Young Adult Ministry in the Age of Authenticity [Firebrand Big Read]
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
A young adult recently spilled his feelings about the church over coffee and a boxed lunch:
“Church can feel irrelevant, or even antagonistic, to young adults and their explorations. We want spaces where we can ask questions, make meaning, and be in relationships with others. And it doesn’t matter if we meet those needs outside the church.”
I’ve spent the last year-and-a-half talking with churches and young adults, or those individuals aged 18 to 25 (or even 29), throughout metropolitan Atlanta in an effort to bridge the gap between Christian congregations and young people. That young adult’s words align with the sentiments of many young adults I talk with regularly—they long for a place to discern their identity, find belonging and community, and live meaningful lives.
In my experience, young adults do not feel allegiance to institutions, denominations, or religious dogma. Instead, they pick and choose beliefs and practices to meet the felt needs of meaning-making and belonging. They bounce between churches and brunch; self-help books are stacked next to Scriptures; CrossFit cohabits nicely with a small group. Can’t the church be a gathering around the dinner table with friends? Can spirituality mean connecting deeply with a partner? Why do we need a building to mediate God’s presence? If the church has no “rizz,” or charisma, young adults will go somewhere else.
A cacophony of voices offers hot takes on young adults with new church growth strategies. Here's yet another take: Young adults aren’t decrying God or spirituality; they long for safe spaces to ask questions regarding their beliefs. And the church can be a place that helps young adults harmonize their spiritual leanings and sacred experiences with a richer story and tradition. But the focus can’t be on filling seats or pews. Instead, the church must be willing to engage genuinely with young adults in ways that are open to their evolving spiritual journeys.
Individualized Young Adults
The headlines indicate that the church is a burning building, and young adults are fleeing as fast as possible. Sensationalism sells. The widespread assumption is that young adults are rapidly leaving the faith. At best, they are shedding their belief in God, and at worst, they are denouncing God with the evangelical fervor of Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens. The reality is not quite as dramatic. The number of “nones,” or those who do not affiliate with a religion or tradition, increases yearly. But while young adults are leaving the church, they aren’t necessarily leaving God.
Current data on young adults demonstrates they are eschewing institutions, no differently than the rest of our nation. The church is among many institutions, alongside big businesses, medicine, the presidency, media, and public schools, in which public trust has eroded since the 1970s. Young adults are shedding attendance and participation in the church and other voluntary associations, but they are not discarding all their theological beliefs. The phrase "spiritual but not religious" may be a tired and overused cliché, but it is nevertheless an accurate description of how some young adults connect to the divine outside formal institutions.
In its most recent publication, The State of Religion and Young People 2023: Exploring the Sacred, the Springtide Research Institute delved into how young individuals perceive the sacred in their lives. Many young people engage in daily or weekly activities they consider religious or spiritual. These activities include prayer, reading, spending time in nature, and engaging in art. Notably, 55% of religiously affiliated and non-affiliated young people reported experiencing sacred moments in various settings such as in nature, the privacy of their homes or rooms, places of worship, religious or spiritual retreats, concerts, online forums, and protests or other political demonstrations.
When I worked as a college chaplain, I learned that the unaffiliated were more diverse and spiritual than I realized. There were philosophical humanitarians, the apathetic, spiritual eclectics, and many confused theists. Few of them observed and practiced their spirituality through a single religious system. Young adult Christians put crystals in their windows, offered tarot card readings, and watched the stars and moon. Meanwhile, some agnostics occasionally attended worship, paid attention, and asked great questions. Most of them just wanted to sort out their identity and find a place to belong.
It’s tempting to hypothesize that young adults are selfish consumers in the spiritual marketplace, picking and choosing according to their arbitrary whims and preferences. We blame individualism. However, a more charitable reading is that young adults are curious; they want to incorporate their life experiences into an authentic belief framework. And the honest reading of young adults is that they are captive to forces of individualization.
Sociologists Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim argue that an amalgamation of societal, economic, and political dynamics shapes us into distinct individuals through processes of individualization. Individualization names how social structures and institutions (such as family, community, workplace, and even religious spheres) have become less influential in shaping our identities and life choices. When the cohesion of social identity diminishes, one’s identity is “created” through individual choices and the self-chosen affinity circles to which one belongs.
