Editorial: “The Kids Are All Right”
As long as there have been church institutions, there have been befuddled cries asking why young people are leaving the church. Twice a year we get social media posts designed to “start a conversation,” or a panel discussion asking this question. Interestingly enough, the only participants missing from this discussion are young people. The question of why we are leaving the church has been asked and answered countless times; therefore, if the question is still being asked when the answer hasn’t changed, those asking must not like the response.
So, what is the answer? Young people have become weary of the bureaucracy that institutional religion has become. The conversation implies a loss, as though our absence from the pews must mean 16-to-35-year-olds have defected to hedonism.
The truth is, young people have returned to a Matthew 18:20 form of church. I’ve seen sons and daughters of elders leave their childhood church to begin Bible studies and home churches. I’ve seen peers reintroduce themselves to Ellen G. White on their terms and find inspiration. Young believers are pursuing Christ without the clutter of institutionalism.
In a letter to S. N. Haskell, Ellen G. White saw the Adventist Church become a denomination full of “indolent” and “sleepy, half-paralyzed souls,” who “simply have the name of Christians but are not fitted for the work of God” because they’ve become crippled with “formality.” Young people are disappointed in many church leaders’ devotion to the institution over God, so when young people leave the institution, they believe we are fleeing Adventism and Christ. But we were a movement before we were an institution, and Christ-followers before we were a movement.
For too long, elders have equated the institution with Christianity itself. White’s solution was: “Take the young men and women, and place them where they will come as little in contact with our churches as possible, that the low grade of piety which is current in this day shall not leaven their ideas of what it means to be a Christian.”
Young believers are pursuing a relationship with Christ, forming a community based on a mutual love of God. We are moving forward. Perhaps rather than asking a well-worn question, listen to the answer.
Nicole Brown-Dominguez
News Editor, Adventist Today website
23 November 2024
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