tightly bound to traditional male authority in the family than I would have realized without listening in now and then, but I am not sure if that's a good readout from the broad sweep of evangelicalism.
DWill wrote:I was thinking of money matters because our UU group is trying to get back to financial stability after falling short on pledges last year. It's a small congregation (61 members) with a budget of about 70K, more than half of that going for the half-time minister who drives 75 miles from DC. A few of the other board members were contemplating him retiring or going to quarter-time. I was concerned about that, because I'm still seeing that role as essential to any church, and I like this minister a lot. What you say, Harry, has me thinking that there could be another way forward that doesn't have a minister as the hub of a wheel. Such a new structure would call upon members to do more, which could be beneficial for us all. There probably are resources available from the central office in Boston to help congregations with weathering changes that will shrink budgets.
These issues can be agonizing. A marketing perspective is not all that encouraging. The natural constituency of a UU church is similar to that of UCC where I go, but the UU's are more hesitant about keeping the trappings of tradition, such as reciting the Lord's Prayer together or taking communion, which means UU is even more limited to people with college degrees or at least a bookish approach to life. On the other hand, a group with that outlook will "get" the importance of community and mutual support in a way that blue collar families have more trouble getting their head around.

I can tell you that what I have seen of the smallish churches with half-time leadership suggests dynamic leadership is still vital. Having older ministers who take a "caretaker" approach often fails to attract new members and cultivate individual energy, while having a younger minister who is open to spending a lot of time on organization seems to pay dividends in putting lay people into mutual support processes. The UCC church where I am currently a member has the advantage of a core constituency that is relatively well off, so they finance things liberally.

The leadership is forward-thinking about putting that money to work, and so they have a good youth program and have been attracting young families who are desperate to build an alternative to the narratives and worldviews swirling around Trump. Trump is probably the greatest gift the UCC has had in decades, (since Borg and Crossan published alternative views to the Biblicism that Christianity was so invested in, I guess) and I would be surprised if the UU was not having some of the same dividend.
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Re: Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back

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Harry Marks wrote: These issues can be agonizing. A marketing perspective is not all that encouraging. The natural constituency of a UU church is similar to that of UCC where I go, but the UU's are more hesitant about keeping the trappings of tradition, such as reciting the Lord's Prayer together or taking communion, which means UU is even more limited to people with college degrees or at least a bookish approach to life. On the other hand, a group with that outlook will "get" the importance of community and mutual support in a way that blue collar families have more trouble getting their head around.
I think that's right in each point. One reason I like the minister is that he does have a background in the Abrahamic tradition, having been raised a Baptist. Apparently also, Unitarian seminary, at least in his time, concerned itself with historical Christianity. That's only fitting, since it wasn't so long ago that Unitarianism was a type of Christianity. It no longer is, but there is value in being reminded of that connection and in blunting the sense of superiority UUs sometimes display at having "recovered from religion." So the minister not infrequently cites the Bible and the touchstones of Judaism and Christianity. And no doubt you're right that UUs are rather heady. I think that at times we try to capture some of the exuberance of the "naive" churches, realizing that otherwise we skimp on joy. UUism, of course, has tried to adapt some of the theology talk to its own purposes. It also creates some novelty terms like "intersectionality" that, as an older person, strike me as jarring. But in reality, that kind of thing isn't very visible unless you read the UU magazine.
I can tell you that what I have seen of the smallish churches with half-time leadership suggests dynamic leadership is still vital. Having older ministers who take a "caretaker" approach often fails to attract new members and cultivate individual energy, while having a younger minister who is open to spending a lot of time on organization seems to pay dividends in putting lay people into mutual support processes. The UCC church where I am currently a member has the advantage of a core constituency that is relatively well off, so they finance things liberally.
Now that I think of it, hasn't the UUC been called the Unitarian Church of Christ? I think at the next transition of our UU, which will probably be the minister leaving, we'll discuss different directions in leadership. We currently rent space in a Waldorf school, which means that the building is only available for a couple of hours on Sunday. I've felt that although the arrangement makes a sensible use of resources, it's limiting in obvious ways.
The leadership is forward-thinking about putting that money to work, and so they have a good youth program and have been attracting young families who are desperate to build an alternative to the narratives and worldviews swirling around Trump. Trump is probably the greatest gift the UCC has had in decades, (since Borg and Crossan published alternative views to the Biblicism that Christianity was so invested in, I guess) and I would be surprised if the UU was not having some of the same dividend.
Well, we haven't had people flocking in; in the past two years there have been just a few new members. The church is in a county of only about 10,000 people. Safe to say everyone is aghast at Trump, though, with the notable exception of our dedicated treasurer, who describes herself as an unapologetic Southerner and who bristles at times at things said from the pulpit by lay speakers. I have to wonder at her loyalty, and I am grateful for it. It could be partly because of her that politics is kept to a minimum as far as what is said to the group. It wasn't that way at another UU I belonged to in the early 2000s.
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