Why “Cool Church” Is No Longer Working with Millennials and Gen Z
To lead a generation with no biblical background or common knowledge, the church must assume just that: that there exists a fundamental need to provide Bible teaching and basic doctrine. We must lay the foundation.
I am a Millennial. I almost left church.
For me, the exodus of Millennials and Gen Z leaving the church is more than a trend or a number. It’s my life. It’s the friends I was raised with as a Pastor’s Kid. And I’ve spent the last 13 years as a Senior Pastor in the trenches trying to navigate the complexity of shepherding 5 living generations.
With Millennials and Gen Z drifting from local churches, an instinctive reaction is often that we need to make our churches cooler, improve our social media, and present a younger image.
Young people want a more relevant church experience… right? I mean, if we made the music louder, put in concert lighting, and preached on topics like dating and grace, younger generations would come flooding through our doors?
I call this model ‘cool church’. It is a belief that if church were cooler, new generations would come. And I have a growing conviction that cool is not what Millennials are chasing. In fact, they are reacting to our attempts at making surface level changes, and ignore the real changes that are needed.
If we mis-diagnose the problem, we will never heal the ailment.
The idea that to reach Millennials and Gen Z we need better branding or a new website is really a misread on what these generations actually want. They have been marketed and advertised to at an unprecedented rate their entire lives.
So, what do they want? Depth.
In a superficial culture, depth is attractive.
Read More
Related Posts:
You Might also like
-
Serve God While You Have Strength
No time spent serving Him will be wasted. Don’t waste your energy. While there is time, redeem it. Make the most of it. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.
Breaking news: We are all going to die. But prior to death, we lose our strength and energy. Old age comes with waning strength. Memory starts to slip; instability and immobility become a norm of life.
Young, healthy people don’t think about the later years as difficult days (Eccl 12:1). They focus on the here and now. But we have all seen the debilitating effects of old age and disease, and so we have to reckon with the reality that as life rolls on, it tends to get harder.
As we consider the imminent reality of death, Solomon charges us in Ecclesiastes 12 to remember our Creator in the days of our youth (v. 1). That is, we should remember who He is, what He has done, and who we are in relation to Him. We should maximize our effort while we still have life. While we have strength, we should serve God now.
Serve God Before Life Gets Harder, vv. 1-2
Most of us as children were unable to comprehend the pain of tragic events. Our innocence and naiveté tended to make tragedies a distant reality. But as we move toward middle age, we start to understand what these tragedies mean. We build deep relationships with people only to experience betrayal. We develop an abiding love for another person only to lose that person to death. And while those losses hurt, we still have much to do. We fill up our time with activity and work, and anticipate living for another forty years. Consequently, the noise of tragedy, while still painful, is somewhat muted by our busyness.
But eventually we get old, and our body breaks down, and our friends and family die. We start to go to more and more funerals of people younger than us—a rare occurrence when we were younger. In our youth, we went to funerals of older people and we understood that all older will eventually die. Now we are older ourselves. Our stamina has faded away. We have little ability to constructively contribute. Fewer and fewer people depend on us. And we know that it is only a matter of time until our own lives come to an end.
Read More -
PCA Chaplain (COL) David Peterson, Retired, Called Home to Glory
Following military service, David served as the Executive Director of the Presbyterian and Reformed Joint Commission on Chaplains and Military Personnel (PRJC) and Coordinator for Chaplain Ministries, Mission to North America (MNA), Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). In these roles, David recruited, sponsored, and mentored dozens of Chaplains who served in multiple branches of the military and communities of service. He retired from this ministerial role in 2010.
Chaplain (COL) David Peterson, retired, age 81 of Sturgis, SD, died Wednesday, October 19, 2022 at his home, surrounded by his loving family.
Peterson was born on January 4, 1941 in Lemmon, South Dakota. He graduated from Lemmon High School in 1958 and received his BA degree from Covenant College, St. Louis, Missouri in 1962. He continued his studies at Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, receiving a Master of Divinity in 1965 and was ordained as a Presbyterian Minister in July 1965. While at Covenant, David met the love of his life, Sandra, and they married on June 9, 1964.
As a Chaplain in the U.S. Army, David ministered to soldiers of all ranks for 30 years. David was as equally concerned about ministering to enlisted soldiers and non-commissioned officers during two combat tours in Vietnam as he was about ministering to the most senior commanding officers during Operation Desert Storm. In his assignments throughout the United States, David positively impacted soldiers and their families with his living Christian testimony. He provided comfort, wisdom, and encouragement to everyone he knew. He retired from active-duty service in 1995 and moved to Sturgis, South Dakota.
Following military service, David served as the Executive Director of the Presbyterian and Reformed Joint Commission on Chaplains and Military Personnel (PRJC) and Coordinator for Chaplain Ministries, Mission to North America (MNA), Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). In these roles, David recruited, sponsored, and mentored dozens of Chaplains who served in multiple branches of the military and communities of service. He retired from this ministerial role in 2010.
