Making the church younger
The United Methodist Council of Bishops has declared that youth are the future. The bishops want to lead the UMC to reduce the average age of its membership by 10 years in the next 10 years. That would mean the UMC’s average age would be 47 in 2019.
This sparks two thoughts.
First, I’ll be 52 in 2019, so I suppose I can help the cause by leaving when I turn 47. I’m just a grumpy, old middle-aged white guy, so please ignore my pettiness.
Second, does the first step toward doing this have to be “hire an outside consultant”? Haven’t when been there and done that over and over again?
If we want to grow the young church, let’s get some money together, gather up some young people with a passion for God, pay their rent, food, and school bills and send them out like the old circuit riders to preach and organize the young people. Why do we need to grind them up in seminary first? Lay preachers and lay organizers worked in colonial America. Why not in the 21st century.
Some of them will fail horribly. Some of them will catch fire. If we support and watch over them, they may create a whole new United Methodist movement under our feet. It will look nothing like what we would plan – we old people.
When Wesley went out to the underserved proto-industrial areas to preach the gospel, he did all kinds of things the respectible people did not like, but look what fruit he bore.
Let’s find some young people who love God with a passion and set them loose.
Excellent!
I also wonder if they have taken account of the fact that the population generally is ageing. Or at least that was one report over here that I heard about. Maybe it’s different in the US.
I don’t recall the stats at the moment, but the trend is that the population is aging but the church is aging even faster.
How about a bishop who reflects the age group they hope to reach? Is that radical or what?
That would be radical. Who could we nominate?
Andrew Conard, of course.
Personally this whole “skewing younger” initiative seems a bit half-baked. As was pointed out, the nation is actually skewing older.
From a sheer membership perspective, we ought to be working with what we have, not fantasizing about hitting the MTV crowd and paying consultants tons of money for who knows what value they will deliver. From where will these young people come? Who are they? Why should they come to the UMC? What will they find when they come in?
If any of these consultants are worth their money, they will tell our leadership that where young people are numerous, invite them and shape the ministerial focus to accommodate them. Where older folks are more numerous, invite them and shape the ministerial focus around them. Where immigrants have come to dominate an area, invite them and shape the ministerial focus around them! Any national cookie cutter solution mapped out on a powerpoint slide will be a waste of our apportionment money.
Over the next twenty to thirty years, a large percentage of the American population will be in various stages of growing old, retiring and dying. The ones who retire will have time on their hands, some retirement money to spend, tithe or donate, and will be looking for a place to feel at home. As people reach their later years, the whole meaning of life thing comes to the forefront, especially from a religious perspective.
Anyone with half a brain ought to see that the majority of coming opportunities for ministry will be inviting seniors who have left the church back to their childhood homes. We ought to prepare ministries of reconciliation, end of life counseling, grieving, and moving on with renewed relationships.
None of this is to say that we ought to ignore younger people. But these young folks our leadership is trying to reach aren’t in the world all by themselves. They have parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts all who will be facing some tough life issues in the next few decades. If we care for older folks well, chances are they will pull their younger ones in with them. At the very least, these young folks will know where their older loved ones happily spent their last years.
I agree: half-baked sounds about right, just like my opinion of a great many initiatives passed down from “on high” in our denomination.
John –
So the headline I read said they want to make the UMC younger. Seems to me the idea ought to be that we help younger generations know Jesus. The difference is that one is about us, the other is about them. Institutional survival is the driving force in our church right now – not proclaiming the gospel and seeking to bring light into the darkness of people’s lives. We are focused on the things we can measure by our own metrics. The spiritual faithfulness of the church cannot be determined by those same metrics.
Whether the population is getting older or younger is irrelevant to those who long to see others find the life we know comes in and through Jesus Christ. They simply do whatever it takes to proclaim Jesus – grace and forgiveness and freedom and life abundant.
Mike,
Thank you for the comment. You make an interesting observation.
What metrics would you use?
Well, if we’re talking about being fruitful – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control?
Can they be measured? Only by God. Can they be fostered and managed? Only by the Holy Spirit. What that means is our faithfulness to God and openness to the Spirit is our main concern. There is no program, seminar, or app that can bring it about, either.
Discipleship is about proclamation, worship, and holiness – which, in my opinion, is fostered through personal accountability, not corporate accountability.
I’m not against reporting the numbers, I just think focusing on them leads us toward survival mode and not kingdom mode. How about this for a headline – “UM Bishops see opportunity to reach the younger generations for Jesus”