I think if a church is going to reverse this trend they have to overcompensate. One author I've read (can't remember who) says that every church has to fight 'gravity of the self." If we try to make an equal balance between the wants of the older generations and younger generations, then we are going to be pulled to the those who are already here (older). So the only way to fight this is to tip the scales to the younger generation.  Don't seek equal or token represantion on committees and governing boards. I don't see real change happening until younger adults make up the majority in power in key places.

I also think that embracing video technology in worship can't be dismissed casually with comments like "We don’t need Power Point presentations during the sermon." Maybe that was not your intent, but this kind of comment occurrs over and over in these conversations and it's almost always by mainline seminary trained pastors. The fact that 80% of the time Power Point is mentioned by name demonstrates a certain level of luddite-like unfamiliarity with how video technology can be used. The thousands of churches that are doing video well in worship haven't used Power Point in years.  It's kind of the equivalent to someone saying, "That internet is just a distrcation. We don't need to use America Online to do ministry these days."

I think the sheer amount of time that younger generations spend watching and sharing Youtube videos should be enough to clue us in that there is something there that can really grab the heart, mind, and attention of younger generations.

Yes, yes, yes. I have seen all these roadblocks and more. The greatest problem, though, is that no one wants to talk about them! I've had so many conversations where the church's problems have been boiled down to "not enough young families" and then move on to day-to-day details instead of taking hard looks at bigger picture including the leadership within the church and what/how the church ministers.

Also, as a single Millennial female in various church leadership positions over the past five years or so I find people love to talk about the young people but they're not so hot on talking to young people. Or they listen politely then say something to the point of "You're already here, so we don't need to hear what you think." Clearly this is not every church-goer, but there are enough people avoiding the hard work of envisioning a different Christian community where there is intergenerational leadership, the church building isn't a testiment to immovablity, diversity is honored without trying to make us all the same, and techonology is used thoughtfully to enhance the church's ministries. The hardest for me, though, is walking in to a church that claims to be a "family church." It doesn't matter if the church thinks of itself as a family or if the main focus of the church is family ministries. It makes me the outsider, even though I've gone to church most of my life and am planning a career in ministry. Certainly churches have some functions that you may find in some families, but the Body of Christ is a much bigger idea. It means we need to go outside our comfort zones and our ideas of "family" to see parts of the Body working in ways we never imagined!

There is so much hope and possibilty for Christian communities right now. We just need to do like Carol Howard Merritt has done and start talking about these issues which will lead to discernment and action!

--PresbyEmily
fightthebees.com

The experience of those who have valiantly tried to change cotton-top aging and wilting congregations into a renewed realtity  that accepts other generations is enormously important to attend to, mindfully.  The processes have often been cautious, incremental, democratic and performed with pastoral skill. Yet, many fail to achieve the desired outcome: a multi-tiered congregation that includes families still parenting children, singles, youth and ethnically diverse persons not typical of that congregation--or even the denomination itself.  In addressing this dilemma from a biblical viewpoint I suggest that the book of the Acts of the Apostles is a source to seriously study and beyond study, take as a master strategy. The church does not expand its horizons in Acts by planning; it expands painfully, even against its own prior ethos conventions. The writer of Acts has constructed a very subtle plot but it is not suble that the heart of the story concerns  heart- and mind-changing events experienced by Saul/Paul and Peter.  We must attend carefully to the mathematics of this storytelling for the change-inducing experience of Paul  is told three time, once by the narrator and twice in the voice of Paul himself. Peter also experiences a heart- and mind-changing event, one divinely ordered in the home of a distinquished Roman gentile and he, too, is given prime place in the narrative to re-tell his story.  These events, narrated in chapter 9,10 & 11 are the "hinge" of the plot. It is no accident or evidence of sloppy narration that between the two, the mechanism of change at the heart of leadership is told a total of five times. The algera of change suggested is that God must be at the center of the conviction that barriers are there to be overome and it takes action in the humnan scope of affairs for that intention of God to become embraced. And the plot is that God in Christ is revealing, bit by bit, the strategy for the evangelization of the entire (ecumencal) world of humankind--and it is a different strategy that the two thought to be, before intervention, to be God-directed. I take this mechanism to be in the service of explaining how it came to be that the church--at the time of the writing--has become a diverse, multi-culture movement and not simply a Jewish sect that is having questionable success. The practical lesson I take it from this that the chief matter to be strategized in creating change is that of bringing a single-generational, non-diverse congregation to the point of accepting--in heart and mind, not simply in resolutions passed as a point of grudging compromise--the "other" who seems not to be in their ken. Interestingly enough, we know how to do this from our studies of cross-cultural education. (Something I have given much of my energy to, but as a kind of minor key to my day job.) This means that before planning and proposal building (so-called "consensus building" that turns out NOT to be a consensus in the fact!) it is essential to arrange a mean of bringing these "others" into the network of the congregation in a way that makes no promises but only asked that table fellowship be shared and stories exchanged. When this is done, we have learned, peope discover that despite the signifiant differences, there are fears, aspirations and struggles that bring these different folks together in ways that lower barriers of the mind for next steps. When the writer we call "Luke" reports Peter's observations at the house of Cornelius, we a can easily picture him dropped-jaw at the recognition that these suspected persons gathered to hear his message are not only different than thought, they are worthy human beings that one might well benefit from being in the same congregation with. And most importantly, they are people that God wants included. Now that is real "born again" religion!

that isn't mentioned may be simply, we live in the the modern world and churches pretend otherwise.  Praise bands and great coffee won't return us to 1600.  Most churches, even mainlines, still give premodernism or traditionalism the old college try, but in an age when the findings of critical biblical scholarship and plain old science are widely known to anyone who pays attention, an educated young person must wonder just what all those people are doing.  I would favor focusing on the historical Jesus and developing an interpretation of his life and actions appropriate to the modern world; there is a lot that is relevant and helpful.