The ideology of individualism has encroached into all parts of our lives. Neoliberalism individualizes our economic lives through competition, deregulation, individual human capital building, profits, and the marketing and monetizing of most of our lives. The digital revolution has individualized authority through immediate access to information. Social media pressures young adults to build personal brands, where the mutual display of seeing and being seen reminds them that they are still alive and valued. Families have increasing individualized choices when it comes to schooling children, with charters, magnets, private schools, and record numbers of homeschooled children. Happiness, virtue, and the good life are becoming as privatized as our economics—one is responsible for creating personal good instead of seeking the welfare of all.
Of course, individualization will not leave religion, spirituality, and church attendance unscathed. The rise of religious “nones” refers to those who are discontent with religious systems—not always God. Without the commitment to religious institutions, young adults are left to pick and choose religious beliefs, unbundling and re-bundling a new faith that aligns with their personal convictions and beliefs.
The forces of religious individualization might feel particularly strong for young adults. Young adults in the United States are more diverse than every preceding generation, encompassing race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic background, and sexual identity. Young adults are exposed to various religious beliefs and practices, fostering an environment of religious pluralism. World religions aren’t abstractions encountered through textbooks like Huston Smith’s famous offering. Instead, young adults sat next to adherents of other faiths on the school bus, sang their songs in their school’s holiday performance, and entered their homes for playdates. As the norms and stigmas surrounding religious affiliation and beliefs have shifted, they are even more liberated to create their religious scripts considering life experiences. In this pluralist milieu, young adults feel spiritual and religious cross-pressure from every angle.
Unsurprisingly, then, young adults often become spiritual pluralists. Springtide Research notes that 58% of young people say, “I do not like to be told answers about faith and religions; I’d rather discover my own answers.” Religion might be one narrative alongside many others, as wide-ranging as television shows or politics, that bestows identity and meaning. This tapestry will be incorporated into a patchwork quilt (or a Spotify playlist) that resonates with one’s spiritual journey.
Individualization explains the present “age of authenticity.” One’s “true self,” must cohere with one’s feelings, outward identity, actions, and purposes. Here’s how Charles Taylor describes the age of authenticity: “The religious life or practice that I become part of must not only be my choice, but it must speak to me, it must make sense in terms of my spiritual development as I understand this” (“The Future of Religious Past,” in Religion: Beyond a Concept, 202). Young adults would rather shun the institution than shed the beliefs they are “creating.” Authenticity has long been touted as the magic solution to the church’s struggle to attract younger persons, but it is a byproduct of individualization.
To be clear, individualization and authenticity aren’t theological virtues. Here's what I know about myself: the “self” being sanctified by the grace of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit is truer and better than whatever “self” exists before or apart from that relationship. We’re right to question whether one’s authentic self should be the standard for right living. We also ought to ask whether such a self can exist before and unencumbered by the social relations that shape our identity. Can we even crack the husk of relationships and find some seed of authenticity within individuals? Likewise, individualization severs us from the communities and support networks through the bankrupt promise of self-manifestation. The result is often loneliness.
But young adults can’t be chastised or held accountable for living their inherited script. As a student in seminary, I could hardly get through a week without hearing that the myth of modernity is that “you have no story, but the story you chose when you had no story.” You don’t get to choose your story, but that doesn’t negate the fact that you still must choose to believe that you are a social self. Ted Smith writes this in The End of Theological Education: “Even if we choose an identity that rejects the idea that we are responsible for making ourselves, we have still chosen that identity, and it is transformed by the fact of being chosen” (114).
Smith, then, argues for ministerial “affordances” rather than railing against the dangers of authenticity. He describes affordances like the crags or handholds on the side of a cliff that can be used to move toward more faithful living. These affordances aren’t always to be celebrated. But while the church doesn’t determine the defining features of the world, we can nevertheless use the features around us to move toward more faithful ways of living.
Smith argues that authenticity is one such affordance. Young adults may appear disinterested in traditional institutional church settings, yet the desire for authenticity is accompanied by an openness to spirituality and connection with God. Young adults are marked by heightened philosophical tolerance, curiosity, and a willingness to integrate life experiences into their authentic belief systems. Moreover, the individualization of their lives is making them hungrier for the community.
