Opinion: Perspectives from readers

The internet was alive for weeks with discussion about Millennials leaving the church, Millennials’ desire to change the church and Millennials’ effect on the church. The conversation, begun by Rachel Held Evans at CNN’s Belief Blog, inspired hundreds of blog posts and untold hours of handwringing about culture, Christianity and our life together as people of faith.

While some decry the state of the church and the wisdom of Evans for raising the discussion, the conversations (and even arguments) we’re having are exactly right. They are just what people of faith must do when culture shifts.

There are some indications that Millennials (the generation of people born between the mid-1980s and 2000s) are leaving church. Some writers of older generations (both in the church and in the press) have called Millennials selfish, narcissistic and shallow. They have claimed they are making demands that will break the church.

Someone, somewhere, is always declaring the death of Christianity. Every generation wails about the incapacity of the next, and every generation thinks it will do better than the generation that preceded it.

No doubt we are changing, and this is going to hurt. As God baptizes individuals, God also baptizes our communities, families and traditions, and baptism hurts. This is the refiner’s fire, the transformation God promised us.

We are often confused about what it means to be transformed because we humans can’t do it. We understand reformation because we are (in some limited way) capable of reformation, but transformation is not even related to reformation.

Let’s say I have a table. It’s a broken-down, ugly thing. All the legs wobble, and one has come off. The top has a crack in it, the apron is all gouged up, and the whole thing has water damage. I decide to fix up my table. I go out to my garage and glue the crack. I add new hardware to secure all the legs, replace the apron and sand it until it’s smooth. Finally, I stain that table until it’s so shiny it nearly glows. I take my table to the dining room, and my family stands and admires it. It is gorgeous. I have reformed my table.
But it’s still a table.

God has a table, too, and it’s just as ugly and sad as my table was, but God is not limited to the perceivable possibilities the way I am.

Perhaps God will turn the table into a bird or a droplet of water or a universe.

God is God, and God won’t change, but everything else might. God might make us into something entirely new. How do we keep Millennials (and others) in church? Simple. We follow Jesus. We don’t attract new people; Jesus does that. We’re not transforming ourselves; Jesus is doing that. We’re not creating church; we are the church that Jesus is continually rebuilding.

So we follow. We pray. We practice togetherness (talk, argue, shout, share, cry, lament, laugh, sing, teach, learn and kiss the wee babes) in ways old and new. We experiment. We unclench our fists (my church, my traditions, my faith). We invite and include, and when we screw up we say so.

When church disappoints us we speak out, and when we see the church disappoint others we take notice and go to that place and search for Jesus and share the love that God has lavished upon us.

We revisit Micah 6:8:
“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?”

So simple, but we resist. I will be the shiniest table. Make of me a beautiful table, Oh God. Hush and follow, says God. I will make of you. I will do with you. I promise.

We meditate on Galatians 5:1, which says, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” We have not been set free in Christ to build institutions or to “win souls for Christ” or to do anything. We have not been set free to follow rules, and we most certainly have not been set free so that we might hit people in the head with our Bibles.

Simple freedom.

Glorious, wild, extravagant freedom—a gift, given freely. God does not seek our slavish devotion to rules but our exuberant devotion to the person of God and the way of Jesus. We walk together, with God and with one another, and the walking is the thing we are doing, and God is unrolling history as we walk.

God does not need our protection and God is not afraid. God is doing what God has always done: pursuing us, God’s own, God’s beloved.

Let’s let God catch us.

Adrienne Jones is a member of Albuquerque (N.M.) Mennonite Church.