Walking through the doors and into the nave, I make pretty snap judgments.
[The nave is what some denominations refer to as the sanctuary or worship space]
“Oh, they hide the font in the back corner.”
“They built a new altar so they could worship the high altar like an idol.”
“Choir pews between the people and the table? What is this, 1892?”
But perhaps I’m a bit more discerning than the typical young adult. My fancy seminary education means that I focus on “all the stuff nobody cares about.” Except, of course, when we try to change it. Then it is suddenly essential to a person’s faith. But I digress.
Even though the typical young adult that enters your building’s nave for the first time has a different interior monologue, it is entirely likely that they are dealing, not in the minutia, but in much bigger things. As Sam Portaro discussed in a recent lecture, young adults are in the midst of dealing with “meaning making”. We are looking for the purpose of our lives, doing things that matter, and making a serious difference in the world. In other words, young adults are in the midst of dealing with the world’s biggest questions.
A second issue is that we are beginning to undertake the critical work in the world. We are stepping out from the purely academic hypothetical and the basic internship bottom rung of the ladder. And we are stepping into the biggest issues, wearing pretty big shoes.
The quintessential Biblical example, as Portaro describes it, is that of Moses, who upon reaching this age and realizing he is not an Egyptian by birth, but a Hebrew, sees an injustice and rashly defends ‘his people’ by murdering the Egyptian. Certainly not the action we expect from a future patriarch of the faith, but the action of someone trying to understand his place, caught between two worlds.
So, engaging young adults means engaging the big questions. Here’s how:
- Wrestle with the tough stuff. Like Jacob, we should wrestle with God. We should wrestle with what we are really called to do. We don’t want the church avoiding contentious issues, but dealing with them like adults.
- Handle conflict maturely. Just because somebody pisses you off, you can’t cut them out. No withholding communion from people you have decided are heretics or taking your toys and going home when you don’t get your way.
- Be authentic. If you believe something, then your behavior needs to match. More important than having right belief is how your beliefs match your actions.
- Understand that we have no time. Cut us some slack. Chances are, if we even attended a church growing up, we were raised to have no responsibility in church and had no opportunities besides acolyting. We don’t know how to tithe. And if we are lucky enough to have school and/or work and family, then we probably can’t give much time to church. So find a way to get us there anyway.
- Challenge us to take responsibility. Just because we don’t have time, doesn’t mean we won’t make time, given the right chance. Give us a meaningful ministry that is for us, not some job nobody else will do. Find ways to meet us where we are. If our kids have soccer Sunday morning, challenge us to start a Saturday night worship and take responsibility for getting our friends to come.
- Make room for us. When I was a kid, we bought a calendar that had a “kid’s day” on it. I asked my Mom that if we celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, why don’t we celebrate Kid’s Day? As you would expect, her response was “every day is Kid’s Day!” In church, it feels like the tables are reversed. We give a couple of special days for children and a few special days for youth and sometimes even young adults. So when older Christians complain about change or about how few activities are geared toward them, I want to say “but it’s all geared toward you!” My point is that we don’t need our own room or group or proportional representation, though that is all sweet and pretty awesome. What we need is for the whole church to share in what we need and looks less like you and more like all of us. We need mentors and babysitters (for our kids) and guides. But we also need a church that wrestles with the tough stuff.
- Make us take formation. Most of us probably didn’t grow up in church. And most of us are uncomfortable with our knowledge of our own religious tradition. We might want our kids to get a better education than we had. Get us to participate too. And the way to get us to do it is to make formation an essential part of what the whole church does.
We often take for granted that many Baby Boomers who left the church as young adults, came back when they had kids. We think this is some natural order, as the way things go. I don’t think that’s the case. I think some come back to drop their kids off at Sunday School “because it’s good for them.” But that isn’t the majority, and it certainly shouldn’t be our operating assumption. We should be assuming that everyone needs to make this community a priority. And to do that, we have to work and lead together.
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