All Millennials know is debt and hypocrisy according to the statistics I have shared in the past few days. They make less, have less job security, and their choices for future income depend on receiving training from a technical school or going further in debt for a college education. The American Dream isn't as cheap as it used to be nor is it as easy to attain.
This is where the church needs to began to look at what once was and what the reality is now.
At one time we wanted the best of facilities because we thought it was an attraction to people, but we didn't count the cost. The solid financial footing that many churches had years ago has slowly eroded due to the collapse of many communities and their local economy. Here in the south whole communities are drying up because of the loss of the textile industry in the last 20 years. As those jobs faded out, so has the security that the community would stay intact as the younger generations moved away in search of employment. That's not only happening with the textile industry, but with other businesses across the nation. Instead of becoming a nation that manufactures it's own products, we have become a nation of consumers of foreign goods.
Karl Vaters wrote on his PIVOT blog:
"Millennials won't build the kinds of churches their parents and grandparents built. I don’t know what kinds of churches they will build, but they’ll be very different than what we’ve been used to in the last two generations. Here’s why.
Builders and Boomers took relationships for granted and needed to build structures. Millennials take the structures for granted and need to build relationships.
My parents’ and grandparents’ generations were literally building and rebuilding nations following the war. For the first time, construction companies didn’t just put up houses, they designed and built entire neighborhoods almost overnight. They ran telephone and electricity cables. They constructed freeways. And they erected church buildings in the same way.
For my parents and grandparents, a permanent church building with pews bolted to the floor, a full-time pastor and denominational label meant permanence and status. In those generations, the fastest way to get money out of their pockets was to launch a capital fund building campaign.
Not so for my kids’ generation. Launch a capital building campaign today and you’re likely to be met with blank stares or questions like, “Why should I give my hard-earned money to help you build a building?”He also wrote:
"Millennials aren’t wrong to feel that way. And they’re not uncommitted. They just have different needs and see ministry through a different lens.
In addition to giving them permanent physical structures, we also gave them an emotionally impaired, morally ambiguous, relationally impermanent society. This is the generation where divorce and/or parental neglect are virtually assumed. Contrasted by the sometimes equally damaging do-everything-for-them helicopter parents.
Most of the relationships that previous generations took for granted have broken. So this generation has a high degree of skepticism, low trust in institutions and finely-tuned phoniness detectors. The previous generations sang songs of permanence and trust in our structures, like “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” This one gushes over songs about restoring broken relationships and identity, like “You’re a good, good father and I’m loved by you. It’s who I am.”
Neither is wrong. They just have different needs and ways of expressing them. Ministry must happen with them, not to them or for them."
The "if you build it they will come" mentality may have worked in the movies, but it won't move the Millennial generation. They may come see the show, but they want something to heal their heart. A buildings not going to do that or a pew. Even a song we sing or the way we sing it isn't what's needed. What they are looking for can only come when somebody who loves Jesus goes beyond the norm to tell them that. Will you be the person?
Get your eyes off of stuff and your eyes on the real need-people who need Jesus in a lost and dying world!
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