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This article is part of an ongoing series called “Young Adult Voices.” This series gives young adults who are either in congregations or searching for a congregation a voice to express their cares and frustrations about the Church. Because many of these young adults are trying to find places of welcome in Washington area ELCA congregations, the articles are anonymous.
I’m a 33-year-old single professional woman. It’s a given, I like to shop. But my most recent shopping challenge has had nothing to do with a great pair of shoes. I am shopping for a church. A Lutheran church to be specific. And I’m about to give up the search because of what I’ve found so far.
Let me be clear. . I consider my role as Christ’s disciple to be the defining one in my life. I’m not a C and E Lutheran. Oh, no. My tattoo design is Martin Luther’s Rose. I’m pretty intense in my love for Lutheran doctrine. I was baptized at Bethany Lutheran Church in Erie, PA, raised in Nativity Lutheran Church in Allison Park, PA, and confirmed just a few miles from there at Berkeley Hills Lutheran Church. I was a member at BHLC until I moved here to Northern Virginia three and half years ago. That’s when my shopping trip began.
I started as I think most people would, at the Lutheran church closest my home. It was a lovely parish. But three weeks into my tenure there, I realized I had heard every single sermon before. Now, for someone who believes preaching should be approached with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, as do most media-infused young adults, this was a problem. I was, however, willing to stick it out and see if things changed because this church had something that I needed, an evening service. I travel a great deal for business and am often not home on Sunday mornings, so this was a great fit. But about six weeks after joining the church, I got a form letter saying the service had been canceled due to lack of interest. Funny, the 20 or so of us who came every week were interested. We’re all of course aware of the budget reality of keeping a facility open for an extra night, but why weren’t the people who attended asked for their needs, opinions, thoughts on alternatives, etc.? Young adults don’t expect the church to have all of the answers, but they expect to be engaged in two-way conversation to get to an answer. But the deal breaker in my relationship with this church was the young adult ministry. More to the point, the fact that the senior pastor gave the stewardship of the program to an intern since the church “couldn’t sacrifice full-time staff to something that was largely social.” (Note: I found it patronizing that what to me was a need for Biblical community was seen as no more than social hour).
So on to the next church I went. This time, it was to a Christian mega church that hosted a service geared toward young adults. It had almost everything I wanted. Sermons that related to real life and current events, great worship music, relaxed atmosphere, an evening service, small groups, and tons of service opportunities. I stayed at this church for about a year. What made me leave this young adult mecca? It wasn’t a Lutheran church. At the end of the day, I couldn’t swallow the inerrancy of the Bible, no matter how great the marketing. (Note: Marketing is not an evil word. One of the big reasons mega churches siphon off the young adult population from traditional churches is that they embrace marketing. To quote churchmarketingsucks.com, “We love the church, but it needs some help. Typos, cheesy logos, and bad clip art aren’t helping the cause. But snazzy marketing won’t save this ship, either. It’s not about being perfect, but there’s a better way to communicate. It’s authentic, it’s loving, and it knows how to spell.”)
The next stop on my shopping trip was dictated strictly by the availability of an evening service. But proving that lightening does indeed strike twice, the service was canceled because of lack of interest about two months after I joined. I emailed the pastor with my frustrations at the cancellation (ie: You can’t treat a new initiative with the Field of Dreams attitude, if you build it they will come. A new service aimed at bringing in young adults requires marketing to young adults where they are and having a “product” that appeals to them.). So the pastor challenged me to stay, get involved, make this traditional church a more hospitable place for young adult community. I dove in headfirst: participated in the social ministry, attended some of the women’s brunches, tried to organize a blood drive, decorated the church for Easter, served on a call committee, and volunteered for council. But after all that what I realized was that this congregation (and I am beginning to wonder if this is not all Lutherans in general) values tradition and the familiar over evolution and inclusion. Unfortunately, I felt as if my ideas were only wanted when they were in line with the others’. When they weren’t, I wasn’t heard.
In the end this experience has reminded me of something my father told me was his greatest joy as a parent, to give me roots and wings. I am searching for a church that will do the same, give me comfort and strength in my Lutheran roots, and help me test my spiritual wings during these transformative young adult years of my life.
image by CasaDeQueso (rights)
May 5th, 2010 at 10:38 am
Amen. I can relate.
I also can’t understand why the Lutheran congregations in the region seem to lack any evening/afternoon worship opportunities, especially any geared toward young adults.
I’ve also been amazed by how hard it is to get the average congregation around here to take young adult input seriously…and to be willing to risk experimenting with it.
Yet, I don’t think that ELCA Lutherans in general are too rooted to be able to evolve and to let people test their wings. In northern Virginia, I wonder if this has become the case because of the history of our congregations, many of which have popped up since WWII as jobs have brought people in from the midwest. I suspect that the people who got here and decided they needed to create a Lutheran church (rather than worship elsewhere) were likely those with a more traditionalist mindset. That’s just my guess.
However, if we value tradition and familiarity over questioning, probing, and being willing to try new things, then we have lost what I feel to be part of the core of Lutheranism: a willingness to always re-examine our faith and practice, and to be continually reforming based on where God is leading us!
Like our namesake, we should be wrestling with scripture and it’s meaning, and striving to make it accessible to the common population in our time, place, and context. One example: Martin Luther set hymns to bar songs, and I haven’t heard of any local congregations re-writing popular music for God or re-appropriating it for worship.
Once again, thank you for sharing your struggles! You are not alone.
May 7th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Thank you so much for posting this – I struggle with many of the same issues, and it’s comforting to know that we’re not the only ones who feel this way.
I belong to an ELCA congregation that doesn’t do contemporary worship — the lame excuse I was given was that “contemporary” means “done now”, so any worship we do is “contemporary”, regardless of how many moldy German chorales we sing on Sunday morning. I have no problem with (I enjoy, periodically) traditional worship, but it cannot be the only worship style at a church with more than one weekly worship service. The church is far too diverse to offer only one option.
Worship in 2010 cannot be the same as worship in 1950, because the church (and the world) of 2010 is not the same as the church of 1950. People don’t listen to the same music that they did in 1950 (or 1517), and I think more people would be drawn to worship that reflected current tastes rather than traditional ones. Like it or not, the pipe organ makes everything sound old, and if the Lutheran church wants to attract a younger population to worship, the easiest way to do it is to use modern hymns/worship songs played on a piano or by a rock band.
I could go on for a while about this. Try not to let your frustration with the church get in the way of your relationship with God.