That seems like a pretty big handhold for Wesleyan pastors.
Wesley’s Bundled Faith
As a child, I heard a lay leader say he became a Methodist because he could believe whatever he wanted and still drink beer. His sentiments have been substantiated in recent years. Methodist doctrinal standards can be nebulous—there is no systematic treatise like the Summa Theologia, Institutes of Religion, or Church Dogmatics. Instead, Methodists glean doctrinal standards from John Wesley’s sermons, notes, letters, and brief treatises. In recent years, Methodism has emphasized breadth and unity to the extent that it means nothing distinctive. Methodism has become a blank slate on which to project one’s theological preferences (as long as one can take a couple of sentences out of context from a Wesleyan sermon).
Wesley was not a pluralist. There is no evidence that Wesley thought every theological expression was valid in the truth of thought and practice. He was deeply orthodox. He regularly enforced doctrinal uniformity among early Methodist preachers. In fact, early Methodists were held accountable for their commitment to the Methodist movement. Yet Wesley’s commitment to ecumenism was one of the most important manifestations of his practical theology. There must be a way to hold Wesley’s ecumenism in tension with his deeply methodical, orthodox movement. Methodism was a trans-denominational renewal movement that prompted Christians with various theological sensibilities to work together toward the in-breaking of the kingdom.
Wesley was first and foremost an Anglican, “a high churchman and the son of a high churchman.” But he didn’t drink his Anglicanism straight. If Anglicanism was the water, so to speak, then the flavor was enhanced with the Christian spiritualities he encountered. Wesley’s theology arose from the collision between his birth, friendships, and the practical needs of his historical location. Wesley’s relationships and sociocultural location exposed the strengths and weaknesses of his theology and tradition.
There is no Wesleyanism apart from the heritage of a broader Christian tradition that Wesley synthesized into a coherent way of thinking about God and inhabiting the world. A storm on the Atlantic became a means to think more deeply about the assurance of salvation with Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf and Peter Böhler. These Moravian Lutheran pietists convinced Wesley that God is not a mental conception but a divine presence who should be felt. The doctrine of Christian perfection, the mainstay of Wesleyan theology, developed in conversation with Roman Catholic mystics like Thomas à Kempis. Finally, it’s hard to talk about Wesleyan theology without making mention of its resonances with the Eastern tradition’s focus on deification. Salvation in the Christian life is a healing of our broken condition and restoration into the image of Christ.
Wesley’s practical theology was attentive to the personal and social experiences that prompted re-evaluation and novel thinking. Wesley lived his life knowing that other expressions of Christianity could emphasize the gifts of his tradition, clarify his beliefs, and create a stronger form of Christianity. His theology was unbundled and re-bundled in light of his relationships and life experiences. And this ecumenism is a handhold for how we think about our ministry with young adults.
I’m interested, then, in the side of Wesley that embodied epistemic humility—the realization that we are susceptible to theological error or mistake and open to the presence of God who goes before us and beyond us. In other words, theological systems that are impenetrable fortresses unto themselves miss out on the ways God is moving outside the castle. God’s Spirit won’t be constrained by the theological walls we’ve built to protect our communities. Orthodoxy is crucial, but orthodoxy has come to us in many different expressions across the centuries.
Prevenient grace, of course, is one theological foundation of Wesley’s ecumenical faith. Wesley believed that prevenient grace permeates all creation, drawing people toward God and working in their hearts even before they consciously recognize it. By emphasizing prevenient grace, Wesley underscored the universality of God's love and the accessibility of salvation, inviting all to participate in God's redemptive work regardless of their circumstances or background. The Spirit always precedes us into the mines, the fields, the schoolhouses, and hospitals.
Wesley gives us a foundation to dialogue with other traditions—inside and outside of Christianity—without shortchanging the core tenets of Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy. A Wesleyan theologian is a practical and ecumenical thinker who knows that the Spirit is preveniently at work in various traditions and practices. Even better is that Wesleyan theologians have beautiful language to describe how we experience the sacred and the significance of these experiences in our lives.
