Millennial’s & Church

As a Millennial and someone who has walked away from what we’ve come to know as “church”, Rachel Held Evans post on “Why Millennial’s are Leaving the Church” struck a nerve in me. With 153,000 likes on FB, it seems that it has struck a chord in many others too.

It’s really not much of a secret. Millennial’s are leaving the local Church in droves. With 61% of protestants between the ages of 18-30 have dropped out of church, 57% since the age of fifteen have significantly lowered their involvement with the Church (David Kinnaman, You Lost Me).

As many are beginning to realize that the church has become exclusively repressive, ironically, millennial’s (not just) are deeming this intolerable, and leaving, while denominations are shrinking, and the american church at large is dying. Though the problem is not that we as millennial’s are leaving, the problem is that the church is not changing.

Many are reading the bible and seeing this Jesus who looks completely different than our pastors, and seeing these disciples that look nothing like our friends who call themselves followers. If Christianity means shunning our LGBT friends, oppressing females, ignoring science, and focussing more on rules and laws than on the person Jesus, we don’t want to take part in that.

As Rachel points out, it comes down to one thing, it’s that, “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.”

You see I’m convinced that Jesus is not a politically charged, white, authoritarian, male that is racist, anti-feminist, and who focusses mostly on abortion, and homosexuality, all while lacking any acknowledgment of the poor.

Plainly put, I don’t believe the American Jesus is the true Jesus.

Though I must admit, it makes sense why we worship a false Jesus, considering many of our american seminaries, relatively not too long ago, just began letting “people of color” into their schools, while a handful still don’t deem it appropriate for women to be admitted. I can’t help but wonder if many seminary’s in the early 1900’s would have even admitted the historical Jesus. To take it even further, in our present day, I doubt many Churches in the states would hire Jesus, or if conferences would bring Jesus into speak, main stage (well – maybe if they didn’t already have another minority booked, too soon?).

Jesus is the exact opposite of this American Jesus… I believe Jesus was a dark skinned, male, that spent a majority of his time with the marginalized and oppressed, who focussed and loved on those that the religious condemned and isolated.

“Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.” – Jesus to the “religious elite” (Matthew 21:31, ESV)

[As millennial’s] We don’t want a religiosity that’s just worth living for, we want a Jesus that’s worth dying for. We don’t want a programmatically driven church (lower case “c”) we want the Kingdom.

“The longer you look at Jesus, the more you will want to serve him in his world. That is, of course, if it’s the real Jesus you’re looking at. Plenty of people in the church and outside it have made a up a ‘Jesus’ for themselves, and have found that this invented character makes few real demands on them. He makes them feel happy from time to time but doesn’t challenge them, doesn’t suggest they get up and do something about the plight of the world. Which is, of course, what the real Jesus had an uncomfortable habit of doing.” – N.T. Wright

That same God that the apostles encountered, that caused them to go throughout the first century and live out a type of faith, that ignited a movement throughout the entirety of the first century to this present day, we want that.

Though, If this is what we want, then this is what we must become. Millennial’s, we’re not the future of the Church, we’re the present day Church. Us, doing nothing, and being silent is just as hypocritical as what we believe the church to be doing. So may we not only deny this Americanized version of Jesus but may we become more like the historical version of Jesus, and do “even greater things than He” bringing the kingdom here on earth as it is in Heaven.

What are your thoughts on this issue, millennial or not?