The Powers That Be

Mandy sat across from me with tears sliding down her cheeks. 

“I feel like Aaron and I are the only ones in our friend group who are investing in church,” she said.  Mandy and Aaron have been married for a few years. They got involved in a church when they were in college and they stayed invested. She made an appointment to talk with me about friends who had drifted from the church. And not because they stopped believing. Because they are disillusioned. 

“I’ve told them,” she said, “that if you want to make change, you have to get involved. You can’t just walk away.” It was breaking her heart that friends she thought shared the same love of Jesus Christ and his church were walking away. 

As I’ve spoken with Mandy and other young adults and college-age Christians, I’ve heard consistent reluctance to attach to local congregations. Some of it’s on them; they own it. It’s much easier to listen to a sermon while driving to work than it is to get out of bed on Sunday morning and go to church. It’s also incredibly hard to walk into a church where you don’t know anyone. But there are deeper things. Harder things. More controversial reasons why today’s young Christians hesitate to get involved or why they only stay a short time.  

As I’ve listened to them, their concerns can be roughly gathered into three categories: money (see “Called to Account,” CC Nov. 25), sex and power. These are old gods – Mammon, Eros, Mars. And our young adults are warning us that these old gods are seducing the church in ways that they find deeply troubling. The “rising generations” need the church to talk about hard things, because society is talking about them all the time and we cannot be silent. Let’s take a brief look at power.  

Whose voice really matters?
On Sunday mornings at your church, who’s up front? Is everybody over the age of 40? If week after week our younger members look up and see people not like them – their race, their age, their marital status – they’re going to think that their voice doesn’t count. If your elders get up to serve communion and every one of them is over the age of 50 and they all look “a type,” they’re going to think their voice doesn’t matter. If everyone chairing a committee at your church has been a member there forever, they’re going to think their voice doesn’t matter! And this is a generation for whom having a voice matters. They’ve had a voice since they’ve had a phone! They’ve been posting their thoughts all over the place. If they have a thought, they can express it. So what ways have we given them to speak into the church? What on-ramp is there for a 16-year-old who wants to be on the worship committee? How can we invite a 23-year-old to be a deacon? 

Last summer I had lunch with a bunch of colleagues and one of them, over the age of 50, said she was going to be installed as an elder that coming Sunday. And a millennial, 26, said “How long is that term?” and the elder said, “Three years.” And the millennial said, “Three years? I couldn’t do that for three years!” And she said that not because she’s flighty, but because so much in her life is unsettled. She’s well educated. She’s single. She’s a traveller. She has no idea what her life is going to look like in three years. Would she be a great elder? Yes! 

Are we willing to change some things up? If you look at your leadership teams, whose voice really matters? Because if the rising generations don’t think we’re going to listen to them, if they don’t think we can change anything, they are. If we aren’t ready to share power intentionally, creatively, and let the 20- to 30-year-olds shape the culture of our church, we won’t have 20- and 30- somethings in our church. The church isn’t for us. If my congregation sings songs I don’t like, I’m still fine. If the church does or does not move toward justice issues, I’m fine. The rising generations are not fine. We need to listen. Are we ready to share power? Are we ready to just give it up? And are we ready to look at how we are using our power in the world? Because the rising generations are not only watching how we share power with them in the congregation, they’re also watching how we use our power to speak to issues of justice in the world. 

How are we imitating Jesus?
In 2036 Canada will no longer be a majority white nation. In 2045 the United States will no longer be a majority white nation. The Christian Reformed Church of North America is a majority white church, for now. Some of us are members of totally white congregations. That means we don’t need to talk about race, right? We have the Office of Race Relations for that, and some congregations that are multicultural, right? 

Nope, that’s not enough anymore. 

When you start talking about race in your church, it shapes how those people begin to think and talk about race. And when they’re at the ball game, and at family gatherings, and on social media, they’re going to talk differently about race. Your congregation feels insular, but it is not insular. We have the ability now to influence many more people. “The conversation about race must happen in white churches if we want the conversation to change,” as David Swanson says. I asked my young alum Bible study, “If there’s a racial incident in the news Wednesday night and it’s not mentioned in church on Sunday morning, do you notice?” And to a person, they said yes – no matter their race. 

When we avoid speaking about race our children notice. The vision of the church in Revelation is a church of every tongue, tribe and nation. How did it get to be that way? Because the one who had all the power emptied himself for our sake. How are we emptying ourselves for the sake of anti-racism? How are we imitating Jesus when it comes to race? 

I would be remiss in my duties as an ambassador between generations if I did not also say that our rising generations are deeply troubled about the way that white evangelical Christians in the States have aligned themselves with certain political individuals. They understand the differences in political philosophies. They understand the differences in policies. They’re talking about the alignment that certain Christians have made with the power of empire, and that never goes well for the church. They are watching as Christian leaders defend behaviors that they could never get away with! They are watching, listening and learning; they are saying, “Where’s the witness? Are we citizens of the Kingdom or citizens of a country?” 

When the church says nothing
The rising generation notices when the church says nothing about immigration or sexism or abuse. When the least of these are invisible in our worship, in our council rooms, our prayer rooms and in our sermons, young adults assume – rightly or wrongly – that if these things are not mentioned in the church, then the church does not care.  

What does it mean to say that I’m a follower of Jesus? What does it mean to talk about hard topics even when you disagree? That’s why I’m excited for the future of the church! Because the next generations are asking us to answer the most important questions. They’re not wringing their hands over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. They’re asking us if following Jesus makes a difference! They’re asking that because they want it to! They want discipleship to make a difference in them and in their friends and in their church and in the world! 

The rising generations are calling us to account for how we live and talk about money, sex and power, because they learned it from us, and we learned it from Jesus. We can get excited – not because these young people want to join a church but because they want to follow Jesus and are asking for our help. What could be more exciting than that?