What Millennials Think of Church.

For those of us who work in youth ministry, we oftentimes don’t want to deal with conflict.

We have enough conflict as it is, trying to balance our love for the teenagers, our relationships with their parents, our dedication to the parish priest, and the demands of our day jobs and family life.

Because of this, I can see there being a lot of running around with the “tyranny of the urgent”–being sidetracked from one fire to put out to another, working valiantly hard to ensure that each week there would be some itinerary to follow for the following week’s youth group meeting.

All the while, we are in a constant tug-of-war with the overwhelming culture. And the culture seems to be winning.

A New Survey Highlighting Millennials

Barna Group has released a new survey highlighting where millennials are currently at.

The Reporter does the autopsy.

“Among those who say church is not important, most are split between two reasons: two in five say church is not important because they can find God elsewhere (39 percent), and one-third say it’s because church is not personally relevant to them (35 percent),” the researchers reported. “One in three simply find church boring (31 percent) and one in five say it feels like God is missing from church (20 percent). Only 8 percent say they don’t attend because church is ‘out of date,’ undercutting the notion that all churches need to do for Millennials is to make worship ‘cooler.’”

We are living in a time where a lot of youth and young adults are failing to see the power of joining a community to worship together and to receive the Sacraments. For those of us who are Catholic, we believe that the Sacraments themselves are an act of worship that cannot be duplicated through online communities and personal prayer (as wonderful as those latter activities are).

I oftentimes wonder if we are shooting ourselves in the foot by having dynamic youth ministries, with tons of activities, only to fail to properly train youth to learn to worship alongside their older peers.

This was an area I had to learn the hard way, when I converted to Catholicism amongst my college-aged friends, only to move away and discover that the dynamic ministry to youth at my college was an outlier, not the norm.

(For the record, I did find a wonderful interdenominational young adult group in my new area, to sustain my friendships, but I also had to work hard to keep my newly discovered Catholic faith. Many of my then-Catholic friends happily succumbed to the pressures of jumping to another church altogether).

Failing to Ensure Community

Another part of the survey is pretty damning towards the Church’s reach of millennials.

“A significant number of young adults have deeper complaints about church. More than one-third say their negative perceptions are a result of moral failures in church leadership (35 percent). And substantial majorities of Millennials who don’t go to church say they see Christians as judgmental (87 percent), hypocritical (85 percent), anti-homosexual (91 percent) and insensitive to others (70 percent).”

This squares exactly with my own experience, when I found myself alone in a packed Sunday morning service. Families finding community amongst other families, boomers and greatest generations finding community amongst their age groups… and nary any age group amongst my own.

Of course there is a feeling of angst in comparison to others! Of course there should be some judgment on those whom you presume simply go to church “going through the motions.” Many youth and young adults have been touched by the fires of God’s love, only to then turn those fires towards others in their own parish, whom they cannot relate to.

Granted, a Sunday liturgy is prohibitive when it comes to fostering community, no matter how long the sign of peace is. We listen, we recite, we stand or sit, and we sing (or not). We don’t know each other any more than when we first enter.

A Question For You

Is there any way to turn this around?

I think there is. There most definitely is.

But I am curious… what are your thoughts on this crisis?

Please share below.