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April 19, 2011

Making the Church More Accessible to Folks Under 35

The folks at FTE have asked me if I’ll write a follow-up to my 20 Steps to a Renewed Church (posted on April 8th). At first, I didn’t think I had anything more to say than I’d already said. Plus, the mere mention of Church Issues makes me want to fill my backpack with trail mix and furs and head into the Alaskan wilderness indefinitely. But then… what I got to ponder was how easy it is to spout off a Manifesto For How To Live, and how hard it is to actually live. So, here’s my follow-up to the original post.

There are good reasons, culturally, why church does not work for many people, especially many young people. By and large church is a place where human beings come to interact together in person and inter-generationally, discuss an ancient text, and participate in a bunch of archaic rituals. In short, it is a counter-cultural situation in the extreme. A very common response to the counter-cultural character of church is to try to make the church “relevant,” which is often a synonym for non-counter-cultural, hip, trendy, and full of Power Point.

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April 08, 2011

20 Steps to a Renewed Church

Tonight I went to a meeting at the local Episcopal church; it was a dinner and get-together with the new Bishop of Alaska.  Apparently, Alaska hasn't had an Episcopal bishop for a while, so this is exciting news that there is now a bishop.  The dear little Episcopal church here, which is called St. James the Fisherman (how cool is that name?!), is tiny and doesn't have a priest and is run by well-intentioned older women.  Which is the story of so many rural Episcopal churches

I left thinking, "ah, the church."  Not "ah" like a sigh of relief, but more just a sigh.  I feel like buried in the center of the church (and I mean the church as a whole--all the Christians worldwide) is this amazing, redemptive, beautiful thing. 

When I was an Episcopal chaplain--for four years--all the time people in the church would ask me, "Why don't young people come to church?" or "How do we get young people to come to church?"  I have some suggestions now, so listen up. 

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