The Church is Strangely Fascinated with Youthfulness

As a young Millennial just a few years removed from seminary, I’ve had my fair share of church interviews under my belt. I recently shared my frustration with my pastor and told her, “I feel like people want someone to speed things up and be more relevant, and they get super confused when I say I want to slow things down and be more contemplative.” 

She responded by saying, “I think lots of churches struggle to not think young people are the solution to all the church’s problems.”

When I say things like this to a church committee, I always get looks of confusion on their faces. It seems like what most churches look for when hiring a pastor or youth pastor is a young guy or girl who can shake things up in order to attract more young people. I get it. The church is bleeding members, and in many of the churches I’ve interviewed, the average age is around sixty with maybe a couple of young families and college students in the mix. 

However, to suggest that youthfulness is the solution to the church’s problems comes with more than a few issues. Andrew Root argues in his book Faith Formation in a Secular Age:

“Youthfulness becomes the late twentieth century’s core strategy for denying external authority (even divine action) to follow the new purpose of ‘what speaks to me.’ Youthfulness promises particular social practices – like sex, drugs, and consumerism – as ways to achieve authenticity… Youthfulness takes on a particular stance against transcendence, making divine action seem more and more implausible.”¹

In other words, an attachment to youthfulness can speed up the process of secularization by prioritizing the self as the ultimate project. 

An excellent example of how this happens is seen in a class I took a little over a year ago on missiology. One of the major themes of the class was what the professor called “relevance theory.” We talked about a lot of things in this class: good marketing strategy, knowing your audience, and even how to format Bibles so they would sell more in particular contexts (i.e. How to make the Bible “relevant”). I remember sitting in this class and thinking to myself, “Interesting, not once have we talked about God’s action in the world, or how God uses his church to forward his kingdom.”

The problem with the project of youthfulness is that it is all too tempting to focus on the consumerist desires of individuals rather than God’s redemptive action in the world. In a strange way, this strategy also produces a kind of anxiety to be more relevant and to be more authentic. It encourages a kind of competition to be more relevant and authentic.

The problem with the project of youthfulness is that it is all too tempting to focus on the consumerist desires of individuals rather than God’s redemptive action in the world. (1/2) Click To Tweet

In a strange way, this strategy also produces a kind of anxiety to be more relevant and to be more authentic. It encourages a kind of competition to be more relevant and authentic. (2/2) Click To Tweet

The Coldness of Youthful Consumerism

In his book, Root narrates how there was a shift from an ethic of duty in the 1950s to an ethic of authenticity in the 1960s. As Root puts it, “What then swings the door open for authenticity is a consumer society. It is the duty to buy that brings forth the age of authenticity.”² 

A strong example of how the social imagination of authenticity is wedded to consumer culture is seen in Apple commercials. Very rarely are Apple commercials actually about the product they are selling; they are more about the authentic experience the products can manufacture. 

A result of this marriage of authenticity and consumer culture is what Root calls “planned obsolescence.” Companies produce products that become obsolete within a couple of years. Again, Apple is an excellent example.

It’s no secret that there will always be a new hip church in town. When one church fails to meet the consumer needs of its community, everyone just flocks to another church. In a church that is obsessed with youthfulness, the anxiety comes from being more hip to attract more young people. 

Inevitably, this cycle has to come to a breaking point. COVID revealed many of these weaknesses. As Myles Werntz writes in From Isolation to Community:

“One reason that churches were able to glide with relative ease into a season of social distancing and isolation was that, as churches, we have been trained to be isolated for years.” This is because, “When individualism is built into structures of advertising, politics, and cultural engagement, this individualism creates cultures in which the cultivated individual — apart from other social bodies — becomes the ideal and, further, comes to believe that social structures that limit this must be removed.”³

Youthful consumerism makes isolation more possible. It breeds a kind of individualism which astranges us from one another and from God. Ultimately, people do not need the church to fulfill their consumer desires. There are places online to belong that are more immediate in giving consumer gratification. What people need is a place to live. 

Youthful consumerism breeds a kind of individualism which astranges us from one another and from God. Ultimately, people do not need the church to fulfill their consumer desires. It's more immediately gratifying to belong online. Click To Tweet

Being Young and Forgetting How to Live

When preparing to write this article, my wife said to me, “It’s interesting how those who are obsessed with youthfulness are the ones who forget to live.” Perhaps this is the crux of the issue. In all of our obsession with youthfulness, we forget actually to live. 

I recently read about a billionaire by the name of Bryan Johnson who spends millions of dollars and has a strict regimented routine in order to reverse the effects of aging. He takes 111 supplements a day and even gets regular blood transfusions from his 17-year-old son to feel and appear young again.⁴ 

While this billionaire spends most of his time trying to prevent his inevitable death, it’s as if he has forgotten how to live. 

Churches face a similar problem. Is it possible that in our quest to stay young and relevant, we forget how to live? 

In the quest for youthfulness, we become estranged from one another by hyper-fixating on what is young and relevant rather than focusing on what is right in front of us. To go back to Root’s assertion that youthfulness can lead to secularization, we lose sight of how God is acting in the lives around us. Most telling, we lose sight of how God is present in the preaching of the Word and bread and wine. 

The irony is that we think that if we stay young we will be more alive. However, if the cross and resurrection tell us anything, it’s only in embracing death that we become alive. It’s only in bearing with one another in death that we can truly be free.

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The irony is that we think that if we stay young we will be more alive. However, if the cross and resurrection tell us anything, it’s in embracing death that we become alive. In bearing with one another in death, we can be free. Click To Tweet

Footnotes    

¹ Andrew Root, Faith Formation in a Secular Age (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).

² Ibid.

³ Myles Werntz, From Isolation to Community (New York: Random House, 2020).

⁴ Alexandria Klausner, “I’m 45, a Billionaire Obsessed with Staying Young and Hard to Date,” New York Post, August 11, 2023. Accessed at  https://nypost.com/2023/08/11/im-45-a-billionaire-obsessed-with-staying-young-and-hard-to-date/