There are some pastors who work with youth and college students who say, "We cannot compete with the world in terms of technology and entertainment. What we can offer is relationships. We need to focus on people, not programs."
Similarly, many people from liturgical traditions report that the young adults they know are turning to liturgical traditions and mystery and contemplation.
See for example Christianity Today’s February cover story:
Chris Armstrong | posted 2/08/2008
Christianity Today
In this month’s Chronicle of Higher Education, there is a similar story by a University of Virginia professor suggesting that college professors need to help their students slow down and think, rather than pursuing the latest technological teaching technique. The article is a must read for people who have an interest in college students because I have never read a better description of the internet generation.
Dwelling in Possibilities: Our students’ spectacular hunger for life makes them radically vulnerable
By MARK EDMUNDSON
ChronicleReview.com
From the issue dated March 14, 2008
Hat tip to Gary Friesen.
Five comments about whether the answer to reaching young adults in the church is to use technology or to offer them something totally different.
1. In the church, you have to motivate people to come back. It is probably appropriate for an English teacher with very highly motivated University of Virginia students to try to slow them down. As a professor the last two years at Taylor University, I was amazed at the power the professor had over students in comparison to being a pastor. As a pastor you need to motivate people to want to come back. As a university professor, they have to come back – their grades depend upon it.
2. Excellence in communication and teaching needs to be pursued. I would not want university professors to rest on the fact that students don’t need technology, they just need old school teaching methods. College students need outstanding classroom teaching to interest to help them engage the subject. Regardless of the style, technology or no technology, the teaching task still needs to be done well. Ditto, churches.
3. The liturgical tradition is certainly not winning the day in terms of any sociological measure that I have seen. Roman Catholics and Mainline churches are losing great numbers of people. Many are becoming evangelicals. But also many are becoming "no-religious affiliation." See Pew’s Survey The Religious Landscape of the United States for the latest example. "While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic
faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as
Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not
for the offsetting impact of immigration . . . members of mainline Protestant churches and Jews are older, on average, than members of other groups." There is much confounding here: there are too many variables to sort out why people are turning away from mainline and Catholic churches but I am simply pointing out that liturgy is no automatic solution for attracting young people.
4. I like liturgical and nonliturgical churches and I think they can both learn from one another. I think it is great to have liturgical churches and I have tried to push all of the evangelical churches I have pastored to greater appreciation of the church’s past and to implement forms of liturgy thoughtfully. However, when I am around people (often connected to Wheaton College or Duke Divinity School) who argue that informal liturgical styles are woefully lacking, I tend to defend "the three songs and a biblical sermon" evangelical-style as having much to commend it.
5. I continue to argue that pastors need to think like educators or missionaries. Educators who teach second grade, gear their programs to that age level. We have to do the same in the church. Meet people where they are at. Similarly, missionaries to a new culture, need to speak the language of the people. Though I agree with the Professor Edmundson that sometimes the culture is poisonous and needs to be critiqued – he argues that the frenetic lifestyle of students hurts their ability to understand life – we also will not be able to critique that culture until we demonstrate (as he has) that we know it well. What I mean is that churches, if they expect to be effective at reaching un-churched or de-churched people with the gospel, need to be able to communicate with them. I think the question, "How will someone experience our church if this is their first time here?" is an extremely important question and people need not betray their tradition to address it. They may simply need to explain their tradition better so that the new person has a better experience.
I think there is great reason to be suspicious of highly fragmented lives powered relentlessly forward by dizzying forms of technology. However, I do not think that purposefully anti-technological liturgy communicates clearly enough with many people who are immersed in American culture. We need meet un-churched and de-churched people half-way with modest uses of technology and draw them into community and contemplation from there.
4 replies on “Should you use technology to reach young adults or offer them something wholly different?”
Great, challenging post. I’ve always wondered about the issue of technology in the church as I’ve worked for around five years with youth and adults in “mainline churches”(Episcopal and Methodist) and I’ve found that the “technological needs” of various age groups are are often quite different from one another. But, I’ve also found that “slowing” down can be quite refreshing and interesting for all age groups. So, I’d like to press you a bit on two portions of your post:
You wrote:
“The liturgical tradition is certainly not winning the day in terms of any sociological measure that I have seen. Roman Catholics and Mainline churches are losing great numbers of people. Many are becoming evangelicals.”
I think many of those leaving the “mainline” churches were likely evangelicals to begin with who are no longer satisfied with the ways that the “higher ups” in the denominations are handling things with either administration or social issues. Also, with regard to whether liturgy attracts, the churches I’ve seen that are growing the fastest (numerically speaking) are “evangelical” churches – some of whom are beginning to employ more “traditional” liturgical styling. I’ve never liked the idea that some churches are “liturgical” while others simply aren’t. All churches have liturgy – it’s just a matter of what sort of liturgy they have and whether that helps people commune with God and grow with others.
You also wrote:
“I do not think that purposefully anti-technological liturgy communicates clearly enough with many people who are immersed in American culture. We need meet un-churched and de-churched people half-way with modest uses of technology and draw them into community and contemplation from there.”
