THE CHURCH AND YOUNG ADULTS

How do we attract young people into our churches?

I suggest to you that this question has already been answered.

In Newcastle Upon Tyne the only congregations that are still gaining young members are evangelical and fundamentalist and I expect this is the same throughout the world. What is it about these churches that make them so attractive to an age group that really should be rebelling against the hateful doctrines the leaders of these churches espouse openly and regularly? It's a paradox but, I believe, one that is easily explained.

Most young people still crave the certainty they enjoyed as children. They are in a transitional stage of life between the dependency of childhood and the independence of adulthood. This need for certainty is so strong in most young people that they will regard its satisfaction as more important than other consideration and they can end up blindly accepting the unreasonable, and even immoral. Most cults, and evangelicalism has many of the hallmarks of a cult, are full of young people and people who joined whilst young and who have been prevented from becoming adults by the brainwashing techniques of the cults.

So, I think we have to accept as a fact that fundamentalist churches bring young people into their churches through their emphasis on certainty and most evangelicals will not only accept that but will often use it to attack the rest of the church. As a heresy that came out of the banking institutions of Zurich, evangelicalism has always been convinced that a profit is proof that you are doing the right thing and selling the right product. However, I do not think that it has been proved that it is the message that they preach that is attracting young people to their churches. It could be just the certainty with which they deliver their message that is the attraction. Therefore, if this is the case, can the mainstream factions of the Church learn from them?

As a "wishy washy" liberal I cannot possibly give you a definite answer on that. But in the tradition of my tradition I can raise a couple of leading questions.

1) Are there elements of contemporary, bog standard Christianity that we can all except as certainties? For example, that God loves all his children and is biased towards inclusion rather than exclusion.

2) Can uncertainty be sold as a certainty? And bear in mind that the major faiths that germinated in the Indian sub-continent have no problems with the mystery and apparent futility of life.

Yesterday, at a forum held in St. Stephen’s Pro-Cathedral, Wilkes-Barre, Katharine Zeta Schori was asked, "What can be done about a shrinking number of members and a drop in attendance at the local place of worship?"

She replied, "The Episcopal Church loses about 19,000 members a year because more of them die than are baptized into the church. The average Episcopalian is about 57 years old. The average age American is 37. Fifty-seven-year-olds don’t produce a lot of children. But, there are lots and lots of communities and populations among us that are growing. Younger generations don’t know what the church has to offer. It’s going to take Episcopalians to become more passionate about ministry to attract new people. How are they going to find out if we don’t tell them?”

Yes. But, of course, the presiding bishop is the exact antithesis of what is required of the people who should head up such a campaign and one of the main reasons why mission to the young rarely gets off the ground in large denominations. Bishops mean inertia or, at the least, very slow progress. By the time a church like TEC get an initiative through all their committees and have settled the court cases with all the schismatics who leave the church because they don't personally like something in the initiative, the young people are being pushed around in wheelchairs and waiting to meet their maker.

Also, a church cannot preach definites if its leadership constantly prevaricates and hides behind vague statements designed not to offend anybody. If people, especially young people, want us to speak confidently about what we believe then somebody at the top has got to come out and state clearly that what we believe is right and what "they" believe is only "a matter of conscience" and nothing to do with the real message of Jesus Christ.

Liberals do believe that certain things are certain. There must be very few people in the world who think that raping children is relative. So, lets stop hiding behind the lie that we are people of no definite opinion and start telling the young people of our communities the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.