The gospel is a living message. As such, it gets parsed anew in each generation, reimagined in all its transformative power, an ancient word with a new face. In this issue of Conversations Journal our writers explore what it means to face the challenges of the Jesus Way as millennials living life in contemporary culture.

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01.  Millennials and Church Membership

– Erin Lane

In this probing piece, Lane inquires into relational dynamics in the local church context that either promote or prevent authentic community. Her assumptions about what lies at the root of the millennial spirit are summed up in the following: “Easy is suspicious . . . the biblical writers are clear throughout Scripture that this life brings suffering. But must we go looking for it?” Not exactly an issue just for millennials!

She speaks of the millennials’ draw toward the frontier where one can be either innovator or vigilante. Instead, she urges a third way of “soft individualism” born of psychiatrist M. Scott Peck. In it, he describes the “ middle path of belonging . . . the kind of disposition one needs to hold the paradox of self and community.”

Truest community has the hard edges of false expectation and closed-club mentality worn off. What’s left are simply people longing to know and be known. And to lose oneself in Christ is, paradoxically, to completely find one-self and in the end safely give oneself away to others in community. In Christ, the sometimes cloudy boundaries between the I and ThouA reference to I and Thou by Martin Buber, originally published in 1923, in which he posits that human life finds its deepest meaning in relation to others. According to Buber, all of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with the eternal Thou, who is God. Martin Buber, I and Thou, Walter Kaufmann, trans. (New York: Free Press/Simon & Shuster, Inc. 1970). become clearer. And in kingdom community the false self is shed in favor of the truest self, which comes alive and is supportively nurtured.

In a brief interview, Lane outlines further thoughts from her book Lessons in Belonging, from which this piece is taken. For her, church should be a safe place for accountability, for belonging, for rootedness, and for faithful engagement. Millennials both need and desire to be contemplative activists. For them church is a place to stop and rest in the interest of launching out, renewed and nourished, into a broken world so badly in need of the mysteries we incarnate.

1. With whom do you feel most safe? Natural? Genuine? Challenged? What do you think of Peck’s term of “soft individualism”? Does the dual challenge of self and community frighten or enliven you? Why?
2. Do a sociological experiment. Gather together a few of your dearest friends. Plan a completely ridiculous evening of fun games and general tomfoolery. Take mental notes of interactions, responses, feelings, associations, and the general spirit in the room. If these are not part of your local church experience, how could that change? Could your personal experiences somehow engage and release more of the same among your church family?
3. Create two separate lists based on the following: where do I feel most at home? And where do I feel most alone? Prayerfully build those lists and then compare and contrast. Are there ways for you to maximize the first and minimize the second?

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02.  A Crisis of Community: Life with the Disciples, Then and Now

– Christine Suh And David Lemley

In the simmering cauldron of complexity known among spiritually thirsty millennials, Christine Suh and David Lemley mete out a measured, biblically nourishing alternative. Beginning with the unsettling statistic of church affiliation dropout rates among millennials, their work among students is rooted in reintroducing these hungry souls to a genuine, communal journey of ancient faith and practice.

Millennials are born with a cynicism that can be hard to identify, let alone extract. And it is ironic that they make up the progeny of an earlier generation who took up the revolutionary battle cry of peace and harmony at a time of war and strife. The abandonment of young idealism by the premillennial generation for the more lucrative individualistic commercialism meant an inherited gospel, both thin and flat.

Suh and Lemley craft their thoughts in Nouwen-esque fashion—movement from a lower to a higher form of transformative awareness. Their goal is to assist students in moving from duplicity to transparency, from comparison to belovedness, and from a gospel of self-maintenance to one of incarnational grace.

Technology, something millennials have never lived without, creates a hollow substitute for the real interconnectedness for which they long. In a society known for its inauthentic, shallow living, mirrored among millennials as a shiny online public profile, Jesus “breaks through these virtual barriers to inclusion by honoring the request of . . . low-clout individuals, preferencing authentic presence over public profile.”

The temptation of comparison, especially on the dubious means of accumulation of experiences and accomplishments, is lovingly challenged by the upside-down kingdom of God. It provides just the antidote needed for the unsteady spiritual feet of these young men and women, where the last are first, the first last.

The distorted gospel of “moralistic therapeutic deism” or that of “sin management” has left millennials (and indeed all of us) with a distorted image of God. The gospel of interdependent community that brings long-term stability counters these distortions. Into a lonely community are introduced spiritual friendships and the depth of genuine love and connection they can bring.

Finally, the authors work among students to help them counter a cultural aversion to soul care. The inevitable burnout from untended spiritual gardens is neutralized in the kingdom economy, through which one’s productivity is outweighed by who and whose we are.

1. The authors’ aim is to instruct us on the spiritual challenges specifically among millennials (those born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s). Could these things be said of anyone, however? Wherever you are on the timeline, how do you relate personally to their struggle for genuine community? If you are older, how can you learn from their struggle as you come to terms with your own faith journey?
2. Technology is both blessing and curse uniquely among millennials. How might you benefit from a technology-less retreat for the purpose of solitude and contemplation? Find a monastery, retreat center, or even campground where you, alone or with trusted friends, can realign to Jesus by detaching from too much bandwidth.
3. Prayerfully seek out one or more co-pilgrims and begin a relationship of spiritual friendship. Learn to listen carefully to one another’s stories. Listen for the “substories,” those unspoken, hidden narratives that they may not hear on their own. Commit to this for at least a few months. Journal your journeys along the way.

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03.  Mystery and Millennials

– Laura Turner

The culture inherited by millennials was that of high certainty, functionality, and productivity. In many, it spawned an aversion to the same and a desire for a gospel less tied to the prevailing culture and more amenable to mystery. Their God needs to be greater than any goals, plans, and ingenuity.

Turner submits that millennials love and serve an increasingly fractured church that has decreasing impact on the culture. The special-interest mentality so prevalent suggests that “millennials are more likely to make a new friend at the yoga studio or coffee shop than at a church picnic.” She insists millennials do not hate the church. They have simply grown disillusioned, disenchanted, even disenfranchised from it.

By contrast, in pursuit of something deeper, many have turned to the comforting repetition of habitual weekly liturgy, prayers, and Communion in the church’s older traditions. The intentionality and purposefulness found there helps to counter the thin, highly commercialized, bumper-sticker church that was so much a part of their growing up.

Says Turner, “For those of us who are millennials, the attraction to more mystical forms of Christianity is born out of two impulses: The impulse away from how we were raised and the impulse toward connection with the universal church.” In some cases, however, there have been knee-jerk reactions that have landed people in circumstances equally unsatisfying and with little actual change.

For much of contemporary Christianity, certainty, in ever-increasing doses, is viewed as the currency of a growing faith. But, in the minds of millennials, whose industry, passion, and ingenuity didn’t get them anywhere close to the success of their forebears, this waxes thin. Hence, there is a dual impulse: toward more mystical forms of Christian expression and the deeper connection with the universal church and away from the church in which they were raised. “Millennials want liturgy because we want to move away from the rootlessness that plagues some evangelical churches,” she attests. One might say that millennials are contentedly choosing significance over relevance.See Henri J. M. Nouwen’s deeply instructional and transformative book In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership (Chestnut Ridge, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989).

For the millennial, technology shapes their lives in fun and convenient ways but at a high price to the soul. As a result, there is a deeply felt need for a liturgical church experience that offers slowness, a place to unplug and to eliminate expediency and hurry.

