The Millennial Church

So, you are part of a church that has recently discovered that you need to start reaching Millennials. Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Let’s start with the bad news. The cultural context in to which our youngest generations are coming of age has shifted dramatically compared to 40 or 50 years ago. There are vast alternatives which are competing for relevance with our early and mid-century mason-esk style churches. And they are winning.

The Boomers with their individual-oriented mindset have left the church and those who have stayed, transfer membership from church to church as they seek to fulfill their needs at different life stages. The Gen-Xers abandoned the church, if they were ever there to begin with, but Gen-Xers are dark brooding sloppy independent types, so who cares, right?* There are strong signs that the Millennials, are like the previous two generations, at risk of leaving the church and never coming back.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that Millennials are completely different than their parents who are largely late Boomers and early Gen Xers. As children and young adults, Millennials are a cherished by their parents and are supported by a culture that shifted around the time that they were born to express more positive attitudes about children.

In the mid 80’s after a nearly 20 year hiatus on movies which featured children in a positive rather than negative light (think Rosemary’s Baby), Hollywood began making movies like Baby Boom, She’s Having a Baby, Look Who’s Talking, and Three Men and a Baby. Disney began new cartoon epics such as The Little Mermaid and the Lion King. In the 80’s there was a boom in magazines published for children. Laws to protect children were created for each new perceived threat. Megan’s Law or Joan’s Law or Amber’s Law are all examples of protections that previous generations of parents never felt necessary. Terms like “kinderpolitics” and “soccer mom” held a status unimaginable in the previous generation when children were seen as “avoidable hindrances to personal fulfillment (Howe and Strauss, 57).” Quality education became a national priority and there was a sharp change in the “support for homework, longer school days, more tests, and standardized curricula (Howe and Strauss, 38).

For the first time in generations, we have a large group of children and young adults who feel wanted, protected, and worthy of our attention.

Now what?

Well, in order to understand what we (the church) may have to do, we should first identify the particular gifts that this new cultural ethic has given to the Millennials and what that might mean for the church.

As a whole, Millennials are;

• Optimists. As a result of their upbringing they are confident and happy.
• Cooperative. A direct result of classroom improvement, Millennials are collaborative by training and their positive outlook makes peer work a very productive experience.
• Accepting of Authority. Yep, that’s right. If you’ve ever worked with a group of Millennials, this is an obvious marker of their generation. Unlike the Boomers who coined the phrase, “don’t trust anyone over 30” and Gen-Xers whose childhood, with countless examples of institutional incompetence and infrastructure neglect, fueled their self-reliance, Millennials have always been cared for and nurtured by those in charge and they are very accepting of authority.
• Followers. This generation doesn’t break the rules. They are clean-cut, well-behaved, young people who are pioneering trends such as “greater economic optimism, higher educational ambitions, and less risky career goals (Howe and Strauss, 46).” In 1997, MTV president Judy McGrath announced, “Attitude is over. [Millennials] like what’s nice and fun in fashion and sports…they’re simple and sweet.” Thanks to a national and cultural focus on reducing negative markers, teen pregnancies, abortions, sexual activity, violence, school killings and suicides, are all on the decline with Millennials as compared to previous generations.
• Workers. Just because they are followers does not mean that Millennials are not also rebelling. They are rebelling against the Boomer tendency to value ideas over action and they are rebelling against the Gen-Xer tendency to withdraw and go-it-alone. Millennials are hard-working mobilized cheerful doers.
• Educated. Because of the widespread attention that teaching and schools have received in their formative years, they are the best educated generation in history. They think school is cool, girls like math and are better at it than in any other generation, SAT and other comparable test scores are up, and college enrollment has sky-rocketed (even before the recession).

What could a large group of hard working cooperative optimists do with their vast expertise? The answer…anything.

“For decades, Americans have been wishing for a youth generation that would quit talking and start doing. Now that older generations…are starting to produce kids like this, a new question arises: OK, Boomers and Gen Xers, now that you’ve got them, can you handle them (Howe and Strauss, 5)?”

So if the bad news is that the culture has shifted and is largely responsible for generations of young people leaving the church, the good news is that if we do something about it, Millennials are far more likely than any other generation to “return” in large numbers. Millennials feel valued and they expect our attention. The great news is that even though they are expecting it, any attention we give to them will be rewarded.

We’ve outlined the powerful culture shift keeping Millennials away from the church and the equally powerful cultural shift which has bestowed on the Millennials the gifts which would be extremely beneficial to the church. It is time for a bit of advice on how to bridge the cultural gap.

The key to being in relationship with Millennials is to be in relationship with Millennials.

After working with Millennials for my entire career (and my entire adult life), I am in a position to offer what I think is simple advice. The key to being in relationship with Millennials is to be in relationship with Millennials. I hope you don’t think I’m being flippant about the task at hand, because I’m very serious about this point. If you want to get to know Millennials, befriend Millennials, mentor Millennials, or mobilize Millennials, all you have to do is meet them, befriend them, mentor them, and mobilize them. It is that simple.

An example of this happened early in my career. My church was responsible for hosting a Presbytery meeting. When folks from all over the metro arrived, the entire youth group was there and ready to greet them, show them to the bathrooms, lead them to the sanctuary, serve them lunch, etc. As our guests were leaving, a woman stopped me and asked, “how on earth did you get all of these kids to help out today?” Wondering what all of the fuss was about, I immediately turned to my husband and co-leader with an inquisitive expression on my face as he shrugged and politely answered, “we asked.”

This is a large visible group of young people who are hard-working and accepting of authority. To know them is to befriend them is to mobilize them.

It is no secret where they are either. A large portion of this generation shows up to the same place every day for 8 hours. They are in our junior highs, our high schools, and on our college campuses. They are on soccer fields, in gyms, at tournaments, and earning merit badges. Many of them are just making their way into their first careers. If you want to get to know Millennials, go back to school, volunteer in a classroom, coach a team, host a tournament, mentor a scout, set up weekly lunches with a new employee, etc.

An advantage for the church in learning to mobilize Millennials is that they are very prepared to run the church like their grandparents before them or even more interestingly (from my perspective) they are poised to rebuild the church like their great-grandparents did in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. “Indeed, Millennials have a solid chance to become America’s next great generation, as celebrated for their collective deeds a hundred years from now as the [G.I. Generation] is celebrated today (Howe and Strauss, 5).”

I want to caution you about something. Getting to know Millennials and being in a position to mobilize them is no guarantee that they will come to church. I find it doubtful that Millennials will find the historical church, with which we are most familiar, sustainable or relevant. Rather, they are in a unique position to reinvent the church in their own image, namely, they are uniquely qualified to be the church.

If you are part of a church that has recently discovered that you need to start reaching Millennials, then you cannot and should not stop at the doors of your church building. Instead, I urge you to take up your cross and follow Christ right out of your doors and into the church of the next generation. They are expecting you.

*Actually, I'm a Gen-Xer and I do care! Expect to see something posted about this generation in the near future.

- Millennials Rising: The Next Generation, written by Howe and Strauss.