Davison's Doodle

Connecting Another Generation

My brand of Christian witness, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is living through an identity crisis that I call our third reformation.  This struggle to find an identity has permeated every manifestation of our denomination: local, regional, and general.  This reformation time is sapping our ability to collaborate, to learn from our history, to rekindle the spirit of our founders, and fund connections.  As budgets have dwindled we have ceased to invest in children and youth and as such are handing GenX and Millennials congregational life and an institution void of a spirit of stewardship and collaboration.  Our powerless hierarchy is doing its best to survive and offer a word of hope, but similar to congregations it is doing its best to transform rather than reform.  The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) are stronger and a relevant voice of gospel when we work together in programmatic mission and education.  When we understand evangelism through the lens of education and mission then our denomination creates educated, grounded leaders for our society as well as our congregations.  I advocate for children, youth, and the adults that work and serve this constituency.

I saw this essay, “Gen X, Gadgets, and God”, on Religion Dispatches.  It provides a way of thinking about how we are being Church and how we might connect to the next generations.  It has lessons for every manifestation of our denomination and all of Christendom.  Here is the last paragraph of the essay.  Click the title to read more.

Gen X, Gadgets, and God
by Elizabeth Drescher | October 8, 2010

Here we return to Schwadel’s research on the durability of religious affiliation among Gen-Xers and the Pew findings on the religious interests of Millennials. Americans, it seems, are not losing religion, but rebuilding it. For those who still anchor the meeting of their spiritual needs to clergy, this perhaps results in a frustrating demand for “concierge ministers,” as G. Jeffrey MacDonald recently complained in an op-ed on clergy burnout. But I suspect that at least some clergy burnout today stems from efforts to retain a kind of spiritual authority in the daily lives of believers that many believers have themselves claimed through spiritual entrepreneurialism in collaboration with others across globally distributed communities of affiliation. Given this, the quest for institutional religious relevance seems to lie in developing ways—technologically-based and otherwise—of participating with believers and seekers in the redistribution of spiritual authority and associated reinstitutionalizing of religious practice rather than in integrating digital gimmicks into lingering religious structures. In the end, it may be that the only way to save the religious traditions many people still hold dear is to actively participate in giving them away.

Sightings

America’s Decline in Worship Attendance
Sightings | by Martin E Marty | September 26, 2010

Pope Benedict XVI has expressed grave concern over the decline of church participation in Western Europe. His trip to the UK last week provided opportunities for him to address it. Most commentators in religious and secular communications found almost nothing that he said or did which might help reverse the downward trends. The fact that large crowds appeared at several of his appearances did not impress them; throngs line up for popes as celebrities. I’ve asked after each of Pope John Paul’s travels, which often drew masses of young people: did his Pope-mobiled words and gestures, eloquent though they be, lead any young man to enter the seminary ranks with intention to become ordained? Did mass attendance swell a month or a year later? Maybe the answer is yes, but it’s hard to find evidence.

Observation of the North American scene and data gathered by many polling agencies provide a cause for separating this continent’s milder declines from the plot which defines Europe today. So sudden have been the marked trends showing disaffection that leaders have not internalized the evidence. Exceptions? Yes, for now, Latino/a Roman Catholics sign up enough to keep the Catholic rolls deceptively high, if only relatively. For now, some astute, market-oriented mega-churches keep prospering, though even among them opinion-pollers and people-counters see signs which prompt concern.

Those who do care and who set out to address the issue of decline begin in a state of alarm. I was recently on a panel with an official who knew all about weapons of mass destruction, from nukes to germ-warfare capsules. Someone asked, “Knowing all that, how do you sleep?” He answered, “I sleep like a baby—for fifteen minutes, and then I wake up crying.” But sleeping or crying does not help and will not help people who seek to address the issues signified in the trends.

Some graphs and paragraphs in Lovett H. Weems, Jr.’s Christian Century show that from 1994 to 2000, two of four studied mainline Protestant church bodies showed modest gains and two others saw only modest losses. But from 2001 to 2008 the “growing” United Methodist Church saw the greatest plunge (-17.86%), and its losses were almost matched in the other three. Disconcerting to church-growth experts was Weems’s note that in the earlier decade, greatest growth was among the largest local churches—but that in the more recent decade, the largest among them suffered most decline.

Some readers may wonder why in columns like this, which are to be about “public religion,” we talk about church and synagogue (etc.) attendance and participation–aren’t their institutions part of “private religion?” Emphatically no. They are the bearers of traditions, the living expositors of sacred texts, the tellers of stories, the troop-suppliers for voluntary activities, the shapers of values fought over in the political realms.

Why are they declining? Certainly not because a few atheists write best-sellers. I always look for the simplest causes, such as rejection of drab and conflicted congregations and denominations. Or changes in habits. I watch the ten thousands running past in Sunday marathons or heading to the kids’ soccer games and recall that their grandparents and parents kept the key weekend times and places open for sacred encounters. Oh, and “being spiritual” is not going to help keep the stories, the language of ethics, and the pool of volunteers thriving. Their disappearance has consequences.

References
Lovett H. Weems, Jr. “No Shows: The Decline in Worship Attendance.” The Christian Century, September 22, 2010.