Sixteen thousand is a lot of people. In fact, it’s a professional basketball arena’s worth of people. And if you were to begin filling up average school buses with those people, it’d take you more than 220 rigs to transport all of them.
A lot of people indeed!
But that’s the number of teenagers and their adult leaders who attended the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s 2024 Youth Gathering this past week in New Orleans, an event six years in the making because the last one in 2021 was canceled.
So, if you’re figuratively wondering these days where all the youth in the church are, well, at least for a week those in the Lutheran church were in the Big Easy. Sure, it’s true that not as many youth are attending church these days. In fact, I know pastors who have zero confirmation students to teach. And as church leaders we can get frustrated by seemingly always taking the back seat to kids’ other obligations, like sports, arts, jobs and whatnot.
But this past week’s Gathering demonstrates that there are still plenty of youth interested in the church. It’s just that they maybe aren’t interested in their grandparents’ church. Or even their parents’ church, for that matter.
Today’s youth want their church to be a little more humble, more genuine, more inclusive, more proactive in social justice and climate issues, and to be a place that builds community for them. All items that square well with the gospel, it should be noted.
Sure, today’s youth aren’t beating down the doors of our brick and mortar churches. But they all haven’t turned away from faith either. Maybe we just haven’t been looking for them in the right places. Or more embarrassingly, maybe we haven’t been inviting them to the metaphorical church table, and they’re just tired of the church’s hypocrisy.
I’m not an expert on how we keep our youth in the church, and I’m even less of an expert in how to bring young people back to the church. But what I do know is that in a week’s worth of large and small worship services, in foreign situations of having to live communally together, and in the practice of learning opportunities and service work, I’ve seen the youth of today really dig into this faith stuff. And it has grown my pastor’s heart!
Before we throw in the towel on the future of the church, maybe it’s just best we give them some air under their wings and see what they can do with it. After all, when the youth wanted to get at Jesus, he said to bring ‘em on because “for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” Amen.
Devlyn Brooks is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and serves Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at [email protected].