We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Rachel Held Evans on What Drives Millennials (and Others) Away from Church
David Clow via Compfight
Have you been wondering why so many churches are dwindling in numbers? Rachel Held Evans was asked to speak about what drives millennials away from church, but her response has struck a nerve with a whole lot of people who are not millennials. It’s time for the church to take a good hard look at more than “relevance”.
From Rachel’s reflection:
What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.
We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against.
We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers.
We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation.
We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities.
We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers.
Yes.
Category: General
Tags: Authenticity, Church, Millennials, Rachel Held Evans
Related Reading
A Cross-Like Church
When God’s church loves like God loves—which means valuing the other at cost to self—it will puzzle those outside the church. While such love might cause the religious to rail with outrage, it will cause the searching and the hungry to ask, “how can people love like this?” In God’s plan, this puzzle is what…
Quotes to Chew On: The Church vs. Religion
“It’s time for the Church to free itself from the religious holiness of the Pharisees and begin to manifest the holiness of the Kingdom. It’s time for us to realize that our calling is to serve people sacrificially–including prostitutes, tax collectors, and enemies–rather than judging them. It’s time we ceased getting Life from the rightness…
Ashamed/Unashamed
Toni Blay via Compfight Rachel Held Evans posted this astounding reflection on her blog this week. Normally, we post a short excerpt of the blogs we link to, but this one MUST be read in it’s entirety. It reminds us of what is both ugly and beautiful in the church and ourselves and calls us…
Thinking Biblically?
Olga Caprotti via Compfight Micah J. Murray over at Redemption Pictures posted this reflection called Beware of Thinking Biblically. The image of a google search on the topic is worth the price of admission. Christians throw around this phrase in some really damaging ways, as Rachel Held Evans demonstrated in her recent publication of A Year…
The Purpose of the Church
Concerning the preaching of the Gospel, Paul wrote that God’s intent was that “through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places … in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord”…
The Religionless Church of the Future
“The time when men could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or simply pious, is over, and so is the time of…religion as such.… [W]hat is religionless Christianity?… What is the significance of a Church… in a religionless world?” Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Letter From Prison, April 30th, 1944. The Crisis of a…