Many, when they switch jobs, will switch cities too, which means they’ll move to another church. Bruce Reyes-Chow, moderator of the 218th General Assembly and pastor of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco, often says he expects few who are in his congregation now to still be there in three years. That makes shared leadership — a welcoming of everyone’s gifts — a no-brainer.
But do many churches provide that kind of welcome?
Often, congregations take time before they’re willing to trust young adults with leadership. Let us get to know you, they say, and after a year or two we might think of putting you on a small committee. Maybe, in another year or two, you’ll graduate to a bigger committee. Then, after that …
By then, Merritt told a group of pastors in Kentucky recently, most of those 20-to-30-somethings will be gone — off to the next job, the next place, and maybe fed up with a church seemingly unwilling to share power with the young.
She spoke of serving on boards filled with people decades older than she was, folks who would talk for hours about “how to get young people involved.” Then, whenever she would make a suggestion, they’d invariably say something like, “Oh, that would never work!”
Through her writing and speaking engagements, Merritt, the associate pastor at Western Church in Washington, D.C., is trying to get congregations to think about the real lives of young adults today, the pressures and challenges they face, and to consider the implications of generational differences for the lives of congregations.
In this workshop, attendees helped make her point. She asked the ministers to think about some of the cultural and historical events that had shaped their own lives. What would some of the major influences be? Some talked about the Cuban missile crisis, or the November day when John F. Kennedy was killed, or watching the astronauts’ first steps on the moon. But others weren’t even born then.
A man in his 40s talked of growing up with “very angry heavy-metal music,” watching changes in the economy and in families, hanging out in video arcades. Another in his 40s spoke of absorbing the mistrust of the Watergate era, not the idealism of Kennedy’s Camelot.
A man in his 30s remembered the space shuttle Challenger exploding and the wave of technology washing over folks, the onset of cell phones and iPods and the Internet, bringing new ways of connecting and forming community.
Stereotypes and reality
Merritt described some of what life is like for adults in their 20s and 30s — what her research has uncovered and what she’s seen firsthand in her ministry.
The stereotype of young adults is “the loser son living in somebody’s basement, can’t hold down a job, can’t figure out a way to pay the rent, can’t get any stability,” she said. It’s “the person who can’t make it, so they move back in with their parents.”
The reality is more complicated, in part, driven by economics.
Job tenure. For those ages 24 to 34, the median job tenure is 2.7 years, Merritt said. Very few consider the idea of staying in one position for 20 or 30 years, as once was common. Today, the idea is “ … if you have a job, you’re probably looking for a job, because you don’t know how stable that job is.” Nearly one in three of those ages 19 to 29 have no health insurance.
Student debt. The cost of four-year public colleges increased 44 percent from 2001 to 2005, Merritt said. Many students graduate from college $35,000 or more in debt. That used to be the down payment on a house, she said. “That’s a huge chunk of change.”
Merritt’s responsibilities at her church include working with students from nearby George Washington University. She knows students there who attend school full-time, work several jobs, and will finish with $70,000 in debt. Even though they’re doing the best they can, “they really hate themselves that they’re in such debt,” Merritt said.
Housing prices. In urban areas, the median rents rose more than 50 percent from 1995 to 2002, Merritt said. As a result, many young people do share apartments or live with their parents. Financial stability can take longer to achieve.
Commitments. Young adults today generally wait longer to marry and have children. They’re in school longer; changes in contraception and sexual mores make it easier to postpone marriage without postponing sex. Many young adults want to be financially stable before they marry, Merritt said. And “there’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot of worry” about broken families.
What churches to try
We’ve all heard it: congregations saying they want to bring in more young families. So they’ll often start, Merritt said, by building programs for preschool and elementary-aged children.
But put yourself in the place of a young single adult who walks into that church, Merritt told the pastors.
“She walks into the church, and the first thing we want to do is sign her up for Sunday school and hand her a pledge card. She looks around and sees everything is geared to that young family. We’re saying something to her. We’re saying, ‘Where’s your husband? Where are your kids? Why aren’t you (financially) stable?’ … She gets that message at every family reunion, every time she goes home to talk to the parents. She gets that message loud and clear from our churches.”
While churches may not know what to do with young adults many of those in their 20s and 30s have “this huge, huge longing for spiritual things” as evidenced by the popularity of Elizabeth Gilbert’s recent book Eat, Pray, Love, according to Merritt.
Many young adults want a connection with God, a connection with the world, a connection with one another, she said. To fulfill that longing to “know and be known” — for a holistic, incarnational experience of faith and a sense of interconnectedness — congregations need to consider new models for ministry.
She also spoke of the customs and culture that individual congregations often develop, sometimes without realizing it, and how sometimes those customs don’t always translate well for newcomers.
One pastor said that at his church, many members of which are military retirees, things are done a certain way and “there’s no room for anyone else to come in. It’s difficult.”
But another pastor, from a church near a military base, said the turnover at his congregation is so high — often people are in-and-out in 18 months or less — that a constant flow of new ideas and new ways of doing things have become part of the culture.
Old models may need to re-evaluated in light of young adults’ needs.
At Western church, the traditional Wednesday night dinners, which have been held for decades, are in trouble, Merritt said. Many students don’t come because they’re in class or working. And many young adults said there’s no way they could leave work, pick up their children, and make their way through downtown Washington’s grid-locked streets for a dinner at 6 p.m. on a weekday. Many young professionals are still at work at 6 p.m.
Like it or not, Merritt said, change is coming. She spoke of “fluid re-traditioning,” being open to what could be.
What would happen if churches said, “‘Take it apart. Do whatever you want with this.’ … Imagine if we threw some kind of fire on this. It would be really interesting. I really think it’s the Holy Spirit moving,” she said.
As some congregations close down, as old traditions and customs fade away, new things are born — sometimes led by young adults who are used to a collegial, creative, connected way of working.
That can be painful — to let go of the old – but also “very exciting.”
