Imagining the future
01/10/14 05:22
There is a conversation that we have over and over in the church: What do the young people want? The question is asked in a wide variety of different ways. Sometimes it is an expression of a very genuine desire of church members to have a church body that includes people of all ages. The intergenerational nature of the church is very appealing. So much of our society is divided by age that an institution that welcomes and embraces all ages together is very appealing. On that score most conjugations fall short of our vision. We would like to have more balance in the age makeup of our congregations, but most congregations are heavily weighted in one age group.
Sometimes the question is discussed in an attempt to get others to assume responsibility. Church leaders who have dedicated countless hours and plenty of their own dollars to institutional maintenance wonder who will pay the bills and do the work when they are unable to do so.
Sometimes it is simply wondering about the decline in church participation and trying to figure out what provides meaning and community for a generation that is conspicuously absent from church life.
Sometimes it is the simple fact that sharing power is difficult. Those who had very little authority and power in the church when they were young want to have a younger generation of followers, but are not as sure about sharing power and authority. It is not at all infrequent that we hear complaints about the lack of young people from the ones that make young people want to stay away.
Mostly, however, it is a confession that there is much about what it means to be a young adult in today’s world that we don’t understand. There has been a lot written about “Generation X,” “the millennials,” “post-moderns,” and other terms that have been applied to the current generation of 20-30-year-olds. It true that their world is very different from the way the world was when we were that age. There is great anxiety about employment. High costs raise the question of the value of a college education. Young lives are filled with stress over relationships in a culture where people have many significant relationships before marrying and first marriages are taking place at an older age.
I can remember conversations with parents who felt that if they could help their children navigate their teen years and make it to their twenties they would have avoided some of the biggest risks faced by young people. These days, being the parent of a twenty-something is as stressful, if not more so, than being a parent of a teen.
Many of the questions about young adults and their culture are expressions of anxieties that those of us who are older have about the future. It seems that some of the current trends are not very encouraging. We can tell that the future will be vastly different from the present, but we don’t know what the future will hold.
One of the shapes of the conversation about what young adults want and need that occurs in our congregation has to do with investments that we are making in our building. 55 years ago, our forebears designed and built a new church building. It is beautiful and was very well-designed. It has served our congregation very well. There are some major systems that have outlived their useful life and need to be replaced. We need new boilers to replace the single, inefficient boiler that now serves our building. The time has come to replace our roof and we need to consider additional insulation as part of that job. Although most of our building is accessible to those with disabilities, our choir loft is not. We don’t have enough bathrooms and we need at least one bathroom where one family member can assist another with privacy. Our building ls not air conditioned. As we sort out the costs of the various investments that need to be made and try to prioritize the expenses, we keep asking ourselves if we are being as visionary as were our forebears when they designed the building. Are we thinking of those 50 years from now? What will they need? What will they want?
The truth is that we can’t imagine the world or the needs of the church 25 years from now, let alone 50 years from now.
The good news is that neither could our forebears. Their vision of the future was not completely accurate. They designed a building with conventional graded classrooms. In all of the years we have had the building, the age profile of the church has not filled those classrooms and the way that we teach and share the faith is very different than was the case in the 1950’s. They couldn’t have imagined the great increase in the number of churches and para-church organizations in Rapid City. They tucked the church into a neighborhood with little visibility to the wider community. The building is hard to find for those who don’t know where it is. They didn’t come close to understanding the spiraling increases in energy costs and the way that utility costs would drive the entire church budget a half century later.
Still, our church building works well for us today. What we won’t have as we go forward is guarantees. There are no crystal balls that predict the future. There is no magic formula that will guaranteed that those who will be in their 50’s and 60’s a quarter of a century from now will find our particular building to be the right home for their church.
It is important that we remind ourselves that the church is much more than a building. The care we provide to the community and to the relationships within our community is far more critical than the investments we make in our building. This is not to say that we shouldn’t invest. It is simply to remind ourselves that having the nicest building has never been the goal of the church of Jesus Christ.
It is the community.
It is the mission.
It is the faith.
These are the legacy we leave behind.
Sometimes the question is discussed in an attempt to get others to assume responsibility. Church leaders who have dedicated countless hours and plenty of their own dollars to institutional maintenance wonder who will pay the bills and do the work when they are unable to do so.
Sometimes it is simply wondering about the decline in church participation and trying to figure out what provides meaning and community for a generation that is conspicuously absent from church life.
Sometimes it is the simple fact that sharing power is difficult. Those who had very little authority and power in the church when they were young want to have a younger generation of followers, but are not as sure about sharing power and authority. It is not at all infrequent that we hear complaints about the lack of young people from the ones that make young people want to stay away.
Mostly, however, it is a confession that there is much about what it means to be a young adult in today’s world that we don’t understand. There has been a lot written about “Generation X,” “the millennials,” “post-moderns,” and other terms that have been applied to the current generation of 20-30-year-olds. It true that their world is very different from the way the world was when we were that age. There is great anxiety about employment. High costs raise the question of the value of a college education. Young lives are filled with stress over relationships in a culture where people have many significant relationships before marrying and first marriages are taking place at an older age.
I can remember conversations with parents who felt that if they could help their children navigate their teen years and make it to their twenties they would have avoided some of the biggest risks faced by young people. These days, being the parent of a twenty-something is as stressful, if not more so, than being a parent of a teen.
Many of the questions about young adults and their culture are expressions of anxieties that those of us who are older have about the future. It seems that some of the current trends are not very encouraging. We can tell that the future will be vastly different from the present, but we don’t know what the future will hold.
One of the shapes of the conversation about what young adults want and need that occurs in our congregation has to do with investments that we are making in our building. 55 years ago, our forebears designed and built a new church building. It is beautiful and was very well-designed. It has served our congregation very well. There are some major systems that have outlived their useful life and need to be replaced. We need new boilers to replace the single, inefficient boiler that now serves our building. The time has come to replace our roof and we need to consider additional insulation as part of that job. Although most of our building is accessible to those with disabilities, our choir loft is not. We don’t have enough bathrooms and we need at least one bathroom where one family member can assist another with privacy. Our building ls not air conditioned. As we sort out the costs of the various investments that need to be made and try to prioritize the expenses, we keep asking ourselves if we are being as visionary as were our forebears when they designed the building. Are we thinking of those 50 years from now? What will they need? What will they want?
The truth is that we can’t imagine the world or the needs of the church 25 years from now, let alone 50 years from now.
The good news is that neither could our forebears. Their vision of the future was not completely accurate. They designed a building with conventional graded classrooms. In all of the years we have had the building, the age profile of the church has not filled those classrooms and the way that we teach and share the faith is very different than was the case in the 1950’s. They couldn’t have imagined the great increase in the number of churches and para-church organizations in Rapid City. They tucked the church into a neighborhood with little visibility to the wider community. The building is hard to find for those who don’t know where it is. They didn’t come close to understanding the spiraling increases in energy costs and the way that utility costs would drive the entire church budget a half century later.
Still, our church building works well for us today. What we won’t have as we go forward is guarantees. There are no crystal balls that predict the future. There is no magic formula that will guaranteed that those who will be in their 50’s and 60’s a quarter of a century from now will find our particular building to be the right home for their church.
It is important that we remind ourselves that the church is much more than a building. The care we provide to the community and to the relationships within our community is far more critical than the investments we make in our building. This is not to say that we shouldn’t invest. It is simply to remind ourselves that having the nicest building has never been the goal of the church of Jesus Christ.
It is the community.
It is the mission.
It is the faith.
These are the legacy we leave behind.