Shifting Strategies to Reach Millennials

A recent article caught my eye on my Facebook timeline. I read it, shared it, and ended up launching a rather long and detailed comment conversation with people in my church about it. Here’s the article: http://faithit.com/12-reasons-millennials-over-church-sam-eaton/.
I’ve seen other articles like this one before, and I have been frustrated by them before, but this time, I decided to do something about it.
First, I determined to seriously consider the suggestions in the article and address their feasibility related to our church context.
Second, I launched that Facebook discussion to try to recruit viewpoints different from my own so that I could think through the issues through the eyes of other people.
Third, I decided to actually do some research to determine if what the blog said matched up with any recent research.
This blog post is me trying to assemble my thoughts on those three points of action.

The Suggested Changes

So getting back to the substance of the article; the author raised twelve issues and offered some specific solutions. I will list and paraphrase them here:

1. LISTEN TO US. “Why should we blindly serve an institution that we cannot change or shape?” (SOLUTION: Hold forums to honestly hear out millennials and get them into leadership.)
2. WE HATE YOUR MISSION STATEMENTS. The church should only have the mission of Jesus. Love God and Love Others. (SOLUTION: Don’t make up your own, use the one I just gave you, and get all the other churches in America to adopt this one too.)
3. YOU DON’T SERVE THE POOR ENOUGH. If our lives do not reflect radical compassion for the poor, there is reason to wonder if Christ is in us at all. (SOLUTION: Create opportunities to serve not more opportunities to study, like once a month “group serve” events. Also, survey everyone to learn their burden, put likeminded people together and see what God does.)
4. DON’T BLAME THE CULTURE. We live in it too and know it’s messed up. (SOLUTION: Teach us how to be different from it.)
5. CHURCHES FEEL ‘CLIQUEY’ LIKE HIGH SCHOOL. (SOLUTION: Create authentic communities centered on service. Create a team of people who reach out to newcomers on Sundays. Find ways to bridge the gap to the shy or anxious.)
6. WE DON’T TRUST THE CHURCH WITH OUR MONEY. (SOLUTION: Make financial records accessible to all. Be frugal about spending. Make ministries justify every dollar.
7. WE WANT MENTORING NOT PREACHING. We can get teaching through podcasts, books, and YouTube, but we crave mentoring. (SOLUTION: Ask the older generation to mentor us. Create a database of people who want to be mentored and people who are willing and match them with each other.)
8. “We desperately need the church to tell us we are enough, exactly the way we are. No conditions or expectations.” (SOLUTION: Listen to us, thank us, and encourage us to chase our crazy dreams.)
9. WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT CONTROVERSIAL TOPICS. (SOLUTION: Create safe places to talk about sex and other difficult topics. Intentionally train young adults. Create programs that transition people from youth group to adulthood.)
10. IMPROVE PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF THE CHURCH. (SOLUTION: Find ways to connect with local neighborhoods. Contact the city and the schools to find out how the church can help them.)
11. STOP TALKING ABOUT US UNLESS YOU PLAN TO ACT. (SOLUTION: Make a tangible plan for reaching millennials. Under-promise and over-deliver.)
12. THE CHURCH IS FAILING TO ADAPT. (SOLUTION: Talk to millennials in your church. Look at the real data and admit the problem.)

As I just typed all this out, I’m realizing even more how people in my church could get the impression that it was a whiny article. These snippets do give me that same impression. Nevertheless, I’m still going to give them serious consideration.
To start with, I’m going to rephrase and summarize his points in as positive a way as I can.

• Millennials feel ignored and want others to value them, affirm them, and reach out to them.
• Millennials feel ill-equipped for life but want tutoring instead of lectures or books.
• Millennials want to feel like they are making a positive difference and would rather do than talk.
• Millennials don’t trust institutions and want organizational transparency.

As I look at his list of 12 frustrations and his suggested solutions, I think my four points cover the same ground.

The Facebook Discussion

Two things immediately came to light in the Facebook discussion:

• People quickly took sides whether they were technically millennial or not to either substantially support the article or to reject it. Some were critical of the author’s perspective, and others his attitude, but others truly resonated with the points he made.
• A few people identified themselves as millennials and quickly raised their hands to be part of the solution. That’s one of the things I love about our church family!

Additionally, a few people took the opportunity to share personal frustrations with the way churches operate these days, and to open up about their own journeys. Specifically, some people identified the need for churches to be more fun and some identified the need for churches to be less political in general or less “Republican” specifically. Someone even referred to the teaching of a pastor that the earth was 4,000 years old as his final straw for leaving the church.
Therefore, I can add a couple additional points to those made in the article.

• Millennials don’t share the historical perspectives of the church and judge the church to be archaic.
• Millennials want fun and will prioritize their time accordingly.

I will not be addressing these two points in this article, but I thought they were worth mentioning nonetheless.

Some Brief Research

I sought out research from two major players in church research these days: Thom Rainer and the Barna Group. Sadly, I couldn’t find any research to support the specific claims in the original article or even the claims from people I know in the comment thread. That doesn’t mean the claims are wrong, but it does mean they aren’t true for everyone. Still, there is a lot of research on barna.org that discusses the relationship between millennials and the church. Plus, they have some cool infographics. Here are just some of the things I learned:

• 66% of Millennials agree with this: “American churchgoers are hypocritical.”
• 65% affirm this: Church is a place to find answers to live a meaningful life.
• 49% believe they can “be themselves” at church.

Despite the sense that church people are hypocritical (a judgment that applies to our entire society, I think), millennials still believe that church is a place to find meaningful answers, and about half of them would be comfortable just being themselves at church.

Among millennials who don’t go to church:

• 39% find God elsewhere and 20% feel that God is missing from the church entirely.
• Roughly a third of millennials would say that church is boring or irrelevant.
• Social reasons, political reasons, and hypocrisy don’t even make this list.

However, take a look at the top two reasons for not going to church, and you will see something interesting. Those are always the top two reasons people give for not going to church regardless of age or any other demographic!

Finally, this last chart spoke volumes to me:

• Millennials are less likely to serve the poor in their 20s than were Baby Boomers.
• Millennials are more likely to pursue fame and influence in their 20s than were Boomers.
• Compared to Boomers, Millennials are more hungry for affirmation through relationships (marriage, family, even fame) but are less hungry for affirmation through personal accomplishments (spiritual maturity, career, education, financial independence).

And finally, this chart just kinda made me sad.

I don’t know if this final chart really means that the importance of the family is declining or if it means that people value family more as they get older, but either way, it’s clear that nearly half of millennials don’t get their sense of personal identity from their family of origin.

Conclusions

Over the next couple of weeks, I will continue to have this conversation with people in my church regarding the ways we can more effectively reach out to millennials in our culture, but I think I have enough here to draw some initial conclusions and generalizations about the state of millennials in our culture and their relationship to churches.

• In many respects, millennials have grown up with prolonged adolescence. It is my natural tendency to critically judge them for “failing to grow up,” but perhaps such judgmentalism isn’t helpful. People don’t mature just because someone told them to “grow up.” Maturity happens only through direction and nurture. In other words, it seems that the church needs to accept the reality of delayed adulthood. After all, how can we judge people negatively for how we raised them!
• By making it into biological and societal adulthood without a strongly developed sense of identity and without a solid family foundation, millennials more than previous generations are looking to relationships to shape them. They hunger for authority figures who are also nurturing, for friendships that are deeply affirming, and for communities with a strong collective identity. Previous generations emphasized the development of identity through formal education, career, and independence, but for millennials generally it’s more about personal relationships.
• Honorably, millennials understand their need for personal growth but their focus on relationships over older methods of growth (education, career, independence) leads them to feel a great need for mentoring as their best option for growth. However, those who would be good mentors are often from previous generations that valued more traditional and/or structural methods of growth. This results in a hunger for a kind of mentoring that few are prepared or willing to provide.
• Millennials, inundated with digital social media, 24 hour news, and a celebrity-driven culture as they are, have had to develop unique evaluative criteria for determining which voices to trust. Where previous generations could rely on the slow, methodical curation and evaluation provided by churches, schools, newspapers, and professional associations, millennials have largely been forced to develop their own on-the-fly curation techniques which often are little more than “Liking” and “Subscribing.” The result is that millennial morals and values have become even more liberal or progressive than previous generations.

