Are Millennials Leaving The Church...Or Just Searching For Authentic Faith?

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There is a perception that seems to be pervasive in American evangelical churches that Millennials (i.e. those born in the early 1980s to the early 2000s) are leaving the Christian faith in droves. Some studies (such as this one from the Pew Research Center several years ago) helps to demonstrate that this might not be the case.

In fact, having worked in ministry with young people for twenty years, it's my opinion that those of Generation Y are mostly looking for an authentic expression of Christianity. They are tired of the fake religiosity that many of them have experienced personally or only know through negative portrayals of Christians in the media.

This does not mean, however, that there are not Millennials that were raised in the Church and have left. There are. But I think it's unfair to single out this generation as somehow having abandoned its faith in ways that haven't also been true of my generation (Gen X), my parents' generation (Boomers) and others before that.

As a member of this Gen Y, Barnabas Piper offers some helpful insights on the belief that Millennials are abandoning the Church in greater numbers than previous generations:

"In decades past America was a traditionally churched, religious nation. A significant portion of society was religiously involved, and church was a cultural centerpiece. Those who grew up in explicitly religious families and contexts attended church out of habit. It was expected that come Sunday morning they would scrub behind their ears, put on their nice trousers and tie, and off to church they'd go. The power of cultural expectations was enormous. In entire swaths of the country a person was a pariah if he wasn’t a churchgoer. But no more. Sure, the Bible belt still exists, but the cultural pressure to be in church week in and week out has waned to near zero. 

Along with waning cultural pressure, the respect for institutions has diminished among young people, and with it the respect for institutional leaders. While the good Reverend McGillicuddy might once have been a community icon and an authority figure in people's personal lives he is no longer. Neither are churches community hubs (at least in white communities). Young people don't look to institutions or their heads for instruction. The trust isn't there. 

And there is a reason trust is missing for the institutional church. For decades a gospel of moralism and legalism was taught in numerous churches. People attended because it was the "right thing to do" and a way to "get right with God." 

The expectations placed on members were a particular brand of morality built around which things we don't do (drink, cuss, smoke, watch certain movies, listen to certain music, etc.). It was a burdensome law, one nobody could keep. Many didn't even try though they acted like it on Sundays. And while everyone knew it they kept on doing it. Except now young people won't pretend any more or follow an institution so full of fakery. They don't trust the hypocrisy and they reject the moralism. 

So what is it young people are leaving behind? In many cases they are leaving a faux godliness. Millions of lost people, people hanging their hat on morality or mere attendance, populated the pews of the church in previous generations. They were just a lot harder to pick out than those who brazenly walk out the door, so hard we can't even be sure how many there were."

To read the rest of Piper's post Are Millennials Less Godly than Previous Generations? please click here.

Both Social Justice & Evangelism On The Rise For Millennials

Photo Credit: Merrimack College

According to recent research from the Barna Group, the perception that Christian Millennials (those born in the early 1980's through the early 2000's) are big on social justice but wary of evangelism might not be accurate. Here is what Barna found:

"They've been called "the social justice generation," and for good reason—Millennials are actively taking up the cause of the poor, the oppressed, the orphan and the widow. Yet the most common critique leveled at this surge in social compassion is that it comes at a great expense. Sure, skeptics argue, they might feed the hungry and free the captives in this life, but what about the next? According to this view, Millennials are elevating physical needs over spiritual needs and forgoing evangelism altogether. 

Yet the latest Barna research reveals this is not the case. 

In fact, in answer to the question of evangelism on the rise or in decline, Millennials are a rare case indeed. While the evangelistic practices of all other generations have either declined or remained static in the past few years, Millennials are the only generation among whom evangelism is significantly on the rise. Their faith-sharing practices have escalated from 56% in 2010 to 65% in 2013. 

Not only that, but born again Millennials share their faith more than any other generation today. Nearly two-thirds (65%) have presented the Gospel to another within the past year, in contrast to the national average of about half (52%) of born again Christians. 

Since tracking began in 1996, the data show born again Busters, who are currently in their thirties and forties (63%), were evangelizing at an all-time high in 1998. However, evangelism practice among Busters is down to 48% today. Among the Boomer generation (born between 1946 and 1964), nearly two-thirds of born again Boomers (65%) shared their faith in 2007, but today, this has dropped to less than half (49%). The outreach efforts of born again Elders (ages 68 and older), on the other hand, have remained fairly steady over the past several decades. Today, Elders (53%) share their faith just about as much as the average born again Christian (52%)."

