the next generation has concluded that "everything is image," and therefore nothing can be trusted. Church is too slick, too good, too polished to be real. And the twenty-something hunger for raw authenticity just doesn’t fit in.
Although there has been a lot of image reform, it has not really been able to take hold in many British churches; too poor to be able to jump on that bandwagon and too many leaders have been archly suspicious of the enterprise of image building and of accusations of style without substance. And yet something of this rings true:
twenty-somethings simply want permission to struggle. Most fear that they are not good enough for God's family. Each week they are told about the standards they are expected to keep, and each week they are led to believe that the rest of the church is somehow keeping up. This "silence about the struggle" quietly drives young adults away from churches all over the country.Except I think that this is more than twenty-somethings in Britain. Perhaps it's our post imperial hermeneutic of suspicion, but I find many forty and fifty somethings who face this. Maybe this is why the whole emerging/ alternative church thing was about 15 years out of the box before it really got going in the USA?
What do you think?
Leadership Blog: Out of Ur: Scum of the Church: How the drive for “excellence” is driving young adults from the church:
Filed in: genY, genX, church, image, acceptance, standards
No comments:
Post a Comment