Finally, not from research, but from my own experience with millennials, I’ve learned these things:

• Millennials are quite different from previous generations in their use of time. Where previous generations invested heavily in school, career, and family, millennials are more likely to use their time to advance friendships. Furthermore, because most millennials still have young children or no children, they have more time compared to members of previous generations.
• Millennials have been trained to be entertained and they are connoisseurs of fun, but even their fun is not done in isolation. Everything is social. Previously solitary endeavors like reading a book or playing a video game become social endeavors in the hands of a millennial.
• When available time is combined with a hunger for mentoring, millennials can feel “left out” or “ignored” or even “abandoned” by members of previous generations. The millennial can think, “I have all this time for them, but they don’t have any time for me,” and conclude that he or she isn’t getting the respect they deserve. This has the negative consequence of creating an emotional barrier between the millennial and the very people they hunger to have relationship with.

So What Should I Change About My Leadership?

I want to tackle this question by going back to the article that prompted this all. I summarized that original article with four points, and I will address them here specifically thinking about the difference they might make in my leadership.

Millennials feel ignored and want others to value them, affirm them, and reach out to them.

The author suggested that churches hold forums to hear from millennials. I can’t for the life of me imagine that a “forum for millennials” will actually get any of them to show up, but I hope to find other ways to give them a voice.
The author also suggested intentionally putting millennials into leadership positions. However, the traditional way leadership is done in any good organization is for people to demonstrate their commitment to the mission, commitment to the people, and effectiveness in leading small efforts before being tapped for real leadership. I don’t think that will or should change. I personally am eager to put anyone in leadership who has demonstrated both commitment and effectiveness.
However, there is a chicken-and-egg effect going on here. Millennials want to feel valued and affirmed before they will make a commitment or take on responsibilities. Prior generations wanted to demonstrate commitment and take on responsibilities to prove their worth and earn affirmation. Older generations are unlikely to give a person a trophy before they win or even before they compete, but that is what it seems millennials are asking for.
What is the church to do? As much as it pains me to say it, I think the church and church leaders need to take the lead in the giving of grace to millennials by meeting them where they are and not expecting them to be where previous generations were. That doesn’t mean giving trophies to people who haven’t even joined the team but it does mean speaking optimistically and hopefully about the potential of people we barely know.
Churches, church leaders, and church members need to go out of their way to identify millennials, affirm them for their potential and their value to the future of the church, and call them to step into positions of challenge and training.
Additionally, churches should create opportunities for millennial leadership to be tested and coached.
That is, I need to seek out millennials, empower them for leadership, but coach them in it. Doing this is easier said than done, though. See my dilemma in the next sections.

Millennials feel ill-equipped for life but want mentoring instead of lectures or books.

This falls directly in line with the previous statement. Books and lectures are impersonal and they can’t communicate affirmation. More than that, when a book is recommended, it can feel “institutional” at best or like a dismissal at worst. “I don’t have time for you, so why don’t you read this book?”
Of course, the real problem with this is time. Millennials have time for all sorts of educational endeavors, but mentoring / tutoring is the form of education that demands the most time of the mentor. Since most people qualified to be mentors have little available time for mentoring, the millennial need for personal tutoring can be a major burden on the mentor.
In our church, we have attempted to create a mentoring program we call spiritual coaching that involves personal study and one-to-one conversations about the study. In some cases, it has worked wonderfully well, but it hasn’t been as effective with millennials. Our program requires a great deal of personal motivation on the part of the learner and doesn’t expect the coach to take the initiative over the learning process. As a result, even with a coach, some millennials have expressed to me feelings of abandonment.
I’m not sure how to address this in the context of a church. As I consider my own available time, I must confront the reality that I can’t personally be the mentor that the millennials in my life desire. It’s possible that I could choose one of them and invest fully in that one, but there are too many with too much potential, and I fear that the others would feel abandoned even more than they do now. However, as I look at the other leaders in our church, the other potential mentors, I see the same problems there. No one has the personal time even if they have the willingness to be the mentor that is desired.
I have personally attempted to solve this problem by engaging in group mentoring with some millennials, but after a few months of doing that weekly, the people in the group admitted to me it wasn’t helping them. To them, it felt like a class and not like a relationship. One of the members of that group eventually left our church altogether.
I am going to re-open conversation with millennials to figure out if there is a solution to this time-availability problem when it comes to mentoring.

