We have a huge problem in the Church. I know how we can fix it,
but you’re not going to like what I have to say.
For years, it was not uncommon for people to drift away from Church in their early 20s.
Living on their own for the first time and living a little wild got the best of them,
but it was temporary. When they wanted to settle down, when they needed a foundation
to build their life on, more times than not they returned to the faith of their youth.
Leading some in our Church today to look at our current crisis and repeat the old line,
“Don’t worry, they’ll come back.” There’s nothing to worry about, this is the way things go.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is simply not the case anymore. They’re not coming
back, and the sooner we can accept this, the sooner we can do something about it.
Today, more than a third of Gen Zers identify as religiously unaffiliated,
by far more than any other generation. More than a momentary lapse in church attendance
durning their early adult years, this is simply the norm for their lives: only 40% reported
attending a church service weekly as a kid, and only 42% ever attended religious education.
For this generation, they’re not coming back because they were never here to begin
with. Unlike previous generations that could fall back on their childhood faith when they
needed a strong foundation, there’s nothing to fall back on for most young people today.
Meaning, that young people are not going to show up at our door.
They’re not going to have a reversion and one day get involved.
They’re going to get married outside of the Church, have kids,
and never introduce the next generation to the faith of Christ.
Which means waiting for them to show up is not going to work. Doing what we’re doing
is not going to change the situation. Staying the course and trusting in God
is not going to work because we’ve got a major hole in the floor of the ship
and the water is pouring in. It is time, I think, for our entire approach to change.
And to get us there, I’d like to draw your attention to Jesus’ parables in Luke 15:
the lost sheep, lost coin, and prodigal son.
Among the most popular stories of Jesus, there is no doubt that we have all heard
them read dozens of times, but I’m not sure we’ve ever heard them the way Jesus really
intended. So often we identify with the thing that is lost, thus taking from the
story that God loves us so much that when we get lost he’ll seek us out, come after us,
and bring us home. There’s nothing we could ever do to separate us completely from God.
Which is true. Don’t get me wrong. I just don’t think it’s what Jesus wants us to see.
Look how the parables open: “The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing
near to listen to him, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying,
‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So to them he addressed this parable.”
Who is the “them” that’s he’s talking to? It seems to me that it’s the Pharisees and scribes,
the religious leaders who are supposed to be responsible for the faith of the
tax collectors and sinners but are instead complaining about them.
Think about how this changes the interpretation of the parable if
it’s directed at the religious leaders rather than the sinners.
Here we have three things lost: a sheep, a coin, and a son. When a sheep gets lost,
whose fault is it? Surely you’re not going to blame the sheep are
you?—they’re dumb. Wandering off is what they do. It was the shepherd’s
responsibility to keep it safe and so it is the shepherd’s responsibility to go after it.
You cannot blame a coin for being lost because coins do not get up and roll
away on their own. The woman had to have misplaced it, and so it is up to the woman to go find it.
Even the son, potentially a stretch but you see where I’m going—if a young boy, a teenager,
a young man newly living on his own runs away, squanders his wealth, and gets into trouble,
whose responsibility is that? While he no doubt has free will, we also know that young people
do reckless things and you are not going to completely blame a teenager for the stupid
stuff they get into or expect them to get out it of themselves. Where is the parent?
How was he raised? I say that the father goes after him, not out of mercy but obligation.
Taken together, when directed at the Pharisees and scribes, what I hear Jesus saying is that It
is not right to blame the lost for getting lost. It is not up to the lost to find their
own way. They were entrusted to someone, and that someone failed to keep them.
Jesus is looking directly at the Pharisees and scribes and asking, “why are these tax
collectors and sinners lost in the first place? Wasn’t it your responsibility to shepherd them,
to teach them, to care for them, and most of all, when they went astray, to go after them?”
And that… has to be a question we ask ourselves as well. Rather than rest on some outdated
cliche that and say “don’t worry, they’ll come back,” rather than looking on disinterested,
without any sense of ownership in this problem, we should be asking ourselves how
we let these kids get away in the first place and what we’re going to do to bring them back.
They’re not going to come back unless we accept
that it was us who lost them and so it is up to us to go find them.
My brothers and sisters, what we are dealing with here is not a matter of being more welcoming to
those who find their way to the Church, it is a desperate need for each and everyone
on of us to take seriously our role as missionary disciples to go find the lost and bring them back.
If we don’t devote our lives to this mission, if we’re not willing to step outside the walls
of the church, risking rejection and humiliation, how are we any better
than the Pharisees and scribes who looked on the tax collectors and sinners with disgust?
These are our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our responsibility before the Lord.
Either we go after them with all our effort, or they’re not coming back.