In my post THE BLACK CHURCH SHOULD BE COMPETING WITH THE NIGHT CLUB, I expressed my opinion on the disconnect between young folks and old church traditions…
Young folks are seeking a church experience that totally focuses on the needs and desires of their generation. These experiences aren’t being hatched by the Baby Boomers leading most churches today. There needs to be a movement of youth church leadership creating the new church experience for Generation X’er, Millennials, and the Gen Z’ers coming up behind them.
Maybe, in the first time in human history, old folks and young folks won’t be worshiping together. What the young folks are creating as a church experience looks nothing like what the church has been running with since almost forever. Is that a bad thing or is this the way it’s going to be from now on?
Old folks mistake the absence of young people in church as the absence of young folks seeking God. Many young folks seek God but can’t stand the Sunday morning church services run by people their grandparent’s age. They can’t relate to the music, the message, the rituals and standards. They form no sense of community with anyone in the congregation since most of them are older. It doesn’t take long before they seek another church they can relate to or quit all together because all churches seem the same.
Today, I learned PBS is airing a two-part documentary “The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song” hosted by Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. on Tuesday and Wednesday (2/16-17) on PBS at 9 p.m.
In a Washington Post interview today, they asked producer Stacey Holman…
Q: “So many young Black people are choosing to live spiritual lives rather than practicing organized religion. How do you think that affects the Black church?”
His response…
A: “I think just that word “organized” sounds strict and stringent. A lot of the rules and regulations feel like constraints to a younger generation. And a lot of the older people who are running some of these churches are kind of stuck in tradition. Anything new and fresh seems too worldly or doesn’t seem like it’s honoring or respectful to traditions that the church has had for years after years. And there are churches that are so young that they don’t have the elders and the wisdom that you get from your older generations. So I think it’s really just a lack of people opening up and saying maybe there’s a middle ground where we can meet. In a sense, both are missing out on an incredibly rich growth experience through faith and community.
Looks like we’re on the same page. What’s your opinion?
Churches seems to be less purposeful, there are more resources and outlets for us all it seems. Todays churches are more Pastor oriented that God or community oriented to me, and yes our youth seek a more multi faceted multidimensional church experience and those type of roles roles in that church experience. Young people have questions too, that can be seen as “strange fire” in a lot of our traditional church venues.
Oh, my. This is surely a question/issue that all traditional faith communities are facing. I have had more meaningful spiritual experiences when I was working with the mentally challenged homeless men and women living on the streets of Philadelphia and with the men and women who had advanced stages of AIDS in Delaware who were also homeless. They became my spiritual mentors. Creating community anywhere is a spiritual experience that should be filled with sharing and supporting one another. No one person should have the pulpit. It isn’t so much a matter of age as it is a lack of imagination and creativity. There is hope as long as we keep building communities that care and communities that are empowered to make a difference . We don’t need a building to to make that happen rather a space to celebrate that it is happening.
Amen and I’m looking forward to the upcoming PBS DOCUMENTARY this week. Religion and its roots have been the central focus of the world since the beginning of time. My maternal and paternal grandparents, my parents, and extended family members conveyed and instilled their religious beliefs about the importance of God and religion during my earlier years as a child.
When my maternal grandmother couldn’t attend church due to her severe arthritis, she would make sure that my brothers, cousins, and I continued the family tradition of attending weekly church services. In addition we also attended choir rehearsals during the middle of the week and Bible School prior to church service every Sunday morning.
I vividly recall my grandmother giving my cousin an envelope with money for her weekly TITHES. She also gave each one of us money for our tithes and an extra quarter for us to purchase a snack from the local store during our thirteen blocks journey back home. The store was also a pharmacy.
These early childhood memories and weekly rituals were non-negotiable in my family. The entire family attended church and my parents attended church on the weekends when they did not have to work.
As a young child it was somewhat difficult for us to grasp the true purpose of the church’ and its connection to God’s words. Many years later this particular subject and my personal belief in God’s mercy is the best thing that I have learned from my family and the churches that I have attended during my lifetime. I am not perfect by any means; for we all have and will continue to fall short of God’s mercy. What’s really important for me is to keep my HEART and SOUL PURE before I depart these earthly shores. ,,AND I TRULY BELIEVE THAT GOD’S WORD IS GOD’S PROMISE TO THOSE OF US WHO BELIEVE IN HIS OMNIPRESENT BEING..
“Organized Religion” gets a bad rap because of some very bad apples. What always impresses me about members of the Black community and of the Black church, specifically, is the tradition of connecting, and connecting at a higher level than just personal — connecting with great purpose. We often learn philosophy first in the form of religion. And the youth can learn deep connection with purpose through models found in the church. I know there are youths seeking both deep thought and deep connection. And, as you say, the church needs to market itself better.
the 16th is not a Wednesday. Correction? Thanks.
I agree. Wednesday is the 17th. What’s there to correct?
A confession:
I am a white woman, 57 years old. I was raised in the rural area 23 miles outside of Rust-Belt Buffalo, NY. No church was within walking distance. My parents were city kids. My father wanted to be a Boy Scout so he attended church every Sunday, on his own. My mother was sent to Sunday School so my grandparents could do whatever and have a vicious fight afterwards, every Sunday.
Where I grew up, our neighbors were Polish Catholic. I asked why we didn’t go to church and I was told, “We’re Protestant.” That worked for a while. Kids and their questions!
I was told I was baptized as a Lutheran. My sisters and I catalogued our parents’ effects after Mom’s death in 2019: we found that my mother was confirmed into a Presbyterian church, and only my oldest sister was ever baptized, into Grandma’s Lutheran church an hour away.
I had an epiphany on November 25, 2019, when I delivered the presentation “Economic Feasibility of Preserving Historic Properties” at the monthly meeting of the Delaware County Historical Preservation Network (DCHPN).
It got mixed response. Dan Campbell AIA, Historic Preservation Architect, came up afterwards to complement my presentation. The Delaware County Planning Department, who asked me to do this assignment, was ticked off because I failed to mention a key statistic in the Planning Department catechism. I chose to omit the statistic because my technical training alerted me to cherry-picked data. On close inspection, it appeared to me to be one of those supporting statistics that might be put forth by the Daughters Of The Confederacy. That’s not me. That I should publicly observe that Planning Department personnel across the country are willfully blind and dumb: is that my bailiwick, or should I render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s?
Through my research, I learned that the only way any US church building can remain standing, regardless of its historical status, is for it not to be vacated. Period. Want to save a historically-important, architecturally imaginative building in your community? Plant yourself in the pew and put your money in the plate, every week. Philosophize all you wish, but this is the Reality of the situation. Don’t believe in God? Observe Reality and The Connectedness of Everything, then act on that observation.
At the tender age of 57, I was baptized and became a member of PCUSA and of one of those local landmark churches, whose small, aging congregation nevertheless puts forth a mighty effort. I’ve learned how to use a lectionary, and read on those days when COVID or ice on the roads precludes public services. And I understand that my presence is needed to keep the structure up.
Pillar of the Community isn’t just a turn of phrase. It’s a reality. What sort of pillar is the question, so I’ve decided not to be a cockeyed telephone pole strung with a dozen abandoned TV cables. I show up, and I drop my money in the plate.