While David had many significant professional accomplishments, his source of joy was serving God, serving others, and uplifting his family. He and his beloved wife, Sandra, created a refuge for family gatherings where wonderful memories were created for his children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, extended family, and so many others. He fixed four wheelers, saddled up horses, guided pheasant hunts, prepared the swimming pool, jumped on trampolines, and refereed family skeet shooting competitions. He did all this with contagious enthusiasm, a fun-loving attitude, and an endless supply of “grandpa sayings” that endeared him to all. He never faced a task too great that he couldn’t complete for the enjoyment of his family. The love he showed and generosity he shared left a legacy of happiness, joy, and love. His life will continue to be an inspiration for many generations.
David is survived by his wife, Sandra of Sturgis, South Dakota; son, Jeffrey (Lili) Peterson of West Point, New York, daughters, J’Lane (Peter) Dunning of Beaufort, South Carolina, and Julie (Paul) Durfield of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. David’s grandchildren include Jessica (Joshua), Kayci, Sydney (Ian), Olivia (Blaine), Benjamin, Joseph, Anna, Stephen, Clara, Meghan, Faith, Ginny, Caleb, Hudson, Heath, Colter, and Jeremiah, as well as great-grandchildren James and Elizabeth. He is also survived by brothers Robert (Karen) Peterson of Lemmon, South Dakota, Rolland (Jane) Peterson of Lemmon, South Dakota, Kenneth (Pauline) Peterson of Aberdeen, South Dakota, and sister Delores Long of Lemmon, South Dakota.
David was preceded in death by his parents, Robert and Winnie Peterson, his brother, Charles, brother-in-law Art, and sisters-in-law, Rosemary and Ruth.
A funeral service will be held 11am Thursday, October 27th, 2022 at Foothills Community Church in Sturgis. There will be no visitation. A second service will be held 11am Monday, October 31, 2022 at the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Lemmon. Interment will take place in Greenhill Cemetery in Lemmon, with Military Honors provided by the Brattvet-Green American Legion Post #66.
At the family’s request, please do not send flowers. In lieu of flowers, memorials are preferred to the Foothills Community Church: 3501 Avalanche Road; Sturgis, SD 57785 or the Reformed Presbyterian Church: 500 First Ave; Lemmon, SD 57638.
Arrangements are with Leverington Funeral Home of the Northern Hills in Belle Fourche, South Dakota.
Both services will be available to view online. Please look for the two weblinks at the bottom of this obituary. David’s video tribute will be also made available here as well. (Hopefully by Tuesday)
Source
Related Posts: -
Reverence and Emotion in Reformed Worship Part 2
Reverent, grave, seemly, solemn – these adjectives convey a seriousness about worship that seems to preclude external expressions of emotion. But this language is not to suppose that the Puritans did not value emotion. In fact, the Puritans were “intensely self-conscious of – and, indeed, fascinated by – their own emotions.”[1] Many Puritans looked to their own spiritual experience for evidences of God working in their lives.[2] For the Puritans, reverence in worship did not stifle the emotions, but channeled them so that they ran deeper.
The Puritans (1600s)
The Puritans in the 1600s continued the legacy of the Reformers by seeking to purify the worship of the Church of England. The crowning documents of the Puritans were the Westminster Standards, completed in 1646. In The Directory for the Public Worship of God, the Westminster Divines describe how the congregation ought to assemble for worship:
Let all enter the assembly, not irreverently, but in a grave and seemly manner, taking their seats or places without adoration, or bowing themselves towards one place or other.
The congregation being assembled, the minister, after solemn calling on them to the worshipping of the great name of God is to begin with prayer.
In all reverence and humility acknowledging the incomprehensible greatness and majesty of the Lord, (in whose presence they do then in a special manner appear,) and their own vileness and unworthiness to approach so near him, with their utter inability of themselves to so great a work; and humbly beseeching him for pardon, assistance, and acceptance, in the whole service then to be performed; and for a blessing on that particular portion of his word then to be read: And all in the name and mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Reverent, grave, seemly, solemn – these adjectives convey a seriousness about worship that seems to preclude external expressions of emotion. But this language is not to suppose that the Puritans did not value emotion. In fact, the Puritans were “intensely self-conscious of – and, indeed, fascinated by – their own emotions.”[1] Many Puritans looked to their own spiritual experience for evidences of God working in their lives.[2] For the Puritans, reverence in worship did not stifle the emotions, but channeled them so that they ran deeper. Speaking of early modern Protestants, historian Alec Ryrie writes:
Certainly they observed and disciplined their emotions with unusual rigour … But channeling a current only makes it run swifter and deeper. Nor did the early modern Protestants discipline their emotions because they wished to suppress them. Rather, they believed that the emotions – or “affections”, “feelings” or “passions”, to use their preferred terms – could be guides on the road to godliness, supports when the road became hard, and invaluable testimonies that the destination was within reach. Protestants disciplined their emotions because they mattered.[3]
For the Puritans, the emotional and rational faculties of man are both necessary for true spiritual worship.
Read More
Related Posts: