Reaching Millenials

I recently read an excellent article in "Worship Leader" magazine on understanding the "Millenial" generation and how they will influence worship in the church. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, "Millenials" are individuals who were born roughly between 1977 and 2000. Basically, this is the first generation of the new millenium who will contribute socially and economically to society.

The article is written by Donald E. Miller and Richard Flory of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. I encourage you to check out their website. They have done a tremendous amount of research in a variety of areas in the religious/cultural arena. These studies include the genocide in Rawanda and pentecostalism in the southern hemisphere, which happens to be one of the fastest growing religious movements in the world!

I wish I could link this article on Millenials...unfortunately Worship Leader does not offer an online edition of their magazine. You can purchase the September issue, which contains this article, individually for about $5. Since you probably don't want to buy the issue, I'll give you a few highlights from the article.


The main idea of the article is that culture is changing with the influence of the Millenial generation and if the church is going to reach them they a.) need to understand their world view and background and b.) need to adjust their strategy in how they will reach them. Here are some characteristics of Millenials:

• They percieve religion to be a choice and not an obligation.


• Religious labels, including denominational identifications, are relatively unimportant to them.


• They are typically tolerant of other peoples beliefs and, in fact, enjoy the variety of different religious practices that they see on campus (colleges & universities).


• Religious authority is internal rather than located in some external source, such as the hierarchy of a church.


• They see more value in religious experience than in a codified set of beliefs.


• They affirm the idea of being on a religious journey rather than embracing a static set of beliefs and practices.


• If they join a religious group, they are more interested in the authenticity of the people - their honesty, openness, and humility - than they are in an authoritarian presentation of the truth.


• They have no problem being eclectic in their religious taste, which sometimes includes creating their own hybrid religious identities.


• They want to make a difference in the world and therefore believe that religion should address issues of justice and equality.

(from Worship Leader, Sept, 2007)

Millenials take globalization as a matter of fact, they are more likely to be cynical of politics and religion than not. They have lived their entire lives with the reality that the U.S. is no longer the superpower that it used to be, which was underscored with the 9/11 terrorist attack. Millenials live with the reality of school shootings, the war in Iraq, hurricane Katrina and the Virginia Tech massacre. They are more technologically sophisticated than ever. However, because of this savvy they would rather communicate via text messaging than face to face.

How do we reach this generation? I don't think there are any quick and easy answers. But Miller and Flory suggest that the church will respond in one of four ways: 1.) As Appropriators - embrace the lates cultural fad, 2.) as Resisters - As the name suggests, they will ignore culture and embrace truth only, 3.) as Reclaimers - This group will embrace historical/liturgical practices of the Anglican & Orthodox church, and 4.) as Innovators - who will seek ways to "embody the message of Christianity in genuinely authentic ways that relate to culture."

It will be interesting to see how my own congregation responds and with which we will find ourselves best relating. This is a broad and complex issue and many of us Worship Minister/Leader types are going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to reach this generation in our worship serivces and congregations. Oh well, no one said ministry would be easy!

Too Big for Our Britches!

Understanding the holiness of God is probably close to impossible. Let's face it, comprehending anything about God is far above our abilities. A. W. Tozer (along with the help of the prophet Isaiah) does manage to help us understand just unholy we really are:

"The Moral Shock suffered by us through our mighty break with the high will
of heaven has left us all with a permanent trauma affecting every part of
our nature. There is disease both in ourselves and in our environment.

The sudden realization of his personal depravity came like a stroke from
heaven upon the trembling heart of Isaiah at the moment when he had his
revolutionalry vision of the holiness of God. His pain-filled cry, 'Woe is
me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in
the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eys have seen the King,
the LOrd of hosts,' expresses the feeling of every man who has discovered himself under his disguises and has been confronted with an inward sight of the holy whiteness that is God. Such an experience cannot but
be emotionally violent."

I have felt for some time that we do not take God's holy nature very seriously and would much rather think of Him as a benevolent grandfather than as the Almighty Creator of the universe. We create worship services that are meant to give us good "feeling" and we candy-coat the need for us to approach God with a contrite heart!

My fear is that we have trivialized our access to the throne room of God and turned our worship services and sanctuaries into theme parks with lots of rides for our kids and shows to entertain us and concessions for when we get hungry. We have been told to “…approach the throne of grace with confidence.” (Hebrews 4:16) However, there may be times that we may be just a little too bold for our own good...a little too big for our britches!

Tozer gives us a good reminder that our access must never be taken for granted. However, I do strongly believe that we do have that access! It's just not necessarily on our terms as we would like to think. It is God who reaches down in His omnipotence to our humanity, not the other way around. I am reminded of a quote from an article written by Shirley Guthrie's He says,

"But God’s transcendence means more than distance from us, his ‘beyondness’ or
‘aboveness’ in relation to our knowledge and experience and language. God
is so transcendent that he can transcend even his transcendence! He who is
above space and time cannot be excluded from space and time as if they were
impenetrable limits for him.”

Thank God for His "Holy" but loving transcendence!

Is this your Worship?

The videos from www.thechurchyouknow.com are entertaining, to say the least. However, they all make a point that often hits closer to the truth of our own church experiences than we would like to admit. These video segments have been around for awhile and you may have seen them, but in thinking about my last post and how we have the tendency to water down our worship, I think the following video is a good reminder of how not to worship!

You can check out all of their videos at www.thechurchyouknow.com.