Wesleyan Young Adult Ministry
John Wesley's ecumenism and theology of the Spirit's prevenience offer profound insights that might shape our ministry to young adults in an individualized age. By embracing Wesley's ecumenism and recognizing the Spirit's active presence, we can open ourselves to the diverse needs and perspectives of contemporary young adults. I advocate for a patient, if not generous, orthodoxy. I realize that the sundry expressions of “big tent” Methodism crashed without a shared theological center and common telos. Still, it’s pertinent to create space for spiritual eclectics by allowing them to be entirely honest about what it is they believe.
Ministry with young adults will require empathy and non-judgmental listening. Are they encountering moments of the divine? How do they articulate these encounters? Can those experiences be harmonized with a grander narrative? Can these individuals link their sacred moments to the tradition of the church? These conversations have the capacity to free us from the prison of authenticity by tying threads of belief and experience into a bigger and stronger garment.
Who will ask these questions if not the church?
We must not enact ministry as a means to the institutional end of “membership.” Young adults do not feel as much allegiance to institutions, denominations, or specific religious dogma as prior generations. Unsurprisingly, they are even less likely to commit to one congregation. The church, feeling the urgency to reclaim its younger demographic, often finds itself in a desperate scramble to bring young adults back into the pews. Well-meaning pastors and lay leaders shove the visitor card in your hand, pressure you to fill out a commitment card, and invite you to a Methodist catechesis class. It almost always feels like institutional evangelism under the guise of hospitality.
Young adults smell the desperation and stay as far away as possible.
Joining a congregation cannot be the prerequisite for or the telos of identity-making, belonging, or creating purpose. Ministries do not exist to save the institution; instead, ministries create spaces where people feel comfortable exploring questions of faith and spirituality in relevant and meaningful ways. In other words, the ultimate goal can never be to make more Methodists, even if it’s a beautiful expression of Christianity. We do, however, want to testify to the beauty of a genuine, saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
The overarching premise is that close relationships are central to disciple-making with young adults; relationships are the answer to institutional distrust. Religious leaders need to offer a safe place for young adults to make sense of their experiences by helping them discern the authority structures in their lives, offer both insight and emotional support as the locus of their authority shifts inward, and then help them to see how the most authentic way of living is found in the story we were grafted into through Jesus Christ.
Therefore, I encourage the development of ministries that function like kinship networks or house churches, where the barrier of entry is low and allow for individual experiences, authentic expressions, and heartfelt connections to God and others. These ministries can embody fundamental Methodist tenets like the necessity of small-group support, accountability, and the power of testimony about the work of God in our lives. Here, the pastors or leaders function more like chaplains than priests. They offer spiritual care, counseling, belonging, and opportunities for existential deliberation. Moreover, the close relationships offer opportunities to tell the story of Jesus well.
Conclusion
Young adults actively seek environments where they can explore the fundamental inquiries of their lives, like identity, purpose, community, and spirituality. Unfortunately, many find themselves without the guidance and understanding of churches willing to lend an empathetic ear and provide support as they unbundle and re-bundle their beliefs. Condescension is not a great tactic for ministry, and guilt trips don’t work when there is the freedom to become non-religious.
Wesleyan principles of ecumenism and prevenient grace, focusing on authentic community, can offer valuable insights for ministries aiming to bridge the gap between traditional religious structures and the evolving needs of today's young adults. Care for young adults cannot be aimed at “solving them” as if they are a problem that needs to be solved. Instead, young adults need a faithful presence that embodies God’s own economy of salvation—incarnation.
By prioritizing genuine connection and fostering spaces for exploration, we can accompany emerging adults with theological flexibility as they construct a coherent faith system that aligns with their developing sense of identity, purpose, and belonging. The incarnation reminds us that presence can be salvific.
Our goal is to love our neighbor and share the good news of Christ—even if younger generations never officially join the church. However, religious leaders will gain increasing authority to speak into the lives of young adults when they provide a nurturing, welcoming, and genuine connection. The connection uncovers the latent potential for growth, change, and spiritual development. If we do that well, young adults might discover what they’ve been searching for all along: an identity found in baptism, the purpose to carry a cross, and a community who gathers around a table.
Ryan Snider is an elder in the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. He works as a program coordinator for The BRIDGE Young Adult Innovation Hub at Candler School of Theology. His first book, Ancient Extravagance: Christian Ways of Becoming More Human, will be released in 2024.