United Methodeviations

United Metholdist July 27, 2010

We’re not getting older; we’re getting better.  Well, actually we are getting older, but this doesn’t mean we can’t get better as well.  The graying of our church — a subject of great concern and incredible misplaced anxiety — is worth looking into, but as an opportunity, not a problem to solve.  Youth culture is troughing again for the next generation or so, and in many parts of our country the age trend will be at the upper end of the spectrum — more old people, with more resources (translated “disposable income”), more time, more energy, and more productive years.  In demographers eyes, a golden opportunity to exploit a market.  But will the church pay attention?

See, the problem is that most in the church refuse to use common sense when it comes to planning.  Research shows that over 8-out-of-10 United Methodist churches are pinning their hopes for the future on “young families with children.”  Congregation after congregation nostalgically pines for the glory days when their Sunday schools were packed to bursting, and when twenty- and thirty-somethings sat shoulder to shoulder with mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, and Aunt Flo.  The vision for the future looks like a rerun from 1959.  In a day when the average length of membership for young adults is less than two years, die-hards in the church look to rebuild their congregations on the shoulders of today’s young.  Good luck with that.  Hey, if you have a lot of young people to draw from, go for it; but this is not the reality for a significant number of UMCs.  Younger families are heading to newer evangelical congregations with plenty of comfort resources and technology, where demands and expectations are VERY modest.  And these growing independent churches have no delusions that the young will pay their own way.  The trend in drawing young is in providing ministry “to” and “for” them, not “with” them (or expecting them to pony up to cash to pay for it).  A tiny number of United Methodist congregations have the resources or leadership to go toe-to-toe with the “big guns.”  And when I visit a small congregation with one 9-year-old and one 14-year-old (generally brother and sister) and they are envisioning revitalization through an active Sunday school and youth program, I have to scratch my head and wonder what they’re thinking.  Most assuredly we need to do everything in our power to provide spiritual support, education and guidance to people of all ages — but real people, not mythical wish-people who don’t exist, and even if they did they probably wouldn’t come to our church.

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