With 3 million young people leaving the church each year, faith leaders are resorting to highly unusual tactics in an effort to regain their divorced congregates. Instead of building a McDonald’s church, as one group has suggested, perhaps we should explore less gimmicky avenues of engaging these dissociated assemblages by speaking on more relevant social issues such as climate action.
Recent polls suggest that 50% of young voters consider the environment to be of paramount concern; so why are only 30% of clergy leaders discussing climate change? Young people are desperately searching for scriptural guidance that will reconnect them to God’s creation - providing religious leaders with a rare opportunity to offer deeper insights on God’s beautiful pairing of humanity and nature.
An article from The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission entitled, Simple Ways Your Church Can Keep and Reach Millennials, gives clear and concise methods to increase church attendance without folding to the pressure of flashy gimmicks. For more on how to build a Path-to-Positive message that will get people back in the pews, checkout out our daily blog for tips and news!
Simple Ways Your Church Can Keep and Reach Millennials
By Dean Inserra for The Ethics and Religious Libert Commision
It seems that everywhere we look in the pop Christian blogosphere, someone is talking about Millennials. The conversation is usually focused on what these Millennials want and how the local church can reach them.
For example, in a September article on their website, Barna Research Group offered new survey findings to produce "5 Ways to Connect with Millennials.” As a pastor of a church that reaches over 1,000 Millennials each Sunday, I personally believe the vast conversation focused on Millennials is a little overblown. It has become more of a content-generating selling point than actually helping us come any closer to reaching Millennials.
Two issues we’re facing:
My suggestion is that we not make this generation so complicated. There are some simple truths we need to understand about the Church and Millennials, but once we know them, we should not overcomplicate how Millennials are reached and connected to the local Church.
There are two glaring issues the Church is facing with Millennials:
1. We need to keep those Millennials who are in the Church.
2. We need to reach the ones who are not.