Millennials want to feel like they are making a positive difference and would rather do than talk.

I love the sentiment described by this statement, and I applaud the youthful exuberance that is present among the millennial generation to accomplish good in this world. However, I struggle to know how to fan that flame. Here are my dilemmas:

• When the church does something that church leadership believes is making a positive difference, it is at times met with apathy from the millennials in the congregation. If the “positive difference” doesn’t specifically resonate with a millennial, they will find it hard to trust the organizational leadership that it really is a good thing.
• When millennials have an idea of something that will make a positive difference, they are eager to get it done but struggle to fully talk through the details of their vision with other leaders or to submit their vision to the guidance of seasoned leaders. If they get the opportunity to lead the effort, the eagerness to do more than talk will lead to poor communication and missteps in the planning and execution of the plan.

In other words, if the church comes up with a way to make a positive difference, that might not motivate the participation of the millennials. However, if the millennials come up with a way to make a positive difference, they are often reluctant to submit their vision to the leadership of others. Still, if the millennials are put in charge of the effort without oversight, their inexperience and eagerness can actually lead to damage in the church.
I get the impression that the millennials in my life want me to hear their dreams and ideas, embrace those ideas, champion them, and make them happen while regularly seeking out those millennials for advice in the effort. I know I react against that emotionally because it feels like a reversal of my leadership—what they want from me is what I’m trying to lead others to do! As the leader of a church, I want to set the vision and get others to embrace it and make it happen while they seek out my advice for the best ways to do it. I feel the millennials in my life are trying to lead me as opposed to being led by me.
I need to prayerfully seek God regarding the kind of leader I am supposed to be and how to appropriately empower others especially in the millennial generation.

Millennials don’t trust institutions and want organizational transparency.

Now this is something I can handle! Increasing organizational transparency is pretty easy for a small church.
FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY: I have expressed on a number of occasions that we practice near total transparency regarding our church finances, but I have recently assembled an easy-to-read financial report of every aspect of the church. If anyone wants a copy, they need only to contact me.
LEADERSHIP TRANSPARENCY: In our church, the decisions are made by our Board of Elders, and even though we don’t invite people from the church to attend our meetings, we follow a few principles:

1. Every decision of the board is by unanimous consent. If any Elder dissents, we wait until we all can agree.
2. There is no blurring of the lines between staff and elders. The Lead Pastor is the only person to serve as both.
3. Contact information for Elders is posted on our website and in our weekly announcements, and we are not afraid to talk with anyone about the decisions we make even if confidential information needs to be withheld.

And… one more…

Finally, there is something that didn’t show up in the original article but that I have seen.

Millennials want to be part of an effective community.

It’s not enough to have good relationships. It’s not enough to be making a positive difference. Where all the pieces seem to come together is when people are in deeply personal relationships AND also working on a mission together. This isn’t just for millennials, but it seems to be especially strong among millennials. Therefore, it seems that to connect deeply with millennials, every relationship should be coupled with mission and every mission should be coupled with relationship.
I am feeling a renewed eagerness to combine mission and community. That is, I will look for ways to take people who are doing similar things in our church and bring them intentionally into moments of community with each other.

What do you think?

I’m turning comments on for this post, because I’d love to hear your ideas. Constructive ideas only, please.
If you are a millennial, have I understood you and the way you feel about church?
If you are a millennial, do you think my suggestions for our church make sense? Do you have suggestions of your own?
If you are not a millennial, what are the limits you have when it comes to reaching out to and developing millennials? Are you willing to spend time and effort to reach out to them and meet their needs even when you are tempted to judge them for their “immaturity”?