WHY MORE THAN EITHER/OR
About the author:
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6. This has been a mysterious verse for me during my adulthood. A study* published by Lifeway Research revealed that 70% of 18-22 year olds left the church for at least a year in 2007. These are Millennials, my friends and my generation. If we were trained up in the way we should go, why did we (or at least 70% of us) depart from it? Even temporarily? A wise woman once said that perhaps it’s not the child who departs from the instruction, but rather the instruction never leaves the child. Even when he or she is old, the instruction stays with the person. Most of us can relate to this if we can pinpoint something we were taught as a child. Something that left an impression, whether it had a positive or negative impact on us, something from which we can not be separate; something that will not depart from us.
Reading that verse and looking at my generation, I wonder how it’s possible that so many of us do depart from how we were raised, especially when I know how powerful a relationship with Jesus is. People leave churches and abandon faith for a very wide variety of reasons. I’d like to focus on one: What the well-meaning and seemingly healthy church communities have done (or refrained from doing) to cultivate an environment that is not suitable for the growth and continued involvement of young adults who were raised in the church.
I was raised in the church, and was one of the 30% who stayed through my teens and early twenties. Now that I’m in my mid thirties and have matured into adulthood, processed my experience, and attempted to understand the shift that happened, I hope to be able to help other Millennials be confident in their faith and place in church communities. While I desire to honor my parents through the process of deconstructing what I learned in my lifetime, some of what I believe and have opinions about are critical of what they believed to be best and good and right as they raised me. I want to be clear that I had an idyllic childhood and overall credit my parents with the solid foundation in the Word and the faith that I find myself standing on today. Going through the reconstruction process after dissecting what I was taught and what I believe, I find myself using the term “our parents” when referring to the generation and Christian culture norms of that time but do not necessarily think my parents are to blame or automatically assume that they would even agree with many of those norms. So to the reader, my parents, and anyone who knows them, please read “our parents” as “the generation who raised us”. And let your parents know how much you appreciate them.
These Christian culture norms, like separating one’s family from worldly behavior and attitudes by disengagement, was seen as a crucial action of self-preservation. While at the time there may have been good reasons for that, many Bible believing Millennials have seen a shift in the American Church and Christian culture that began with a spirit of fear of the world. It has grown to elevate and emphasize parts of scripture while deemphasizing others, creating an unbalanced worldview and a church that doesn’t always resemble Jesus. Millennials currently have a unique vantage point. We are now well into adulthood and have become the leaders and influencers. The ability to implement new systems and structures, or maintain and preserve the old, is ours. Those of us who love God and desire to honor Him are setting the pace and tone based on personal conviction, the Word of God, and how we were trained up in the way we should go. Because of this vantage point, when churches and Christians depart from that way, we notice.
*https://lifewayresearch.com/2019/01/15/most-teenagers-drop-out-of-church-as-young-adults/
Photo attribution: https://unsplash.com/@peterconlan