Five friends cluster for conversation among hundreds pouring out of a Sunday service at Flatirons Community Church in Lafayette. The five are in their 20s and 30s. And at this church, they don’t stand out for their age or their attire — it’s easy to come to church dressed casually when the pastor gives the sermon in jeans and a hoodie.
They’ve returned to church as adults, under their own volition, for varied reasons — a tragedy, a friend’s infectious enthusiasm, a feeling that something was missing.
“Life is just hard,” said Jennifer Luoma, 26. “So you end up back here because you don’t know what to do in life,” she said with a mix of exasperation and humor.
Faith is in decline in this country by several measures, and some churches are wondering who will fill the pews in the future. Capturing the attention of millennials is no easy task. The number of older millennials (born 1981-89) who say they’re religiously unaffiliated grew 9 percentage points to 34 percent in the seven years between large-scale studies, in 2007 and 2014, on the American religious landscape by the Pew Research Center.
The biggest group of “nones” — those who don’t claim religious affiliation — in that study is younger millennials, those born between 1990 and 1996.
Engaging a generation
Yet while some churches are in decline because of those young “nones,” some in the Denver area — from large organizations, such as Flatirons, which has three area campuses, and Red Rocks Church, which has four, to smaller ones — have turned to creative methods of engaging millennials in ways that matter to young potential congregants, appealing to their more earnest and transient lifestyles.
“The churches that are doing well with millennial ministry are the ones who are looking at how do we minister for a global Church — capital C,” said Elisabeth Nesbit Sbanotto, an assistant professor of counseling at Denver Seminary who does consulting work in intergenerational management and ministry. Her book “Effective Generational Ministry” comes out in January.
“It’s the idea of creating ministries that are a short-term commitment,” she said. “It’s not going to be a year-long commitment. It’s not going to be, well, you’re here forever.”
Rather, she said, they’re equipping millennials to be transient disciples — because millennials tend to be transient.
“This has to be about preparing them for what’s next, because they’re probably not staying here (at one church),” she said.
The old ways of catering to young adults — like simply starting a youth group, for example — can still work at some churches, said Katherine Turpin, a professor and director of the master of divinity program at Iliff School of Theology. Her research examines intersections of contemporary culture and faith.
But young adults are seeking something different from church now, she said.
“(They) tend to be looking for older adults that are living their intentions,” she said. “They’re looking for integrity. They’re not looking for something to do socially — that power in the church is gone.
“They’re joining communities that are standing for something.”
Looking at churchgoing millennials broadly, Sbanotto said, they’re mostly divided into two groups: those who attend contemporary churches such as Flatirons, which are more likely to be in a strip mall than a 100-year-old building with a steeple and more likely to have a Christian rock band than a pipe organ, and those who attend “high” churches — those with history and liturgy, like the Catholic and Episcopal churches.
“For those drawn to high church, what they talk about is that they wanted to be connected to something bigger than themselves,” she said, then noted that it’s just one of the contradictions in values for the age group some have dubbed Generation Me.
Seeking authenticity
Millennials can be a tough group to engage, said the Rev. Scott Bailey, priest secretary to the archbishop for the Archdiocese of Denver.
“They don’t exactly just show up at church on Christmas,” he said.
He should know — he is one.
“In a certain sense, we’re more connected because of social media, but a lot of times we lack intimate relationships with other people,” said Bailey, 30. “If there’s something that might draw people into church, it might be that there’s something they’re not getting from social media.”
He noted another thing millennials are looking for: “Can someone please just answer my questions? What do Christians believe? How do I live my faith?”
Stephen Redden, pastor at New Denver Church in the Bonnie Brae neighborhood, was packing up for a mission trip to Guatemala when he paused to talk about young adults in his church.
New Denver Church comes up quickly on an Internet search of “Denver” and “church,” even though it’s a smaller church. “Young people are going to start looking for a church online,” said Redden, a 44-year-old Gen-X’er.
Denver, like many cities, draws people from all over, he said. “It feels like there’s a lot of churn,” which has an effect on the 20-somethings who have moved here, he said.
They’re in a new city, away from their families. They’re working new jobs (maybe several). They’re trying to pay off college loans. Finding an extended family and even professional mentors at church can be pretty appealing, he said, especially if that’s coupled with the opportunity to have an impact on the place you live, and beyond.
“They want to see that faith actually matters,” he said. “They want to see that it’s not just something you say — you live it.”
They’re looking for authenticity, said Jordan Terrell, 34, the young adults pastor at Flatirons Community Church.
“And at Flatirons, we’re giving it to them. We’re being vulnerable. We’re talking about our real life, our real truth.”
That sort of ministry is effective with millennials, Sbanotto said, because it does speak to their search for authenticity — and she defines that along generational lines.
For baby boomers, she said, honesty is a strong value, but so is privacy. “There is a sense that you don’t air the family’s dirty laundry,” she said. Gen-X’ers rebelled from that: “Those were family secrets … 20 or 30 years after, all of this stuff comes to light and we feel like we’ve been living a lie,” she said.
What started with X’ers seeking that transparency became the norm for millennials, she said. You see this value playing out in churches that are popular with millennials in several ways, Sbanotto said. One example: pastors exploring Bible verses from the perspective of their own life experience and sharing their personal story, rather than relating them to an anonymous third person.
Millennials are seeking authenticity, but they also can be noncommittal. “There’s a value on connection but also on change,” she said. “They’ll church-hop, they’ll job-hop, because there’s a fear of missing out.” That’s why Sbanotto thinks looking at church broadly — this one institution is one of several churches a young adult might attend — is a realistic way for churches to move forward.
And change? It’s already happening.
“This year was the first year that millennials outnumbered baby boomers in the country,” said Bailey, of the Denver Archdiocese. “So that means we’re going to start seeing millennials taking over the country. They’re going to be running businesses, being our politicians, becoming our priests and pastors. And that’s going to change everything.”
Jenn Fields: 303-954-1599, jfields@denverpost.com or @jennfields
