By Jaymi Firestone

So you walk into your local coffee shop and look around. The tables are filled with 20-30 somethings, laptops in front of them, headphones in, and an oversized mug billowing the aroma of fresh brewed coffee close by.

Sound familiar? Of course it does.

Millennials live for their coffee and the vibe they experience in the coffee shops they go to.

What Millennials don’t live for is church.

The Barna Group did a study on church attendance and impressions of the Church. Here is what this study (and many others like it) found:

2 in 10 people under 35 believe attending church is important or worthwhile (do the math, that means 8 in 10 don’t).

59% of Millennials who were raised in church have dropped out (more than half).

35 percent of millennials have an anti-church stance, believing the church does more harm than good (ouch).

Millennials (35 year olds and younger) are the least likely age group to attend church (by far)…

If you’re a millennial like me, you’ll understand when I say that attending a church event is kind of like a Titanic Search Party when you look for someone your age. “Is anyone alive out there? Can anyone hear me?”

A deep-seeded dissatisfaction has been growing inside of me for quite some time now, and despite my greatest attempt to whack-a-mole it back down, the dissatisfaction can’t be denied.

What I’ve realized is that despite the steep drop-out statistics of Millennials, churches around the country seem to be continuing on with things as usual.

Sure, maybe they throw in a couple new slides or try switching up worship one Sunday every 6 months, but very few churches seem to be reacting to these STAGGERING statistics.

Where is the lost generation search team?? Where is the concern that 1/3 of an ENTIRE generation are anti-church?!?

Why is no one listening to us???

Millennials value having a voice. When a church never asks for input from us, we get the message loud and clear: we aren’t valued.

That’s a BIG problem, and one of the reasons why we are continually disappearing from church pews.

It’s important for Christians to be moving in the same direction, but that should be easy for us because we already have a leader to follow. Jesus was very clear about our purpose on earth: Love God. Love others.

Task completed.

Easy enough right?

Wrong.

Churches seem to think they all need their own mission statement. The problem for us is that we should all have the same mission.

Stop wasting time on religious mambo jambo and get back to the heart of the gospel.

If you have to explain your mission and values to the church, it’s overly-religious and much too complicated for us.

We’re impressed by actions and service, not overly alliterated Christian terms formed into a complicated, confusing statement. Those mission statements aren’t going to get any of us closer to heaven. We’re more tired of those than Moses was of wandering in the desert!

We are also tired of everything being blamed on the culture.

From Buddy Holly to Post Malone, every older generation has the same conclusion: The world is going to pot faster than the state of Colorado.

Spoiler alert…We’re aware of the downfalls of the culture — surprisingly, we are living in it too. But perhaps that’s because it’s easier to blame everything on the outside instead of focusing on the problems inside the doors of your own building…

When churches ignore their inward issues, they don’t have to answer the tough questions, like what are you doing with our offerings?

Over and over we’ve been told to give 10% of our income to the church, but where does that money actually go? Millennials want pain-staking transparency.

Why should thousands of our hard-earned dollars go toward a mortgage on an expensive building that isn’t being utilized to serve the community or to pay for another celebratory bouncy castle when that same money could provide food, clean water, and shelter for someone in need?

We want our money to be used the way Jesus would’ve used it.

We also want to feel like relationships matter, and that the older church members see us as people.

We want to be mentored, not preached at.

Preaching just doesn’t reach our generation like our parents and grandparents. We have millions of podcasts and Youtube videos of pastors at our fingertips.

We crave relationships, to have someone walking beside us through the muck. You say you’ve been there? Show us how to get through it. We’re looking for mentors who are authentically invested in our lives and our future.

If we don’t have real people who actually care about us, who have been there, and aren’t afraid to show it, why not just listen to a sermon from the couch (where we can enjoy donuts while wearing sweatpants)?

Millennials are told by this world from the second we wake up to the second we take a sleeping pill that we aren’t good enough. We desperately need the church to tell us we are enough, exactly the way we are. No conditions. No expectations.

We need a church that sees us and believes in us, that cheers us on and encourages us to chase our big dreams.

Despite the stereotypes about us, we are listening to phrases being spoken in our general direction. We hear you. Just running your mouth about change and never acting, however, doesn’t cut it.

We are scrutinizing every action that follows what you say, because we’re sick of being ignored and listening to broken promises. If you want our respect, or better yet, our presence, under-promise and over-deliver.

It’s time to focus on changing the public perception of the church within the community, and listening to what Millennials want the church to be.

The neighbors, the city, and the people around our church buildings should be audibly thankful the congregation is part of their neighborhood.

We should be serving the crap out of them.

Our version of Jesus is much different than what the older generations view Him as. Jesus isn’t in a tidy little box in our world. He is radical.

Jesus served. He loved. He lived.

He didn’t hide behind mission statements, stereotypes, or cultural blame. He lived boldly, serving in every aspect of His life.

When the public opinion shows 1/3 millennials are ANTI-CHURCH, we are outright failing at being the body of Christ.

Failing.

So here’s the bottom line, church — you aren’t reaching millennials. You’ve created 1/3 of a generation that is dropping out of church.

Enough with the excuses and the blame; it’s time to accept reality and purposefully move toward a generation that is terrifyingly anti-church.

“The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change.”

– Bill Clinton

You see, church leaders, our generation just isn’t interested in playing church anymore. It’s obvious you’re not understanding the gravity of the problem at hand and aren’t nearly as alarmed as you should be about the crossroads we’re at.

You’re complacent, irrelevant and approaching extinction. You’re looking at pews filled with mostly older people, doing mostly the same things they’ve always done.

Your churches are dying along with the generations you’re ministering to.

You can write me off as just another angry, selfie-addicted, Snapchat-using millennial. Believe me, at this point I’m beyond used to being abandoned and ignored.

Regardless, the truth is, church, it’s your move.

Decide if millennials actually matter to you and let us know.

In the meantime, we’ll be over here in our sweatpants listening to podcasts and eating donuts, serving others, and agreeing with public opinion that perhaps church isn’t as important or worthwhile as the generations before have lead us to believe.