Soapbox

Please read this article before enjoying/hating my thoughts and opinions on the topic.

I am, as it turns out, "a millennial." I did not know that before reading this article, which I stumbled across on Facebook, posted by a sweet friend from high school.

I knew this before reading this article - cue step up onto the soapbox - right now, Christians are their own worst enemy. DC Talk knew this a long time ago, when they started the song "What If I Stumble" with the spoken intro, "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and then walk out the door, denying Him by their lifestyle. And that is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."

I knew this - that being a Christian is hard. Being someone in this generation is hard. Trying to reconcile those two things is really hard. We have memories of life before cell phones and computers, when things for most of us were really pretty simple - and that's not life now. My kids... well, Jax can work the iPad already. With all of this information and technology and just life being thrown at us, we want something tangible. Something real. Something that makes sense, but that we can question.

The problem, in my mind and I'm certain I'm not alone on this, based on the article and the research attached, is that something is missing. And what I keep coming back to is this - Christianity is a relationship. Not a book of rules. Not a band on stage or a dynamic preacher moving people to tears. Rules are necessary, yes. The music and the preaching, too. But nobody is talking about that. Yes, "having a relationship with Jesus" is talked about. But it's more than that. You can talk to Jesus, pray, listen all day long. You can read your Bible daily, go to a church service or meeting every night. And you can still look like everyone else on the outside.

What I want and need - and again, I can't be alone in this - is for Christians to take that relationship OUTSIDE of the church. Take what Jesus was about - that relationship - and apply it to the people you don't agree with, maybe don't like, those who worship differently, in a different church, or a different religion entirely. Taking "love your neighbor" and applying it to, say, people on welfare. People with addictions or mental health issues or a past you don't understand. 

I cannot possible say it better than the above article did (emphasis added by me):

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.

It's not enough to have a great band, an energetic pastor, or friendly greeters... the church has to preach and teach how to connect with others... and help us find the answers to the questions we have. There has to be compassion, there has to be some wiggle room, there has to be a place for it to be acceptable to have friends who are different in any and every possible way. We need a place where loving Jesus can equal loving a church - because right now, for a lot of people I know personally, that is the problem - the people who make up the church make Jesus/religion/Christianity look really unappealing. There aren't enough people saying, "That's not my Christianity" and showing others what we believe Jesus is REALLY about. 

Step off soapbox.