I think that the intentional “backing off” of the use of certain technologies (explained clearly) has as its purpose the de-immersion of people from American culture. Maybe we just have different ideas of what worship (or even the church) is, but it seems that a good goal would be to help people understand who they are within the community of faith (in relation to the world) and that intentional withdrawal from a “we need technology to be human” mindset that can actually be quite de-humanizing. As I said before, I’ve found that a “backing off” with technology can actually be a drawing factor because – whether their actions indicate it or not – I think many people are actually pretty “technology weary” – they just might need to be reminded of that.
Anyway, great post. Don’t mean to write so much, but this is just a discussion I’m really interested in. Hope to see you sometime around campus for coffee.
Retention is a big problem for Christians of all stripes. Michael Horton has a challenging essay in this month’s Touchstone Magazine on why he believes it is better to eschew the temptation to jazz up church with a bunch of technology (All Crossed Up: Michael S. Horton on the Ordinary Ministry That Can’t Corner the Market — it may be available online, but Touchstone’s site is presently under construction).
In his article, Horton states that 80% of the youth who grow up in an Evangelical church have left by their sophomore year in college (additionally, he states that 80% of Evangelical pastors are out of the ministry 5 years after they graduate from seminary). These are astonishing numbers. Yet, based on my own experiences, they do not seem far-fetched (Andy, I think the attrition rate among our friends from Student Body is pretty high, and we had an outstanding youth group!).
Nonetheless, the Pew Forum’s findings regarding the Catholic Church are very sad indeed. However, it is naive to simply attribute these statistics to the Catholic Church’s liturgy. First and foremost, the Catholic Church has experienced this decline only since the reforms of the mass that took place in the 1960s! I would refer curious readers to the following site, which compiles the answers of 34 prominent Catholics (from bishops to professors to bloggers) to the question, “Why are so many leaving the Catholic Church?”: http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3009&Itemid=48
Having skimmed most of these responses, I haven’t seen any that thought the problem was that the liturgy was “out of touch” and failed to use enough technology or novel communication techniques.
That said, I agree with Andy wholeheartedly that it is incumbent on liturgical churches to be sensitive to how their services are received and understood by newcomers. BUT, as I have said before, this does not necessarily mean watering down the liturgy, as many Catholic parishes do.
I remember my first visits to a wonderful Orthodox parish in Chicago. At the coffee hour/potluck afterwards, several people approached me with a smile and asked whether I had ever been to an Orthodox service before. They recalled their first experiences with the ancient liturgy, and how they had come to love it. Their warmth, sensitivity, and generosity was a great gift to me, as it has been to many others. Without it, I might have skipped out on this wonderful opportunity to get to know and come to love the Eastern liturgy.
“Grow like a tree rather than a forest fire”
The Touchstone website is back up. here is a link to the Michael Horton article I mentioned in my previous comment:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=21-02-011-v
Here are some highlights…
* * *
A host of passages exhort believers to patient and mutual submission, progressive maturity and unity in the Word, and a community that is disciplined in its worship, life, and doctrine. There are clear instructions on the examination and ordination of a formal ministry that is entrusted with authority subordinate to Christ, with commands to “guard what has been entrusted to you,” going on from the milk of the Word to solid food, and so forth. There are no equivalent injunctions or instructions for small groups, para-church ministries, crusades, marches, revivals, or other movements that celebrate the extraordinary, spontaneous, restless, expressive immediacy that Americans relish, whether in church or on daytime talk shows.
* * *
When churches abandon the ordinary ministry for extraordinary “excitements sufficient to induce conversion” (Finney’s phrase), eventually the innovations become traditions and the insatiable craving for ever-new experiences of spontaneous expressivism, like a drug addiction, leads eventually to the spiritual equivalent of a heart attack. Tragically, the landscape of American religion is littered with successive waves of “revival” (often patterned on American trends in salesmanship) followed inevitably by periods of spiritual fatigue and skepticism.
* * *
There are no easy answers to finding the right balance between caring for the flock already gathered and seeking those who are far off. However, the New Testament does, I believe, lead us to a crucial conclusion: namely, that the same ministry that leads us and our children to Christ, in an ever-deepening communion with him and his body, also reaches strangers, which most of us (as Gentiles) were ourselves.
* * *
To become a Christian was already to begin one’s lifelong journey in the company of pilgrims under the care of the church. Discipleship was defined by churchmanship. Personal faith in Christ was never set over against active membership in the visible body of Christ.
* * *
When pastors feel the burden of saving people, selling the gospel, or cornering the market through their own cleverness, methods, creativity, or charisma, they eventually burn out. So, too, do the sheep who are submitted to perpetual exhortations to imitate their restless “authenticity.”
* * *
According to a recent study of Evangelical ministers, 1,500 pastors leave the ministry each month and 80 percent of seminary graduates leave within five years. This comports with another study that found that 80 percent of the youth who grow up in Evangelical churches drop out by their sophomore year of college.
* * *
Charles Finney’s “burned-over district” is growing like a cancer. The challenge before us is to regain our confidence in the ordinary means of grace: “to grow like a tree rather than a forest fire,” as Wendell Berry described our relation to our local environment.
* * *
Should we not begin with Paul’s list of qualifications for our pastors rather than the average job description in circulation today, and abide by the habits of disciplined growth that we find in the New Testament rather than the consumer habits of the marketplace?
eric,
thanks for these comments and the helpful balancing Michael Horton article citation. I only wish he would have given the statistical footnotes on the studies he cites.