Wanted: New Church Methods for New Church People

There’s nothing wrong with traditional methods of doing church. As long as you want to minister to traditional church members.

People who like traditional styles of church (whatever yours may be) need places to worship, learn and be discipled. Too many of them have felt overlooked, even ridiculed, in recent years as many churches have rushed to make changes.

But.

The traditional church member is dying out.

Literally.

If we truly want to change the world with the Gospel of Jesus, that is less likely to be done using traditional church methods with every passing year. Read more

From what I gather a number of churches in the Anglican Church in North America are banking upon a perceived affinity among Millennials for traditional forms of worship, particularly ancient forms, for both their survival and their growth. This trend was brought up in the comment thread on New Small Church, which follows this article.

Dan Kimball writes about this trend in The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations and Emerging Worship: Generating Worship Gathering for New Generations; Sally Morgenthaler in Worship Evangelism. These two writers and the late Robert Webber have sparked interest in the use of traditional forms of worship to reach this particular generation. It accounts for the popularity of gatherings like the Ancient Evangelical Future Conference devoted to the revival of ancient forms of worship.

The problem is that this perceived trend may not be as widespread or pervasive as those who draw attention to it would have us believe. Indeed they may be engaging in wishful thinking.

While we may run across on the Internet anecdotal accounts of Millennials who have been attracted to the ambiance of a traditional Anglican church, we do not find any hard research supporting the claim that Millennials are flocking to traditional churches. The trend appears at best to be regional—evident in some places and not others. It also appears to be confined to only a small segment of the Millennial population.

In my particular area this trend is not evident at all. Traditional churches in the area are not benefiting from an influx of Millennials. Missiologist Ed Stetzer has conducted research into the trend; his research found that the larger segment of church-going Millennials were unaffected by the trend. Stetzer has yet to release his findings.

Photo: bennyinjapan.blogspot.com