What Do We Need to Do to Effectively Engage Millennials with the Gospel of Jesus?

"In last year's Annual Church Profile, 60 percent of the more than 46,000 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) reported no youth baptisms (ages 12 to 17) in 2012, and 80 percent reported only one or zero baptisms among young adults (ages 18 to 29). One in four Southern Baptist churches reported zero baptisms overall in 2012, while the "only consistently growing" baptism group was children under five years old"  Christianity Today, May 2014.

If you are a Millennial, how would you advise the Church in joining you in being salt and light to your generation?  What do you wish the church would change  about itself to help you reach your peers?  What do you like about what your community of faith is proclaiming and demonstrating of the Good News of JESUS to your friends?  How would you advise an older group of people, far removed from your generation, to re-think or re-imagine how to be the church?

Millennials Trust One Another

Millennials: Trust No One But Twitter. 

They aren't believing = trusting  the message of institutions: the government, wall street and religious organizations. 

How will this influence the way organizations build trust with this generation?

Read more here:
http://t.co/9Qg4pUx3h0 via @drpeggydrexler

http://twitter.com/DanSchawbel/status/435523183962107904

So what you’re saying is we need hipper worship bands?”

Why are millennials leaving the church?

By Rachel Held Evans, Special to CNN

(CNN) – At 32, I barely qualify as a millennial.

I wrote my first essay with a pen and paper, but by the time I graduated from college, I owned a cell phone and used Google as a verb.

I still remember the home phone numbers of my old high school friends, but don’t ask me to recite my husband’s without checking my contacts first.

I own mix tapes that include selections from Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but I’ve never planned a trip without Travelocity.

Despite having one foot in Generation X, I tend to identify most strongly with the attitudes and the ethos of the millennial generation, and because of this, I’m often asked to speak to my fellow evangelical leaders about why millennials are leaving the church.

Armed with the latest surveys, along with personal testimonies from friends and readers, I explain how young adults perceive evangelical Christianity to be too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

I point to research that shows young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith, between science and Christianity, between compassion and holiness.

I talk about how the evangelical obsession with sex can make Christian living seem like little more than sticking to a list of rules, and how millennials long for faith communities in which they are safe asking tough questions and wrestling with doubt.

Invariably, after I’ve finished my presentation and opened the floor to questions, a pastor raises his hand and says, “So what you’re saying is we need hipper worship bands. …”

And I proceed to bang my head against the podium.

Time and again, the assumption among Christian leaders, and evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates – edgier music, more casual services, a coffee shop in the fellowship hall, a pastor who wears skinny jeans, an updated Web site that includes online giving.

But here’s the thing: Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances.

In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular.

Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. –precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.

We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against.

We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers.

We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation.

We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities.

We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers.

You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.

Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus.

Now these trends are obviously true not only for millennials but also for many folks from other generations. Whenever I write about this topic, I hear from forty-somethings and grandmothers, Generation Xers and retirees, who send me messages in all caps that read “ME TOO!” So I don’t want to portray the divide as wider than it is.

But I would encourage church leaders eager to win millennials back to sit down and really talk with them about what they’re looking for and what they would like to contribute to a faith community.

Their answers might surprise you.

Rachel Held Evans is the author of "Evolving in Monkey Town" and "A Year of Biblical Womanhood." She blogs at rachelheldevans.com. The views expressed in this column belong to Rachel Held Evans.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/27/why-millennials-are-leaving-the-church/

Posted with Blogsy

How These Two Groups of People are Tipping the Scale on Transportation

Transportation is changing.  In a city like Portland, it will change quickly.  It changes for a variety of reasons.  City planners, gentrification, our PREFERENCES--to name a few--will challenge the design of a city and therefore, reorient our thinking on how we move about the city.

Transportation will impact your church.  Count on it. In fact, it has already happened.  It is especially noticeable in the winter time around our fair city.  As the darkness looms around 4:00-4:30 for our NW long winter nights, older people are choosing not to drive after 4 p.m.  If you are in the suburbs and your Sunday night crowd is the driving elderly, chances are your Sunday night services are dwindling or being cancelled.  Why?  Because of a transportation issue.

In Portland,  two groups of people are influencing how transportation is being designed: Boomers and Millennials.  They are the largest population group in the city. Here is what we are learning:

The American Assocation of Retired Persons recently reported that as baby boomers move into retirement age and older, driving will continue to steadily decline as an option for getting around. And more and more seniors will increasingly depend on a variety of public transportation options. On the other end of the age spectrum, fewer teens, 20-somethings and early 30-somethigs are falling in love with the car culture. Fewer young people are getting their driver’s license. Researchers and various media report that between half and two-thirds of 18-year olds had their driving licenses in 2008; in 1983, more than 80 percent had their licenses. And they’re buying fewer cars. Millenials also don’t mind getting around by transit, walking or biking. Carpooling and even car-sharing is an acceptable alternative. Owning a car is not out of the question, so long as they do not have to spend so much of their income on a monthly payment. Millenials also prefer — even demand — a more urban lifestyle. They tend to want something different from the suburban way of life of their parents’ generation. Most young workers today want to live in a more urban setting.  

And more and more, too, Millenials are choosing to live alone (or with a dog). Thus, the trend is towards smaller and smaller households that demand less space. 

Want to learn more about this issue read here:
How Baby-Boomers and Millennials Might Be Tipping the Scale Toward Even More Active Transportation Use

Check out one of these books on the Urban environment:
Urban Loft Publishers