Gen Z and the Wesleyan Moment

Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

The American branch of the UMC is in an interesting season, to say the least. If you read news headlines and research polls (which I do), Mainline protestantism, of which the UMC is the largest individual denomination, is in rough shape. 

Many of us are familiar with the polls and statistics:

According to Pew research:

  • The UMC ranks among the top five oldest membership populations in the U.S. including Christian and non-Christian faiths. 62% of American members of the UMC are over the age of 50.

  • We have the second smallest population of people between the ages of 18 and 29 of all faith communities examined. Only 8% of American UMC members are under the age of 30.

  • As a Mainline denomination we have one of the lowest retention rates for adults who remained for some time in the tradition of their upbringing. 

And as was reported in 2019 in UM News:

It’s not my intention to use these numbers, as they often are, as a cattle prod to provoke the desperate adoption of ill-conceived membership initiatives and marketing campaigns. I also feel it needs to be said in our youth-obsessed culture that there is nothing wrong with being over the age of 50, or 40 for that matter. I am turning 44 this year. On the contrary, we have a particular mandate and responsibility in the body of Christ to raise up future generations of Christians. If we are spiritually mature, we won’t be afraid to confront what the numbers above may reveal about our success in that work.

My generation (Gen X), although less so than the generation before me (Boomers), enjoyed relative ease when it came to “being Christian.” I was evangelized very matter-of-factly by a classmate sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch when I was in 7th grade. It was a relatively short succession of events that led to my family joining a local UMC. True to the statistics above, of the 4 daughters who consistently attended Sunday services, were baptized, and were confirmed into the Methodist tradition, I am, as they say, “the last man standing.” I have never laid the blame for this at the feet of my pastoral leaders or the adults with whom I went to church. I remember them on the whole as being lovely people. My then pastor, who is still a pastor, was my confirmation mentor and was very kind about my horribly self-important statement of “faith” that, if I remember correctly, said something to the effect of: “I don’t know if I’ll ever believe every single thing the Bible thinks I should believe, but I promise I will fairly consider the merits of each idea.” Well, how enlightened of me.

If there is a besetting sin one can point to in the Methodist legacy, it is our toxic love affair with cultural favor. I said as much once to a woman from one of my pastor-husband’s church appointments and her question to me was: “What’s wrong with being liked?” There is nothing wrong with being liked, but that’s not our problem. Our problem is that we suffer from wanting to be liked. And if we’re being completely truthful, that is a generous way to frame the failures of Chrisitian fortitude that have taken place in Methodist history. The reality is Methodists, in pursuit of greater social standing, have compromised the integrity of both our Christian witness and our distinct spiritual heritage, because these ran afoul of cultural mores and secular conventions of power. We jettisoned our legacy of evangelism, miracles, deep sacramentalism, ascetic pursuit of holiness, the influence of the early church fathers, liturgical tradition, the manifest and delivering power of the Holy Spirit, and entire sanctification for what? Respectability.

Judging from our current state of affairs, it doesn’t seem like the trade paid off.

If there has ever been a time for our church leadership to invest in the recovery of a holistically Wesleyan approach to faith and life it is right now. This is especially the case as we are on the eve of what appears to be an inevitable split, and as American culture becomes not merely increasingly secular but increasingly pagan in it’s worldview and orientation. My worry, however, is that there will not be a concerted effort to reclaim our denominational heritage in the split to come, but rather the strategy of choice will be to favor evangelical broadness, or a “big tent” approach that theoretically appeals to the largest number of people desiring to break free of the UMC morass. There is strength in numbers, the old adage goes, but in the Kingdom of God, big numbers don’t always translate to spiritual authority. The “big tent” approach may be a viable escape strategy from our denominational woes, but it likely won’t be the best strategy for building the foundation for a compelling “next Methodism.”

There are multiple indicators that today's young adults and older teens, who will in no time at all be tomorrow's scholars, pastors, and lay leadership, are fertile ground for the teachings and ethos of the original Wesleyan movement. Generational postulating is not an ideal method for charting the future vitality of any church. The UMC has been down that road. But like the statistics at the beginning of this article, data on some of the least-churched people in American society seems like it could be useful in our quest to execute the great commission. In this article when I say “young adults” I am referring to the older members of Gen Z, who are 18-25 today, although all data referenced from Springtide Research Institute includes polling information from people as young as 13 years old.

Much has already been written about Gen Z (people born between 1997 and 2012) and by all accounts they are a generation of truth-seekers, both in the sense that they value transparency, and in their search for personal significance. A cursory Google search demonstrates this is a trait consumer researchers have incorporated into their marketing strategies as evidenced by the trend to connect common consumer items to personal identity and purpose. While Gen Z may be searching for truth, they don’t indiscriminately consume any narrative of truth offered to them. They put a high premium on relational credibility and are more likely to be formed and influenced through small peer groups or mentorship than they are by established institutions and traditional authority structures. They are an astoundingly spiritual group of people. Particularly enlightening is the study called “The State of Religion & Young People,” published by Springtide Research Institute. A digital copy of their most recent study can be downloaded for free by scrolling to the bottom of this page. A 2018 study published by Barna calls Gen Z the first post-Christian generation, noting that “For Gen Z, ‘atheist’ is no longer a dirty word: The percentage of teens who identify as such is double that of the general population (13% vs. 6% of all adults)” (Barna.com). But closer inspection of the data seems to imply not a flat rejection of all matters faith related, but rather a rejection of organized religion. This tracks with data from the Springtide report that provides important distinctions in two areas. First, when Gen Z people identify as atheist, they tend to mean something different than atheists of older generations. 42% of those polled who described themselves as atheists also describe themselves as being “very spiritual.” Second, one might assume the hawkishly watched categories of the “religiously unaffiliated” refer to young people who are “not interested in questions or lifestyles we often associate with ‘religion,’-- including living out of religious values or attending religious gatherings. But for a surprising number of young people the data tell” a completely different story.

