About a week ago, the video embedded at the end of this post was forwarded to me. I’m still processing it. It’s a presentation by Skye Jethani, editor of Leadership Journal, to a gathering in Dallas, Texas, of evangelical (including many mega-church) pastors. Other than the fact that Jethani equates evangelical mega-churches with “the American church” and “American Christianity” (as though no other kind of church exists in the U.S.), his presentation was pleasantly surprising to me.
Jethani did not say anything particularly new. He’s been reading the same research that a lot of us in ministry have been absorbing over the past few years. But I can only imagine how his frank words must have been received by the pastors he was addressing. He challenged their basic orthodoxy of church growth in two ways. First, he shared data to prove that the mega-church movement has failed to advance the cause of Christ in America. Overall church membership and attendance in the U.S. have been in decline as the mega-church movement has grown, and public trust in organized religion has eroded during the same period. Second, he asserted that the mega-church movement is reaching the end of its effectiveness. The appeal of mega-churches is pretty much limited to the “boomer” generation, which sees “big” as “successful” and “popular,” and the bigger the better. On the other hand, the children of boomers – Gen X-ers and millennials – see “big” as “not to be trusted,” and assume that any big organization must have done something corrupt in order to be that successful.
He discussed how mega-churches have promoted themselves as destinations rather than as vehicles toward a relationship with God. Ironically, then, these huge congregations that claim to have moved beyond traditional institutional churches have taken institutionalism to a whole new level. A year-round focus on fundraising is required to maintain lavish facilities, expensive hi-tech equipment for worship, fully-equipped health and fitness centers, coffee shops, and recreational facilities for children, not to mention large ministerial staffs. Younger adults who grew up in these churches are leaving at an alarming rate because they are put off by the impersonal nature of large enterprises that do a good job of raising money and promoting themselves but have failed to nurture personal spiritual growth.
In addition, the churches’ near total focus on the nuclear family has left out those young adults who choose to remain single or not to marry until their late 20’s, the current average age for first marriages. Sensing that their churches have nothing to offer them unless and until they decide to marry (“singles” ministries are really designed to help young adults find marriage partners), young adults drop out for so long that they lose their connection entirely. (I think this trend is a challenge for all churches, not just those of the pastors Jethani was addressing.)
I credit Jethani, a former evangelical pastor, for being so honest with a crowd of people who would have a difficult time accepting his candid analysis. But I’m also aware that he walked up to a line he knew he couldn’t cross, so he stopped. All the same research data that supports his analysis leads to some other inevitable conclusions that might have gotten Jethani escorted out of the hall before he finished his presentation.
Suspicion of large institutions and a longing for more authentic faith development are not the only reasons twenty- and thirty-somethings are leaving mega-churches. By overwhelming numbers, they are also rejecting the following:
1) Intolerance toward different points of view, including other religious/spiritual traditions. They categorically reject the insistence that only Christians of a particular stripe are going to heaven and everybody else is condemned to eternal damnation.
2) Obsession with social issues related to sexuality, particularly abortion and gay marriage. While young adults are actually more pro-life than their parents’ generation, they loathe the politicization of this issue. And by a wide margin, America’s young adults are very accepting of gays and lesbians and their right to be joined in matrimony just as heterosexual partners are.
3) Partisanship within the church. Since the 1980’s, the mega-church movement (and the entire evangelical movement in the U.S.) has been so closely identified with the Republican Party that it has lost its integrity for many young adults, who believe that churches should rise above partisan politics.
So Jethani threw down a gauntlet, but only told part of the story. Gen X-ers and millennials are not only leaving church over style issues, but over substance as well. They are rejecting big institutionalism, but they are also snubbing some of the teachings they have learned in those big institutions.
The mass exodus of young adults from church is happening almost entirely among large evangelical and Catholic churches (which also tend to be rather large). This is partly because, by the turn of this century, the historic Protestant denominations had already declined so precipitously that there weren’t enough young adults left in them to muster an exodus even if they wanted to. But in the aggregate, those formerly “mainline” churches are no longer declining. Community-based congregations that exhibit vitality, theological openness, and a sense of mission have found an important niche in our society. And if spiritually disaffected young adults decide to find new faith communities, it is these smaller congregations that will appeal to them.
If you’re a pastor in the mega-church business, all this sounds threatening. But from where I stand, these developments are hopeful. I doubt it will ever be my church’s ambition to be “big.” We just want to be sizeable enough to practice Christian community, provide opportunities for service, and equip our members to develop a relationship with God and apply their faith to their everyday lives. And we want to be inclusive enough to make room for whomever God sends to enrich our fellowship.
That just seems like “church” to me.
©2014 by J. Mark Lawson
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