The notion of Millennials and an not-uncommonly-taken, spiritual-but-not-religious approach to faith has been around for a few years now. Many young adults have felt disillusioned with their faith traditions, for various reasons. The CNN article points out that some church’s leaders simply try to be more “cool,” in superficial ways. Young adults can see right through that, the author asserts. She also suggests that, for example, concerns about social justice, an allegedly overdone focus on sexual standards, and positions on gay rights have created rifts for Millennials and have left them wanting something different…in essence, wanting the churches to change to reflect more “modern” perspectives on social issues.

But apparently not all Millennials feel that the rising generation has all the keys to what churches should do in order to retain young adults in their congregations.

For example, I was intrigued by an article written in the Washington Post by Brett McCracken entitled “How to keep Millennials in the Church? Let’s keep church uncool.” His response to the CNN article doesn’t argue against Evan’s entire premise (he also is against trying to make church “cool” as the title of his article makes clear). But he has a message for Millennials as well.

“I’m a Millennial,” McCracken writes, “but I am weary of everyone caring so much about why Millennials do this or don’t do that. I’m sorry Millennials, but I’m going to have to throw us under the bus here: we do not have everything figured out. And if we expect older generations and well-established institutions to morph to fit our every fickle desire, we do so at our peril” [emphasis in original].

I found this a refreshing addition to the discussions about and among Millennials and those who care about and/or sympathize (or even agree with) them. As noted, McCracken doesn’t minimize the reality that the CNN article points out — that some churches are swinging away from Jesus in their “let’s be more hip” approach. But he reaches beyond the surface to explore some of what might be keeping many Millennials spiritually unsatisfied.

McCracken has concerns both about the young adults who clamor perhaps too much to be heard and also the churches that are perhaps trying too hard to cater to the every whim of those activists. He invites young adults to sit down and listen, too, and to be willing to learn from those who have gone before and invites churches to not try so hard to be socially and politically correct.

Quoting C.S. Lewis, he writes:

Part of the problem is the hubris of every generation, which thinks it has discovered, once and for all, the right way of doing things. C.S. Lewis called it “chronological snobbery,” defining it as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”

McCracken’s last, heartfelt paragraph to me reflects some wisdom from which any of us, of any age, can benefit.

As a Millennial, if I’m truly honest with myself, what I really need from the church is not another yes-man entity enabling my hubris and giving me what I want. Rather, what I need is something bigger than me, older than me, bound by a truth that transcends me and a story that will outlast me; basically, something that doesn’t change to fit me and my whims, but changes me to be the Christ-like person I was created to be.

These sentiments have been explored elsewhere by Christian leaders who also see the peril in a give-me-all-that-I-want mentality that McCracken addresses.

[M]uch of modern Christianity does not acknowledge that God makes any real demands on those who believe in Him, seeing Him rather as a butler “who meets their needs when summoned” (Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (2010), 17) or a therapist whose role is to help people “feel good about themselves (Dean, Almost Christian, 30; see also Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (2005), 118–71). It is a religious outlook that “makes no pretense at changing lives…. By contrast…the God portrayed in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures asks, not just for commitment, but for our very lives. The God of the Bible traffics in life and death, not niceness, and calls for sacrificial love, not benign whatever-ism” [Dean, p. 30, 37]. [From “As Many as I Love I Rebuke and Chasten“]

McCracken shares his thoughts as to why catering to the latest social or political or cultural opinions is anything but benign.

“The Christian gospel is defined outside of and with little regard to whatever itch people think Christianity should scratch. Consumerism asserts that people want what they want and get what they want, for a price. It’s all about me. But to position the gospel within this consumerist, give-them-what-they-want framework is to open the door to all sorts of distortions, mutations, and “to each his own” cockamamy variations. If Christianity aims to sell a message that scratches a pluralism of itches, how in the world will a cohesive, orthodox, unified gospel survive?”

His insights reminded me of talk given by one of our church’s leaders about the benefits of learning from the past (both from older generations who are still alive and ancient people whose stories and lessons learned and testimonies are recorded in holy writ). There are patterns of truth that stand the test of time, mortal lessons that have been learned and re-learned, with negative consequences that could be avoided by learning from those who have gone before.

“Learning the lessons of the past allows you to walk boldly in the light without running the risk of stumbling in the darkness. This is the way it’s supposed to work. This is God’s plan: father and mother, grandfather and grandmother teaching their children; children learning from them [and from the patterns in the scriptures] and then becoming a more righteous generation through their own personal experiences and opportunities. Learning the lessons of the past allows you to build personal testimony on a solid bedrock of obedience, faith, and the witness of the Spirit.

“If you are open and receptive to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit in your lives, you will understand the lessons of the past, and they will be burned into your souls by the power of your testimonies. [From “Learning the Lessons of the Past“]

McCracken invites his Millennial peers a bit more bluntly.

“[W]hy don’t we take our pastors, parents, and older Christian brothers and sisters out to coffee [or, for Mormons, a hot chocolate? {grin}] and listen to them? Perhaps instead of perpetuating our sense of entitlement and Twitter/blog/Instagram-fueled obsession with hearing ourselves speak, we could just shut up for a minute and listen to the wisdom of those who have gone before….”

I think we all could benefit from this advice. I recently attended a Mormon ward congregation comprised mostly of retirement-age people and I was left wanting to learn more from them. I could tell they had stories and perspectives that would be interesting and worthwhile. When was the last time any of us talked to someone older than ourselves just to listen and learn from them?

We can also sit for a spell with the ancients (with coffee or hot chocolate in hand?) in the Old and New Testaments (and for Mormons, in the Book of Mormon) and hear what they have to say about life and faith in Jesus Christ, sacrifice, love, humility, service.

I give a “Hats off!” to Brett McCracken for his willingness to invite Millennials (and all of us) to listen to and learn from one another. We can grow as we are willing to be humble and teachable. As McCracken says, we can seek for “truth that transcends” individual and cultural limitations.

In truth, it’s the kind of truth that stands the test of millennia. I believe that’s where we can all find Jesus.

The post Thoughts on Millennials and the Church and finding Jesus in “Truth that Transcends” appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends – but only one mother in the whole world.
~Kate Douglas Wiggin

If I was damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’mine.
~Rudyard Kipling

God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.
~Jewish Proverb

Mother, I love you, Mother, I do,
Father in Heaven has sent me to you.
When I am near you, I love to hear you
Singing so softly that you love me too.
Mother, I love you, Mother, I do,
I want to help you because I love you.
I want to mind you, I want to find you
Happy and Smiling because I love you.
Mother, I love you, I love you, I do.
~Lorin F. Wheelwright
 
The holiest words my tongue can frame,
The noblest thoughts my soul can claim,
Unworthy are to praise the name
More precious than all other.
An infant, when her love first came,
A man, I find it still the same,
Reverently I breathe her name,
The blessed name of mother.
~George Griffith Fether

And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and Earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary…
Mosiah 3:8

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