What Millennials Want When They Visit a Church

As part of strategic planning for Brighton First, a task force created by the Administrative Board has been studying Brighton area demographic information and reading literature concerning trends in church participation.

The Barna Group is one source for up-to-date information concerning religious trends in American Society. Recently, I read the brief article What Millennials Want When They Visit. The Millennial Generation includes those who were born (approximately) between the late 1970's and early 2000's. I expected to read about formats for worship, high tech innovations and coffee shops on church campuses. I was surprised by the Barna Group findings.

Millennial survey respondents said that church was not important in their lives because they can find God elsewhere (39%) or that the church is not personally relevant to them (31%). The survey found that 1/3 of Millennials find church boring and 20% feel like God is missing from the church.

Surprisingly, only 8% called the church "out of date". This suggests that working to include Millennials in our worshipping community will not be accomplished by a series of technical fixes like painting the walls, changing the furniture or finding just the right worship songs. The Barna Group study indicates that there are fundamental cultural hurdles to overcome. Societal assumptions about the church are the biggest roadblock with Millennials.

Many feel alienated from the church due to moral failures within the church. Respondents who don't attend church offered several reasons that indicate overall negative perceptions of the church: Judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), anti-homosexual (91%) and insensitive to others (70%).

It occurs to me that young adults, based on this survey and other findings of the Barna Group, are not going to make the first move to seek out a church. Based on the negative perceptions, what would motivate a young adult to seek out a church?  

The only effective way to reach young adults is through personal relationship. If Millennials are meeting Christians who do not match the negative stereotypes, they will see a different picture of the church and the church's faithful congregations.

I am asking myself today, what impression do I, as a professing Christian, leave with the young adults that I meet? Am I open  to who they are? Do I show care and concern? Do I really care about their lives and their futures? And if I do,  how am I demonstrating that?