Articles for tag: Millennials

May 13, 2014

Mark A. Taylor

Proud, but Not Satisfied

By Mark A. Taylor Don”t count CHRISTIAN STANDARD among today”s crop of church bashers. Even when we don”t headline our cover with “I love the church,” we make a point of encouraging the local church and its leaders. But posts at our site this month give special reasons to feel positive. For example, we couldn”t agree more with Bob Russell”s local-church cheerleading. Think of all the dysfunction and distress our world would face without the healing and help the church has extended through the centuries. Then there”s Kent Fillinger”s annual update on the state of megachurches and other churches among

April 29, 2014

Mark A. Taylor

Maybe the Answers Are Simple

By Mark A. Taylor “We make Christianity so much more complicated than it needs to be, especially when it comes to talking about millennials.” Rachel Held Evans, author of The Year of Biblical Womanhood, had 18 minutes to answer “How will millennials contribute to the future of the church?” Hers was one of 30 questions, each assigned to a different speaker at the Q Conference last week in Nashville. No one gave answers clearer than hers. “Millennials are tired of the culture wars,” Held said. “Time and again church leaders believe a few style changes are the key. But millennials

April 22, 2014

Mark A. Taylor

How Would Jesus Use a Smartphone?

By Mark A. Taylor Scene One: We sit in a restaurant and look across the aisle at a young woman and her husband, out for dinner together. He”s playing with the digital ordering device at the table (it includes games), and she”s intent on her smartphone screen. They”re eating in the same booth, but they”re really not together. Scene Two: We”re at a beautiful time-share at the beginning of a weeklong vacation with Christian friends. After dinner we settle into comfortable chairs and the sofa in the living room, each of us with a laptop or tablet computer in our

October 8, 2013

Mark A. Taylor

Keeping Them Connected

By Mark A. Taylor Those concerned about millennials and their relationship to the church can be encouraged by research reported by the Barna Group in September. Although the news release, titled “Five Reasons Millennials Stay Connected to Church,” minced no words about “the harsh realities of Millennial Faith,” it also offered research to show why many 18- to 29-year-olds stay connected to God by being connected to a local church. But first the bad news: 59 percent of millennials raised in Christian churches eventually leave them. In the last decade, according to this research, the number of unchurched millennials has

August 13, 2013

Mark A. Taylor

They Need a Friend!

By Mark A. Taylor Young adults may lead the way in social networking, but their hours with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram don”t help all of them feel connected. In fact, among Americans today, the youngest adults are most likely to say they”re still looking for a friend. The Barna Group reports 20 percent of Americans describe themselves as lonely, up from about 10 percent just 10 years ago, “a paradoxical reality in the full swing of the social media age.”Â  In that same decade, the number of Americans “trying to find a few good friends” has increased from 31 to

September 2, 2012

Christian Standard

Demographic Darwinism and the Church

By Robert Hull I was born in 1943. Demographers are eager to put me in my place, but I”m not sure exactly where that is. They tell me if we stretch the boundaries a little, I”m considered a Baby Boomer (or just a “Boomer”). From the reading I have done lately, I think that”s bad news. Any day now Generation X is going to wrest power from me and my decrepit fellow Boomers, throw us all under the church bus (uh, van), reinvent the church we have loved and served with our idealism, strength, time, and money, and replace it

July 15, 2012

Christian Standard

Megachurches: Storm Clouds Ahead?

By Brian Maris It”s not all smooth sailing for the megachurches. Church leaders I interviewed foresee some storms on the horizon. In my previous column (May 27), I shared seven positive trends megachurches are experiencing. These were gleaned from interviewing nine authors, academics, megachurch pastors, and missional church planters. These nine were overwhelmingly optimistic about the future of megachurches. But not everything they see is positive. Today, we”ll look at three concerns that were mentioned in those interviews.   1. Overfishing in Other Churches” Ponds “There are two kinds of megachurches,” states Eddie Gibbs, senior professor of church growth at

April 11, 2012

Christian Standard

Gen X Rising (Part 2)

By Rick Chromey Gen X is rising. From the Tea Party to the emerging church movement, a new breed of leader is operating. Unlike previous generations in recent history, Americans born between 1961 and 1981 don”t feel a need to work within institutional frames. In the 1990s they pioneered dot-com companies to launch a World Wide Web. During the past decade they”ve revolutionized dig- ital learning, wireless communications, reality television, and thousands of “third place” cultural experiences from coffee shops to fantasy sports to “emerging” churches. Now in their 30s and 40s, this generation rides the leading edge of unemployment, foreclosure,

April 10, 2012

Christian Standard

Gen X Rising (Part 1)

By Rick Chromey The next two decades will produce unimaginable change. By 2040, much of what we now call “modernity” will be history as the digital revolution finalizes its reinvention of commerce, communication, and education. In 2010, Amazon e-books outsold print books, and in 2011, Borders booksellers filed bankruptcy, signaling an end of the age of Gutenberg. The iPad and Kindle are changing how we read. The CD and DVD are dead media (and books are next), while Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter continue to flex digital muscles. In the midst of this cyber revolution stands a generation waiting to

June 23, 2010

Christian Standard

Loving Sinners Outside Church-as-We”˜ve-Known-It

By Mark A. Taylor In this, our second week of “Eats with Sinners” features, we”re reminded again that we may not always be comfortable getting close to folks untouched by the gospel. When we venture outside the predictability of safe relationships inside the church, we”ll probably bump into people whose lives are messy, whose choices have been bad, and whose language or appearance or habits make us ill at ease. That”s what happened when Rick Bundschuh took seriously the mandate from a church that hired him as youth minister. “Reach unreached teenagers,” they said. But they didn”t count on “unreached”

October 5, 2008

Christian Standard

Raising Up the Next Generation of Genuine Leaders

By John Derry   Sociologists have identified certain characteristics associated with contemporary generations, differences church leaders will find helpful as they seek to resolve conflict and bring generations together to achieve common goals. One generation is not better or worse than another. They are just different, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.   DIFFERENT GENERATIONS The Silent Generation or “Tradition-alists” (born between 1925 and 1946) lived through the Great Depression and World War II and experienced the postwar boom in America. They are known for loyalty, a strong work ethic, respect for authority, and resistance to change. They are

September 16, 2007

Christian Standard

5 Books About Emerging/Emergent Churches

By Gary Zustiak EXILES: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture By Michael Frost Hendrickson Publishers, 2006 Frost is professor of evangelism and missions at Morling College in Sydney, Australia. His book is scholarly, yet very practical. It carefully lays out what the church must do to effectively communicate the gospel to a postmodern world and retain those Christians “who find themselves falling into the cracks between contemporary secular Western culture and a quaint, old-fashioned church culture of respectability and conservatism” (p. 3). Exiles acknowledges the yearnings of those in the emerging church movement who long for church that is more

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