If you're a congregation with older members...

[Lamb]

If you're a congregation with older members... how did you draw in younger people?

 

[Albion]

We seem to have been lacking religious topics lately, and I was wondering to myself what subjects would be good to raise. I'm happy to see that you served up a worthy and timely one.

This problem is undeniably critical for congregations and parishes across the spectrum! However, I don't know what a good approach actually is, and I've witnessed my home church try a variety of approaches. Some work for a while, but only for a while, and most of the approaches don't work at all.

At the same time, I suspect that there are some changes that might work, but they apply to the kind of Christian churches that ours is not. I'm thinking of bands, slappy-happy songs that are unlike any traditional hymns, ministers who dress like the average teenager on a typical day, etc.

And then there's the matter of doctrine. We're not "Bible-belters" but we affirm the inspiration of Scripture and make frequent use of it, as one might expect. Plenty of young people, though, seem to find all of that to be technicalities and rather oppressive.

It's a problem that may not have a ready answer.

 

[tango]

If you're a congregation with older members... how did you draw in younger people?

It's tricky to see how the church can stay "relevant" (whatever that means today) without losing sight of the core mission.

One church not far from where I live is the same as it was 40 years ago. Nothing changes except the members get older. Young people raised in the church may stay but will probably move to a different church. New people moving to the area from the same denomination may visit. But aside from that the members grow old and die, and as they do so does the church.

Sometimes I think churches try too hard. It's hard not to cringe seeing middle-aged people trying to speak like teenagers to "stay relevant", without any sense of irony at all.

At the same time there's nothing wrong with becoming more modern. Expecting people to dress a certain way excludes people for no reason, refusing to sing any song written less than 100 years ago seems unnecessary, and so on. At the same time a lot of modern songs are just mindlessly repetitive drivel that are either all about me or theologically empty (or simply wrong). There's no reason we can't use instruments that aren't pipe organs.

It's easy to become a group that gets very comfortable and then refuses to change anything because it's just how we like it. It's also easy to get so desperate to attract a certain crowd that we lose sight of the fact we're supposed to be offering them something they can't get at the pubs and clubs.

 

[Albion]

Sort of like "What's so great about the US Constitution? It's old and hasn't changed much. But that "world government" idea, along with some of the updating Karl Marx proposed...that's attractive and modern." Right?

Well, no. That was sarcasm, of course, but the point is that what worked and was good in the first place maybe shouldn't be replaced.

For the sake of clarity, the question of this thread might need to be reworded to ask how to attract the young people who are open to believing in God and his work and in Jesus' teachings. Those who are willing to consider a church only so long as it agrees with all the secular values they already buy into really aren't the ones that the churches need to attract, and you cannot build a Christian church for the future on such as those.