Are you following the hubbub in the blogosphere of the growing disaffection among young adults with all things Evangelical? First Andrea Dilley, who left Neo-Calvinism for an Anglican church, posted Change wisely, dude. She posited that young adults are looking for liturgy. Three days ago Rachel Held Evans posted “Why millennials are leaving the church.” She pegged the issue as young adults outgrowing narrow, simplistic Evangelical answers and desiring greater social engagement. Yesterday Pastor Keith Anderson posted “Millennials, Consumerism and the Idolatry of God in which he suggested that millennials have been over-marketed to and are cynical of a “God about you.”
Will the Mainline see a resurgence from this growing discontentment with Evangelicalism? After all the Mainline is everything all three authors are advocating: We have always done liturgy. We have always been engaged in combating social ills. And, lets face it, we have never been very good at packaging and marketing. Even more, our churches are often strategically located in inner-cities, the very place that upwardly mobile, educated young adults are flocking. Our churches even have the sense of space and permanence they crave. We should be what Millennials flock to!
Will we be?
Don’t bet on it.
Here are three reasons:
1) We don’t have money. Most of our churches are theologically progressive. Progressives tend not to tithe. According to Barna 24% of Evangelicals tithe. Less than 1% of Progressives do. (Here) As a result, we tend to have far less money than evangelicals, for whom eternity is at stake. Related to this (as it takes money to fund leaders) is a second issue:
2) We don’t develop leaders. Evangelicals push toward ordination people who a) Have a lifetime of leadership (student body president, captain of the volleyball team, etc), and b) Have succeeded in a smaller church roles first. Then they c) Train them by mentoring them on the job in their own system of leadership development. We usually find someone who is young and nice and has the desired theology, and, whether or not they have ever led anything before, send them to three years of expensive seminary. They graduate and we put them in a college ministry or small church alone and then wonder why they flounder.
3) We don’t have momentum. In Phoenix alone I can think of 7 Evangelical young adult groups with an attendance of greater than 100 (including 2 more than 500). I cannot think of a Progressive young adult group with more than 30. I have actually heard our people say, “They have 500? What are they doing wrong?” Young adults are not nearly as numero-phobic as Progressives. In fact, since they tend to be dating and looking for social connections, larger events attract them. Unfortunately, we tend to fear large.
Until we solve these three hurdles, most of the crowd will run past us…probably back to Evangelical churches, who are pretty resilient and entrepreneurial. Not surprisingly, Evangelicals have begun to regularly ring my phone to talk about liturgy.
One thing we do have going for us: Some of those disaffected Evangelicals are leaders and some of them join us. When they do, they bring the leadership skills they developed elsewhere to bear in our world. In the Episcopal Church, two incredibly gifted Evangelical crossovers come to mind: Gil Stafford, former national champion baseball coach and college President and Julia McCray-Goldsmith, a former missionary. In our diocesan office, of the five clergy mission-staff, NONE of them was raised in the Episcopal Church. Each came to the church in adulthood from other traditions.
Let me say what non-Episcopalians regularly point out: We have a leadership identification and development issue. And until we address that issue many of those running from Evangelicalism will run right past our door.
the gospel side 