Indiana Bishop Mike Coyner has spend a lot of time with youth in the last few weeks.
He shared his observations in a recent e-mail to the conference:
+ They are very enthusiastic about their faith, about Jesus, and even about the future of The United Methodist Church.
+ They are very serious about the Christian faith being fun, by which I mean they love to have serious conversations about faith issues, but they believe that being a Christian is fun, joyful, and exciting – not dull and boring.
+ They take diversity and acceptance of everyone for granted, and they don’t understand why the rest of us “old-timers” still struggle so much with issues that divide us.
+ They long to make a difference in the world, and they will be a part of any Christian group or congregation which is making a difference. Of course the contrary is also true: they don’t want to play church and just do “church stuff” which is not making a difference. So things like hands-on mission trips and personal sharing are attractive to them.
+ They are very respectful with competent leadership (no matter how young or old those leaders might be), but they are not very patient with incompetent leaders who try to be their “buddies.”
+ They are very Jesus-centered, are eager to learn more about Jesus, and delight in singing about Jesus. This is not to say that they fail to grasp the Trinitarian aspects of our faith, but the Jesus stories and teachings make the most sense to them.
+ They wonder if the church leaders (especially the Baby Boomer leaders of the church) are really ready to accept them, to allow them to lead, and to share power and authority with them. They have seen how selfish many of us Baby Boomers are, even while we talk about “empowerment” and sharing. In fact, many of the youth are more positive about the elderly members of the church, because they sense an integrity and acceptance from those faithful veterans which is attractive.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
This love we believe to be the medicine of life, the never-failing remedy for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of men. Wherever this is, there are virtue and happiness going hand in hand. There is humbleness of mind, gentleness, long-suffering, the whole image of God; and at the same time a peace that passeth all understanding, and joy unspeakable and full of glory.
“They take diversity and acceptance of everyone for granted, and they don’t understand why the rest of us “old-timers” still struggle so much with issues that divide us. . . they are very Jesus-centered, are eager to learn more about Jesus, and delight in singing about Jesus. This is not to say that they fail to grasp the Trinitarian aspects of our faith, but the Jesus stories and teachings make the most sense to them.”
I think tells us volumes about the changes coming to North American Christianity. Jesus is cool, doctrine isn’t. Jesus = relevant and spiritual, doctrine = rules (and rules are bad). Never mind that the Jesus of the gospels had no problem passing judgment on some and yet was loving of all. Actually, we’re seeing these changes already.
What always frustrates me with things like this is that they unfailingly carry the subtext “and therefore the church ought to be the way the young people want it to be.” I think there are important theological discussions to be had on the issue of “making a difference” vs “church stuff,” on the problems of making the faith all about “fun, joy, and excitement,” on how “taking diversity and acceptance for granted” opens up its own blind spots, etc. The perspective of young people is a mixed bag, like the perspective of any generation, and I wish there were a little more awareness of that in statements like this. As a young person preparing for ordination in the church I would love to see a little more criticism of the perspective of the younger generation, rather than simply a statement of their likes and dislikes and a tacit chastisement of the church for not conforming to them. I talk to so many older members and leaders in the church who it seems have almost been taught that their own piety is second rate because it does not match what young people want and that ought not to be. There is no need to open up these fissures between us, which is what this subtle rhetoric of praising some generations and condemning others; sin, which is common to the young and the old alike, opens plenty of fissures of its own that need to be named and combated. We are one people of God: it is the world that wants to decisively separate us into young and old, as it wants to separate us so many other ways.
Thank you for your perspective, Charles. I think you hit on some crucial issues.
I was in a discussion with a group of young Methodists and tossed out a list of names from Mother Theresa to Hitler and asked them if they thought these people were in heaven or hell. For the ones they said were in heaven I asked them why and they all said “because they were good people who did a lot of good things”. For the hellbound substitute bad for good and you can guess what they said. This group was composed of young people between 18 and 24.