I'm thankful that I have the privilege to invest in the lives of this generation of young people.

To read the rest of the findings please click here.

Generation Y: A Tethered Generation

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They are often referred to as Generation Y, Millennials, Echo Boomers or GenNext. However we may label them (by the way, they hate labels), individuals born approximately between 1978 and 1998 are changing how we view the workforce.

As one who was born in the middle of Generation X, I have some understanding of Millennials, but there is much I just don't get. I grew up playing video games and remember the excitement of playing basic games like Pong and then Pitfall on Atari. Many belonging to Gen Y have never seen an original Nintendo game and are used to dropping fifty bucks for a single game and spending hundreds of dollars for a system.

I got my first cell phone at the age of 27. Nowadays, it is not at all uncommon for elementary aged kids to have their own phone. And I may have grown up watching MTV, but at least they used to play music videos back then! I do consider myself fairly Internet and computer savvy, but I didn't own my first computer until I was out of college and got my first e-mail account as a fourth year college student. My kids already knew how to play video games, dial a cell phone and use a computer -- all before starting school.

Since I serve, work alongside of and lead mostly those of Generation Y, I am in a continual learning process about their values, work styles and world views. The Tethered Generation, a great article in the May 2007 of HR Magazine, addresses the realities that young people face today and highlight some of the strengths and drawbacks of how they interact with one another and the world. You can read the whole article here, but I've highlighted the Good News and the Bad News of "The Tethered Generation":

Good News... 

Millennials have a lot of skills and enthusiasm to offer companies. Experts say they are:

• Techno-savvy. “They’re enormous consumers of information and can locate details about anything within seconds,” says Jeanne Achille, CEO of The Devon Group and mother of two millennials. “We employ millennials to help with research because they can find in-depth data through sources we older employees don’t even know exist.” (The flip side is training millennials to adequately vet the research they find on the Internet.)
• Adept at global and diversity issues. “Millennials’ world is far more expansive than previous generations’ because, through online social networks, they can reach well beyond the confines of geography and establish relationships with others. They’re ideally positioned to support our global workplaces, and HR people should tap their skills accordingly,” says Achille.
• Team-oriented. With Millennials, “decisions are made in a team environment,” says futurist Jim Taylor. “They measure themselves by their peers. They will form communal tribes and communicate astonishing amounts.”
• Multitaskers. “For today’s young people, multitasking is as natural as eating,” says Robert Epstein, visiting scholar at the University of California in San Diego, and West Coast editor of Psychology Today.

Bad News...

According to experts, the millennial generation as a whole lacks the following traits:

• Discretion. “If you give up your privacy on MySpace about everything from your musical preferences to your sexual hang-ups, it is harder to” understand others’ concern for privacy invasions, says Sherry Turkle, a licensed clinical psychologist and MIT professor. “They get the idea one’s privacy is dispensable.”  Clearly, this lack of confidentiality can have dramatic repercussions in the workplace. “There will be no secrets,” futurist Jim Taylor warns. “A conversation that would normally be judged as a private discussion between a boss and subordinate” will become public.
• Independence. “Because parents over-scheduled their lives, they don’t know what to do next. They will need more direction” in the workplace, says Jean M. Twenge, associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before (Free Press, 2006).  Claire Raines, author of Generations at Work (AMACOM, 2000), says millennials may look to managers to “take on that ‘mom role’ in some ways. We have to show that we really care about the person, know what their goals are and help them with their career paths,” she says.
• Realistic expectations. Barbara Dwyer, CEO of The Job Journey, a soft-skills training firm, notes this generation believes they can change the world on the first day of work. “The problem is that they don’t have the track record to support these statements. When they’re told their entire lives how wonderful they are, and then they’re challenged in the business environment, they are crushed,” she says.
• Patience. “They’re used to instant gratification. They tend to be impatient and want things yesterday. From an HR perspective, the advantage is that, in their impatience, they may become more efficient, but the disadvantage is that they may not have the patience to work through a complex problem,” says Twenge.
• Work ethic. When asked how the work ethic of today’s young professionals compared to that of previous generations, 49 percent of executives polled by Korn/Ferry indicated that it was worse.  “One problem HR professionals are already facing is many young people entering the workforce have unrealistic expectations about what it means to work,” says Robert Epstein, West Coast editor of Psychology Today. “Many are unwilling to work hard or make personal sacrifices to get ahead.”
• Soft skills and the basics. “Students’ grammar may suffer from an over-reliance on computer programs that correct language errors, which will perpetuate poor written communication skills. E-mail and instant messaging reduces the opportunity for face-to-face interpersonal interaction. The lack of strong interpersonal skills impacts other soft skills, such as conflict resolution,” says Stephen P. Seaward, director of career development for Saint Joseph College in West Hartford, Conn.