 

1. If possible, find a more liturgical, mainline church in your area (Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.). Attend one or more services in which Communion is the centerpiece of worship. What were your experiences? Mark the differences of approach, of how music and prayer are used, of the use of colors, fabrics, placement of sacred objects. Ask a leader of that church to help explain the significance of these things to you. Mark how this helps you to worship back in your regular setting.
2. Go on a one-day silent retreat—without your phone, Kindle, iPad, or laptop. Spend the entire morning walking, practicing the presence of God, and simply paying attention to your soul. Promise not to speak again until after breakfast the following morning. Journal what you hear the Spirit saying. Do you feel more at ease? More centered, ready to face your week?
3. With your small group or a collection of trusted friends, commit to “pray the hours” together in accordance with the Benedictine tradition:

6 a.m.—Matins/Lauds (First Hour)

9 a.m.—Terce (Third Hour)

Noon—Sext (Sixth Hour)

3 p.m.—None (Ninth Hour)

6 p.m.—Vespers (Evensong)

9 p.m.—Compline

After an agreed-upon time, share your experiences together. How did you gain from this experience? What was challenging about it? Why?

 

A Prayer in the Spirit of Saint Benedict

God of glory, grace,
garden, and gladness,

Let us find in one another
the solidity of love,

The gentleness of welcome,
the fragrance of hospitality,

That to be anywhere else would
be to become an exile.

Root us to this ground, Lord,
at this time, with these souls,

Wherein is found your
blessing and peace.

Amen.

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04.  Pilgrim Stability

– Ben Barczi

In this article, what becomes clear is the often-tenuous hold the contemporary church and, indeed, institutions in general have on millennials. The resulting instability has caused many to make their spiritual nest outside the organized church, while others are hanging in there but asking hard questions all over again.

With the end of “pilgrim stability” in mind, Ben Barczi posits some spiritual resources sufficient to encourage millennials as they work through their ambivalence toward the larger church. The first of these is the practice of stability as taught in the Benedictine tradition; in short, bloom where you’re planted. Having been raised on a steady diet of well-packaged individualism, the very notion of community, let alone its experience, has been especially elusive.

Conversely, in the midst of a spirit of stability, is to practice holy pilgrimage. Historically, pilgrims left “the familiar and [sought] out liminal, in-between spaces, feeling the turmoil of transition and expressing it with their feet.” To be rooted sojourners, stable pilgrims, is “to stay put in order to wander with God; [and] sally forth in order to root at home.”

For Barczi, the monk and the farmer, both of whom are tied to a place for different reasons, provide a valuable picture of what’s most needed for the soul. The monk is charged with growing in charity among those with whom he would sometimes rather not. The farmer gains the most only as he or she is equally planted to the very land from which spring yearly planting, the fruit of faithful stability. Rootedness, whether uncomfortable or not, is presented as a deeply formative choice.

In turn, pilgrimage is rooted in the wilderness wanderings of the fledgling Hebrew nation. Says Barczi, “Pilgrims discover God with them on every step of the journey— even the parts where the map is lost and they aren’t sure they’re heading anywhere.” Pilgrims leave their home to find it again, maybe for the first time.

Millennials need permission, grace, freedom, and support to ask questions all over again, questions that were either given answers too easily with the result of a thin, pale, clichéd faith that no longer supports the complexities and nuanced paradoxes of their life in the real world.

Finally, utilizing the philosophy of Hans Georg Gadamer, Barczi insists that pilgrimage to the millennial must be about encountering oneself and the other. Millennials are challenged to allow their horizons to be expanded through the very diversity that already defines so much of their lives.

1. Develop a discussion group with six or seven people, all of whom have different viewpoints on a topic of mutual choosing. Meet at an agreed-upon time and place, weekly, for a month or more. Have one person act as moderator. Before any discussion, recite together the following passage: “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity” (Psalm 133:1 NRSVScripture quotations marked (NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, copyright © 1989, 2021 The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.).
2. What roots you to your present location? How are you connected to it? How are you not? With the Benedictine prayer of stability (left), discern ways you may be invited to participate more deeply in the life of your community. How can your pilgrimage with Jesus stabilize you in this place and bring about transformation and hope in your specific locale?