It would be a mistake of tragic proportions if we, who are orthodox and formed in the doctrines of Christianity, simply dismissed this generation because we find their spiritual and ideological chimerism incoherent or offensive. It would further be a mistake if we in the Methodist stream did not avail ourselves of the Wesleyan principles that seem so pointedly to answer the critiques this generation has for the church. Yet those of us who are in the church, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, know very well that some criticisms of the church, her teachings, her practices, and her methods are baseless and born out of wrong-headedness and flat out ignorance of what Chrisitianity is. Furthermore, legitimately identified problems are not going to necessitate solutions that demand the abandonment of the creedal and historic faith, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come at the cost of something.

First, for the future of the church, for the wellbeing of our young people, and for our own sanctification, Boomers and Gen Xers must stop grieving our cultural losses. We have been evangelizing through the lens of our sorrow. Some of us are guilty of discipling people into sentimental, nostalgic visions of the church, rather than into a relationship with Jesus Christ. We must move forward, with Christ at the center. Churches would do well to evaluate every aspect of what they do and preach, against the standard of whether or not it specifically facilitates a deeper relationship to Jesus Christ and understanding of the Gospel. 

Second, we must not allow any secular allegiances or external media narratives, whether political, educational or otherwise, to influence the internal identity or mission of the church. Traditional Christians are often portrayed in news media as monolithic and socially conservative. Perhaps the absence of specificity is of little consequence when it comes to counting votes. Nevertheless doctrinal distinctives and missional integrity are of great importance when it comes to evaluating the effectiveness and power of the public witness to Jesus Christ coming from a particular church. And we are a particular church. We should not cede the odd spiritually gerrymandered territory we occupy in favor of political might or broad conservative appeal within our own house. 

Thirdly, we must prayerfully look ahead like the men from Issachar who “understood the times.” We must discern our next steps in light of how the Holy Spirit is moving both inside the church and in the world. Recently I was encouraged in this respect when I had the opportunity to attend The Next Methodism Summit, a gathering for scholars from throughout the Wesleyan landscape, many of whom contributed to the recently published book called The Next Methodism. They gathered for the express task of writing a document entitled, “The Faith Once Delivered: A Wesleyan Witness.” Although I am calling it a scholarly conference, it didn’t seem like any academic conference I have previously attended. For one thing Dr. Ryan Danker, the host of the event (Assistant Lead Editor here at Firebrand), explicitly instructed scholars to “avoid academic jargon” and write for the people of the church rather than the academy. I had more than one conversation with scholars attending the summit who acknowledged that their work sometimes ends up edifying the academy more than the church and her people. There was a sense of urgency that if the Wesleyan witness is to have a continued impact on the world, scholars will need to play their part in applying their gifts in service to the church as well as the academy. What I observed to that end were scholars of the church deeply committed to her revitalization and as hungry for a fresh move of God among the people called Methodist as any of us are. They were Christians before they were scholars, and came to offer their trade in service to the body. While in the past seminary professors and other scholars have often been rightly criticized for their disconnect from the on-the-ground work of teaching, preaching, evangelism, and service, this was not the case here. This group came together to serve out of love for Christ and his church.

This bodes well for our cultural moment. It’s a beginning–an important beginning. As I listened to group after group of scholars express in plain language the beauty, truth, and goodness of Christianity and the Wesleyan witness therein I couldn’t help but think of the young adults I know. Some of them are recently awakened to the truth and power of Christ. Some of them are still cautiously searching for the spiritual mother or father who is willing and able to see past the affectations of secular formation, to listen, love, teach and equip in matters of faith and Spirit. 

I believe we are up to the challenge of loving and evangelizing this younger generation. To that end I offer these encouraging words from Dr. Danker’s opening address to those at the Next Methodism Summit.

“The Spirit is moving amongst the people called Methodists. Some had thought that the Spirit had given up on Wesley’s heirs, or at least on its institutionalized forms. But just as the Spirit swept up men and women in the 18th century Evangelical Revival, people like John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Selina Huntingdon, and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, William Grimshaw, Thomas Adam, John Newton, Jonathan Edwards, and Charles Simeon, so the Spirit moves today, often surprising us, and changing us in the process”.

Amen. May it be so, and may Wesley’s heirs continue to multiply.

Maggie Ulmer is Resource Director for Spirit & Truth, Managing Editor of Firebrand, and one of the hosts of Plain Truth: A Holy-Spirited Podcast.