Not long ago the daily” Roanoke Times” newspaper, a publication for which my late husband and I worked for more than 40 years, carried on its Sunday front page a comprehensive story, “Building Faith Without the Pews.” It analyzed a relatively new cultural trend: Many young adults are no longer bringing themselves and their families to familiar houses of worship with steeples, stained glass windows and pipe organs.
Instead, if they are going to a house of worship at all, it’s likely to be in an unlikely structure such as a restaurant, a stark “shell” building, or a civic hall or school auditorium.
The young folk are quite happy in these surroundings without the trappings of beauty which their families contributed to the brick and stone landmarks that abound in our valley. Moreover, they don’t care if the congregation they like is denominationally connected. It’s likely to carry a generic name which sounds so much like others that the identities are blurred.
As a revealing song of 60 years ago put it, “The Times They Are A-Changing.”
Looking back over the many decades I’ve been visiting Western Virginia congregations, I find it more fascinating than alarming. To me it says something about the power of God and the need of us all to find Something bigger than ourselves in which to trust; many also have found that it’s pleasant to share this faith and trust with others of their age and status in life.
Still, it’s hard for those who have given their lives and loyalties to a more familiar kind of church to accept the transition. Strangely, to some, it seems out of line for so many young adults to be conservative and literalistic in their religious preferences while their elders are more liberal in acceptance of people of many views.
It’s not supposed to be that way. The mature are the ones who are supposed to be “set in their ways” and the young open to new ideas. That’s one of the paradoxes in life.
My wisest high school teacher sometimes said, “You’ll be more like your grandparents than your parents.” My grandparents had all left this world before I entered it, but –after my three children all left organized religion after being brought up in it – my far – away granddaughter is beginning to find it again in a large non-traditional Georgia church.
Why do things turn out this way, especially when Scripture tells us to bring up a child {with time-honored religion values} and when it is grown church loyalty is supposed to continue?
Many reasons are given for the failure of those born from about 1985 on to appreciate the Sunday morning church-going routine. Here are a few:
- It costs too much to maintain a well-paid staff and a building and grounds with many amenities.
- The perceived cultural positions are too conservative or too inclusive. {Unmarried parents, mixed-race couples, gays and possibly transgendered persons are accepted or not as the case may be.}
- The music isn’t familiar.
- Most adults wear dress-up clothes such as hose and neckties.
- Children are not free to run about and talk during worship.
- Without a Sunday morning church-going routine, it’s hard to make time when recreation and grocery shopping have long taken precedence. And so many women now work out of the home.
- In the casual contemporary fellowship a stranger notices these differences.
