Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada

First and foremost, allow me to state unequivocally that we, in The United Church of Canada, need to pastor and minister to our constituency - the folks that have been with us since birth (ours and theirs): The ones who pay the bills; the ones who live out our shared faith in world; the ones who find comfort, challenge and Holy Presence in worship as we have practiced it for many decades.

But, having stated that...allow me to digress.

I was at my local strip mall the other day. As I made my way from the health food store to the ice cream shop, I was not only aware of the irony, but also of the music playing on the speakers. It was Bach...from St. Matthew's Passion, actually. I loved it. It created a tiny perfect Holy Moment for me, in which I was aware of God's Presence, the power of tradition, a sense of past, present and even future. I was, for a moment, part of a glorious moment of praise to God. Ahhhhhhhhhhhmen.

The strip mall was playing that music to keep teenagers from loitering.

I've been aware of this for some years. Shopping centres and public areas playing "classical" music to ward of the young people who might hang around...keep ‘em moving.

(I use the term classical in a very general way, as I figure that differentiating between Baroque, Romantic, Classical, Neo-Classical, etc., to be tedious and a waste of good blogging space...see?)

The music that we often feature in worship is the very music that others play to keep young people away.

Why aren't they coming to church?

I have three sons. By the time September rolls around they will be 30, 29, and 27 years of age. They're not church goers - not particularly, anyway. They like don't people telling them what to do, they will not abide people telling them what to think.. They love to get into discussions and arguments, they can spend a whole day at the coffee shop talking with friends and stop only long enough to move to the pub and start the conversation anew.

We invite them to sit in pews (or chairs) facing forward, not looking at each other, while a leader of group of presenters tells them what to do, what to think, and gives them no real opportunity to talk themselves; in fact we implore them to keep quiet during the service.

Why aren't they coming to church?

Kanye West, while perhaps not the voice of his generation (notwithstanding his claims), is a young person of the times. He doesn't read books. He refuses to read. I heard him say something to the effect of "I don't want no autograph from a book." He's proud that he doesn't read books. Now, you may snicker or sneer (both if you're really good), but it would appear that many young people are not book oriented; they don't want to read - they want experience over lesson.

We consider ourselves to be people of the Book. We gather to worship and have people read the Book to us... a little bit at a time.

Why aren't they coming to church?

This is not a rant about what's wrong with our churches, or what's wrong with young people. As it begs a question, it barely scratches the surface. But it seems clear to me that we need to re-imagine what it means to be church. Not so that we can get the young people to run the committees and pay the bills (surely we have renters for that!), but because God has something to offer these people. We often forget that these young people are not the "Church of Tomorrow" as much as they are the "Mission of Today."

The gospel of Jesus Christ has something to offer young people in North America, people bombarded with conflicting messages of value and worthlessness, people facing a changing economy and the loss of trust, people feeling powerless even as the world changes around them. People who want something more to do than watch TV, more to think about then the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy. There is comfort, challenge, and a sense of the Holy available for these young people....

But when they look at us the don't see it...

hear it...

or feel it...

...and many of them give up not just on church, but also on God. And that's the tragedy - not our closing churches, but our failure to open hearts.

I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before - by better writers and deeper thinkers - but I'm going to keep saying it until we get it: We need to stop trying to figure out how to get young people into church and start wondering about how we can share the love of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ with these people...where and how they are right now.

I don't think this new way of doing church is going to look like Sunday worship. We need to keep doing Sunday worship, but we need to do more.

I'm going to try something modest (I'm always modest. Ask around, it's entirely appropriate for me to modest.).

An open mic gathering. Kind of like the old coffee houses that some of us remember. Free coffee, small tables, a couple of musicians or bands playing contemporary music. My pitch to local musicians would be "Come and play a couple of thought provoking songs...not religious, but thought provoking."

The open mic is for musicians, poets, or speakers.

Each gathering will have a question for discussion at table:

• Should there be government funding for religious schools?
• Is belief in God is an unnecessary crutch?
• Is prayer powerful or just an exercise in talking to yourself?

...etc.

As the evening progresses, people will be invited to share any thoughts they deem worth sharing at the mic.

At the end of the time, people will be invited to leave or to stay another five minutes to pray. But there will be no expectation for folks to stay.

So, that's my simple plan.

It won't amount to much the first time, maybe not even the fourth time, but perhaps something might come. Something that might lead to connection for some younger people who really don't like our music, would rather talk than listen, and are more at home drinking coffee than sitting in Sunday morning worship.

You got any ideas?