Uh-Oh, there is a rumor going around that young adults are dropping out of church. If it is true, why would it surprise anyone? For the last twenty years they have witnessed bad changes in their parents…who attend church every week. And, has anyone checked out the social sites lately? The rise of social communications has allowed young adults to discover that, in fact, there were millions of others who are also dissatisfied with the same things they are. Isn’t that what the 2009 election told us?
If anyone wants to understand young adults, tell them to check out Obama’s campaign strategy. The turnout for President Obama was the clearest message ever sent to churches, parents, politicians and the education system in the history of the United States. And what I find most remarkable about it is that the only thing Obama’s people did was give them an opportunity to say what they thought ought to be changed and then invite them to help do it. In other words, Obama’s campaign managers brought them into the process. More than any other group in the United States, young adults are responsible for his election.
What conservative Republicans should have learned is that American politics is a very close cousin to American churches. The same kind of zealous radicalism one finds in religion, one also finds in politics because both are generally controlled by charismatic leaders more so than those possessing good leadership skills. That’s why if I was a preacher, the most important thing I would worry about is just how much is true about what I am told in the seminaries of every faith!
I think young adults know that two and two is four. They know about the many contradictions between sermons and scriptures. They know about the outrageous statements made by supposedly religious people like those of the conservative Republicans. That’s why I think young adults are dropping out; no one is able to answer a simple question. They want to know why worship is not just a matter of a person raising their face to heaven because God is in all of us. They want to know why a preacher wears a costume in the pulpit. They want to know why there are so many preachers who aspire to so much materiality while preaching about a Messiah who did not even have a fox hole. They want to know why it states in the Bible that Jesus said he came for the poor whom he found rich in faith yet; every church aspires to lavish surroundings.
If the church wants to reclaim them, it had better change. It had better adopt an agenda to wipe poverty off the face of the earth. It had better learn to love every human being on earth as though they were members of their own family…because they are! And if these words seem harsh, the church had better re-read the words spoken by Jesus so they can tell me where I have said anything that is not true. And it had better do these things in a hurry!
