The middle school through young adult age group, also known as the millennials, are not connecting to a local church and many of them are distancing themselves from church, God, and an active pursuit of spirituality. Recent surveys estimate that 20 percent of millennials attend church on a regular basis and at least 1/3 classify themselves as having no spiritual belief or affiliation. This generation is becoming more and more disconnected from the Church and Jesus and the local Church is becoming faced with a situation that it should and for the most part desires to address. Like any problem we face in life, we must choose the level at which we want to invest into the problem. Example – you hurt your knee, but its ok when you walk on it, but it hurts severely when you run. Do you simply avoid running or do you go to the doctor for prognosis and therapy. Prognosis and therapy are not easy, they cost you something — time, resources, pain, hard work, but in the end you get to move how you were meant to move.
I believe the local church is facing many challenges in reaching this generation, but I do not believe they are unattainable. The first challenge that the local church faces is to decide how much we want to invest into reaching this generation. I have talked to dozens of lead pastors, youth pastors, search teams over the last 18 months and nearly all of them want to see millennials connect or reconnect to church. The problem isn’t the want to, it is the will to. Will we, will they make the decision to do an in-depth analysis of their church and will they be willing to go through the difficult, strenuous process of treatment and therapy? Will we be willing to realize that the way we have reached the generations before is not how we will reach this generation? Will we be willing to go deeper than style of worship music into changing the church so that we can reach this generation more effectively?
I love the local Church. I believe that the local church is still the hope of bringing Jesus to the world. I also believe that we must go through an in-depth, thorough prognosis of how church operates and be willing to participate in a lengthy therapy season so that we can become even more effective in reaching and training people for Jesus.
Here are the challenges that I believe the local Church is facing in reaching this generation
- Will the Sr/Lead Pastor or leadership be willing to submit themselves and the church they are chosen to lead to an honest evaluation of how they are reaching this generation? This includes admitting that they way they were reached as 13-25 yr olds is not the way this generation will be reached.
- How do we address the opportunity of Hebrews 5:11-14. How do we move people from milk to meat. From babies to mature. Honest first step – identify where the leaders are at — we may have more babies in leadership now since the early church — growing leaders maturity will help grow this generation’s maturity. Also, what if we started using tools that this generation is looking for – leadership development, integrity, financial training, influence in the workplace – to teach Biblical principles and maturity instead of methods that are limiting and ineffective.
- This generation is more connected, has more access to information, and has more opportunities than any generation before it. We no longer can shout louder, create a better show, ask first for a time consuming commitment, or think that we are cutting edge innovative. I am not saying we shouldn’t use fun, creative elements, but they can not be where we invest our outreach resources or focus. We need to identify the needs of this generation and work to meet them. We must meet their needs of authentic relationships and honest experience of God. They do not need another show, they need to experience the True power of the most highly God.
- How we engage the leaders of this generation. How do we attract, engage, and unleash the leaders of this generation – the athletic captains, the theater leads, the band majors, the young executives, the rising managers, the coaches and influencers of this generation. As a local church we have to decide whether we will invest time and energy to pursue the influencers and leaders of this generation (and the struggles that produces) or whether we will keep our focus on just the followers. I admit that as a church leader it is many times easier to attract and engage followers than leaders, but to impact a generation you need both followers and leaders. For the most part, the local church is disproportionately vacant of leaders.
- How much of leadership in our local church will we give up to mature and maturing people of this generation. The challenge is not to give leadership away too soon to immature (milk drinking) people and to be willing to train and invest into this generation and then take a risk on people as soon as they become meat eaters. This generation needs to be apart of the ownership and leadership of the local church, they need training first, opportunity next, and finally freedom to lead to reach their generation
I believe that God has created this generation to radically influence this world for Christ. I believe that He wants to use the local church to train, inspire, and unleash this movement. I know that the local church has a choice to be involved in this process – will we choose to do the hard work of prognosis and therapy or will we choose to stop running for this generation. The choice is ours. The choice is yours. Lets choose wisely and courageously.