I find these finding amazingly accurate. For those of my age and older that lead and supervise those who are Millennials, we are most likely nodding our heads in agreement when reading these comments. I'm curious... Have you found these things to be true? And what of those of you who are members of Generation Y. Do you feel like the characterization of your generation is fair? I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

Young People Turning Away From Organized Religion..but not from God.

According to some recent research by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, members of the Millennial generation (those currently in their late teens to late twenties) are much more likely to have abandoned formal religion than older generations. At least one in four adults under the age of thirty describe themselves as "atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular" and 65% do not attend any kind of religious worship services.

Even as disconcerting as these realities may be for those of us that work with young people, there are a couple of encouraging trends that are taking place. For those that are actively involved in their faith, the number of those taking their faith very seriously is comparable to previous generations:

"Among Millennials who are affiliated with a religion, however, the intensity of their religious affiliation is as strong today as among previous generations when they were young. More than one-third of religiously affiliated Millennials (37%) say they are a "strong" member of their faith, the same as the 37% of Gen Xers who said this at a similar age and not significantly different than among Baby Boomers when they were young (31%)."

Also, even though many young people have given up on the traditional church and formalized religion, they are still very much open to God and spiritual issues. For far too many of us, the Christianity that we were introduced to in our youth was a boring, dry faith that was dominated by rules and regulations and missed out on a real relationship with the living God. Add to that the failure of many spiritual leaders to live by the standards that they required others to live by and it is not any wonder that young people would want nothing to do with the Church when they enter adulthood.

For those of us that have traveled a similar path, it is up to us to show the younger generation that Christianity is not about rules and it's not about suits and ties and pretty dresses. Christianity, at its heart, is about a personal relationship with our Creator and Maker. For those of us that are leaders in our churches we need to ask ourselves whether the environment we help to create in worship settings is conducive for children and teenagers to meet God right where they're at.

Is the faith that we practice and model in front of impressionable young eyes that of honesty and humility and love? Or is it a rigid formality that paints God as a distant, uncaring judge that is just waiting to discipline us? When young people are introduced to the God of the Bible -- a God of love and justice and compassion and truth -- they will be interested. In thinking about this subject, my mind is drawn back to one of my favorite songs by Steven Curtis Chapman, For Who He Really Is. Here are the lyrics:

"Too many hypocrites," I heard her say,
"I even saw it in the headlines today;
How can I follow God when His own people turn away?"
She said, "Nobody’s perfect but I just want to see
Somebody living what they say they believe;
If they’ve got all this world needs like they say,
I wonder why won’t they give some away."

CHORUS
Can he see God for who He really is
In what he sees in you and me.
Can he see God for who He really is,
For who He really is is all he really needs to see.

He slips into church and he puts up his guard;
They look so happy but his life’s been so hard.
He keeps his distance so they won’t see the scars;
It’s just a religion that’s all dressed up in white,
And God is love as long as you’re living right.
But does he know that Jesus also has scars,
And His love can reach Him no matter how far.

(chorus)

The skeptics are watching to see who will fall,
While those disillusioned search for the Truth in it all;
Maybe today we’ll cross their paths unaware,
And they’ll stop and look at us. What will be there?

(chorus)

If you're an invidual that is intrigued about learning more about a real relationship with God, please click here. I'd love to help you on this journey.

Is Facebook Losing its Older Users?

From Switched.com:

"Facebook may be losing ground among its older users, according to Inside Facebook.

Over the past few months, baby boomers joined the popular social networking site in droves, creating some inter-generational tensions in the process. From February and March, though, to April and May, that trend seems to have reversed. According to data that Facebook supplies to its advertisers, the 55-to-65-year-old age group's activity has drastically declined over the past couple months (by 651,080, to be exact), making it the only demographic to experience an overall drop in numbers.

While their parents seem to be fleeing Facebook, 18-to-25-year olds are spending more time on the site than ever. Since the end of March, nearly 2 million new members have joined up in that age bracket. The root of these developing Facebook trends? We'd bet that those Gen Y-ers, finding themselves unemployed and out of school, are aiming to waste some time and distract themselves. Meanwhile, we'd guess that their parents, in light of their companies' tightening belts, are laying off the during-office-hours browsing."