My young adult has left the Church (part 1)

This is a little series of posts I put out in 2010, at the time they were helpful for a number of people, I hope that continues to be true today.

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Over the past many months I have been approached by several parents of young adults who have, in some form or fashion, rejected the Church or the Christian religion in some form. I am sure it is because I am of the same cohort of their child or because I am a minister or these parents love their child or (more likely) a combination of reasons, these wonderful parents ask for guidance. After many conversations with parents who tell me the same story (albeit with different characters and little nuances) it has given me cause to write down what I have been sharing with these parents. This is not a formula on "how to get your kid back in church". Nor is it by any means going to be 100% effective in all situations, but generally speaking, I have found these steps to be a good starting point for these parents (or so they have shared with me).

1) If you have a child who is leaving church or religion, do not panic. This may be difficult to do in the moment, but panic is a reaction and in a "status update/twitter" world, reactions are all young people get and know how to fuel (with more shock). Do not panic.

This might be enough for right now. Check back in two days and I will post the other actions I have found to be helpful for adults who find themselves at a loss with their young adult.

We are not the only ones safeguarding the gains

In the previous post I mentioned McLaren who said, that movements are organizations which call institutions to new social gains and institutions are organizations which conserve the gains made by past movements.

If this is a fair representation of the church as an institution  the question becomes what social gains are being conserved made in the past?

To put it another way, if the UMC ended tomorrow, what social gains would be lost?

I am not a huge scholar in this area but here are just a few I thought of:
The UMC conserves gains and deficits in ecumenical work (see the denominational unification)
The UMC conserves gains made in workers rights (see the UMC's involvement in the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act)
The UMC conserves gains made in women's rights (see John Wesley ordaining women back in 1760's)
The UMC conserves gains made in eradicating global disease (see efforts in eradicating malaria)

Not a bad list really for thirty seconds of thought. 

Glide Memorial UMC - An institution conserving new gains

The UMC should be very proud of this, but the fact of the matter is the UMC was once one of the few institutions to conserve gains, but now we are one of many institutions conserving the same gains.

Take for instance women's rights. Where the UMC was once one of the only institutions to advocate and protect women, now there are hundreds of institutions conserving the gains made by and for women.

Perhaps the way forward for the UMC is to let go of working to conserve some gains because we no longer have the major responsibility to conserve these gains. 

What does it look like for the UMC to seek out new gains to preserve?

What would it look like for this institution (and lets not kid ourselves, no matter how much "movement" rhetoric is out there we are and will be an institution for a while still), moved toward the frontier of social gains? 

Can we conserve social gains made by the "green" movement? The LGBT movement? The "99%" movement? The "Tea Party" movement?

Church is a there to meet my needs. Right?

It is a common way to understand the church as a place where someone goes to have their needs met. This is in part why we look for a church that has a good children's area, biblical preaching/teaching, solid small groups that are not full of crazy people.

And so churches work to ensure that we are meeting people's needs. And we want to ensure people's needs are met because that is what we are supposed to do. Right?

Well, if the church is under the impression that we are to meet people's needs, then yes, we should work to meet people's needs. However, this not only creates environments where churches do not know what they are called to do but it also creates environments where churches will do everything for the sake of someone's needs.

Rather than meeting people's needs, shouldn't a church be in the position to change people's needs?

The church that is under the impression to change people's needs will have a much different way to do ministry. This church will be a place where people are changed, not just satisfied. This church might be smaller and less "full" in the pew on Sunday. This church might also be the most nimble and life changing place in the community.

So let me ask you, is your church set up to meet your needs or change them?