The worship engagement of Missing Millennials in existing
worshipping communities continues to hover
around 4%, 5% on a good day. As I
have begun engaging those who stayed (remained somewhat active and engaged in a
local church) with those who strayed (left the church), and those who never
played (never made church part of their lives) I have found some interesting
categories among the “strayers” and the “never players.” They seem to fall into
one of three categories: the anti-spiritual, who believe spirituality and
church are essentially a waste of time; the pseudo-spiritual, who in some way
create their own personalized faith system that may only make sense to them;
and the spiritually apathetic, who really just don’t care one way or the other.
Anti-spiritual
Almost a decade ago Jesse Ventura made the headlines when he
said, “Christianity is for wimps.” People of faith, offended and defensive,
quickly paraded Christian athletes, weightlifters, and bikers to prove that
“real men love Jesus.” Regardless of what you think of Mr. Ventura, he was
expressing a sentiment that I have found underneath the surface for many young
adults, that is that spirituality, of any kind, is a waste of time. They don’t
really care if you believe as long as you don’t expect them to adhere to any
religious tenets or fundamentalist belief system. Though probably not all the
way over to an atheist mindset, these neo-agnostics assume that God may have wound
up the clock and set it free or, if there is a God (or gods), god is too busy
for the likes of us. Why bother wasting time with the intangible when the real
world is hard enough to understand?
Pseudo-spiritual
The pseudo-spiritual cobbles together a belief system with
components and elements from all sorts of faith traditions. Some forgiveness
from Jesus, some self-awareness from Buddha, maybe some Hindu dietary
practices, with a side order of meditation to round out their spiritual life.
They don’t feel the need to create any form of systemic belief system or
establish any rules of practice, they just adopt what they like, and jettison
the rest. Spirituality is about creating inner peace and feeling good about
yourself, anyway, isn’t it?
Spiritually Apathetic
The spiritually apathetic seem to be an interesting hybrid
between the anti-spiritual and the pseudo-spiritual. My conversations with
these young people reveal that they were probably active at some time in their
life but when they became less active, and eventually completely disengaged,
they really didn’t miss it. They don’t really mind attending Christmas Eve
worship with their parents or showing up at Easter to keep grandma happy, but
in actuality they just spiritually don’t care. The most troublesome part of
this group is that at one time in their life they cared very much about their
faith journey but as they matured they realized that the complexities of life
were not answered by the simplistic Sunday School religion they were taught. The
world did not fit into simple categories so they simply grew apathetic assuming
that if they ever needed a church it would be there but essentially not caring
if it was there or not.
Until we realize that these young adults aren’t coming back
just because they get a little older and then decide to engage them in
authentic, agenda-free relationships, we will continue to struggle with why
they are missing from our pews and our lives. I want to challenge you to build
a relationship, a friendship, with some one who is anti-spiritual,
pseudo-spiritual, or spiritually apathetic, not to get them into the church,
but to let them into your life so that their voice can resonate in your heart
and perhaps, together, we can discover how to communicate with the missing millennials.
