Millennials At Church Services Are Few But Passionate

WRITTEN BY: Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

Heads turn when Robert "Bo" Wilinski, 22, turns up for a weekday Mass at St. Patrick Catholic Church in White Lake, Mich.

"I'm there with 15 people over the age of 70 and they are looking at me saying, 'You're becoming a priest, right?' It seems that every time a Catholic sees a faithful young person, they assume he's going into a religious vocation," he says.

Wilinski, an accountant in suburban Detroit, has no plans for the priesthood. But he goes to Mass every Sunday and often during the week because, he says, he needs God in his life. "There is no other way I could see myself living."

And that makes young Wilinski a rare bird in a shrinking flock -- young adults who are passionate about belief and engaged in bringing their faith to life.

A survey released this fall by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found 32% of those under age 30 claim no religious identity. Among young believers, those who actually attend worship services weekly or at least once a month are even more scarce. Fewer than 10% of young adults regularly attend worship services.

Catholic University sociologist William D'Antonio has tracked American Catholic life and the slide in young adult involvement in five surveys over 25 years.

In 1987, adults ages 18 to 35 were 43% of U.S. Catholics but only 29% of them attended Mass at least weekly. By his 2011 survey, Millennials were 26% of U.S. Catholics and 25% of them attended Mass weekly.

Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, a Nashville-based Christian research agency, analyzed Protestant trends from 1972 to 2010 in data collected by the General Social Survey, a biannual survey from the National Opinion Research Center.

When he looked at young adults ages 23 to 35 -- an age group that is often away from their parents' influence and the cocoon of college -- he found that during those 38 years:

-- Mainline Protestant numbers dove from 24% to 6% and their worship attendance slid from more than 4% to less than 2%.

-- Black Protestants held steady in number, less than 10%, and their worship attendance did, as well, at about 2%.

-- Young evangelicals rose in number, up from about 21% to 25%. But only about 9% attended church at least once a week in 2010, up from about 7.5% in 1972.

Erin Kenny, 28, of East Brunswick, N.J., is one of these young-and-faithful. She worships at First Baptist Church in Red Bank, drawn to share joy in God and to bolster her peers in faith.

"The majority of people's experience in church is a lot of rules and religion and a lot of doing it because you're supposed to when you're growing up," Kenny says. "So I think a lot of times when you go away to college it becomes the time where you're like, 'Now I'm free'."

But Kenny, now a therapist working with abused women, says she felt more lost than free. Returning to church, and a community of fellow Christians, strengthened her, she says.

First Baptist Rev. Tyrone "Pastor Ty" Choate Sr. has taken a high-tech route to reel in young adults. Before Choate's sermon on a recent Sunday, a church member gave a lesson on inviting non-churchgoers by way of Internet eVites. And Kenny and her friends use a quick response code to call up sermon notes on their cellphones.

But low-tech still works. At the Sixth and I, a youth-oriented synagogue in downtown Washington D.C., cellphones were powered down and stashed in a basket during recent weekend workshop on celebrating Sabbath.

Two dozen of the hundreds of young professionals who attend worship and events at Sixth and I -- from concerts to lectures to study sessions -- came to sing, pray and discuss how to switch off their wired-in lives for a while every week to focus on God.

Rabbi Scott Perlo, who led the workshop, says, "It's not that people in 20s and 30s don't care about worship services. They just don't like institutions. What they demand is actually a more intense version of whatever we (practicing Jews) we are doing. They want the real deal, not a peripheral engagement."

Jacqueline London, 28, a Washington consultant, says Sabbath is her de-stress time in a high stress city full of young ambitious people on the run. She began coming to Sixth and I nearly seven years ago "to find out what it meant to be to be a young Jewish adult." Now, she helps lead songs at worship services.

Evangelical pastors see the same demand for authenticity and engagement from the young faithful at their churches.

Five years ago Rev. David Clayton, 30, and some friends founded Ethos, a youth-focused non-denominational church in Nashville that draws nearly 2,000 to worship on weekends.

Unlike many worship services geared to young evangelicals, there's no praise band and drum cage. Clayton says, "We feel like if we can strip some of the noise away, then they can wrestle with what God wants to say."

And they can hear Clayton preach straight up "full-proof Gospel" that calls on the faithful to give it all up for Jesus, his congregants say.

Jana Ogg, 26, who works for a non-profit in Nashville, says she used to be believe that being a Christian meant being a nice person. She said that meant being good to earn God's love.

At Ethos she came to believe that God loved her despite her flaws and failing. "We are going to fall and fall and fall again," she says. "Don't look at us. Look past us to Jesus."

That message is exactly what draws Nashville small-businesswoman Kim Parker, 28, on Sundays. She says, "If you are going to church to be a good person or to be religious, it's going to be boring."

Parker won't be bored -- or passive -- at Ethos. Most of the congregational leaders, including about 150 who run weekly small group in homes, are under 28. Many are involved in community service projects at the church, which gives away 50% of its income each year.

Jeremy Johnson, 35, the teaching pastor at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, has a similar plan for community giving, once the church pays down its mortgage next year.

Now more than 10,000 people attend services, including 2,500 young adults and about 200 come to a Thursday night worship service. The growth began with young people who never left as they grew older.

Bryce Book, 24, of Ankeny, near Des Moines, says he keeps returning after nearly three years of worship because of the church's progressive emphasis on young adults. Sermons directly address the nerve-racking milestones he and his friends are navigating in "a chaotic time" -- career, dating and marriage.

Many young adults at Lutheran Church of Hope only date people they know share their faith, said Kevin Down, 24, of West Des Moines. With such a large church, it makes it easy to find people who attend worship, whether it's a fellow churchgoer or a friend of a friend, he said.

Mandy Miller, 33, of Des Moines, says she has always had friends who are not religious, but when it comes to dating, Miller want a churchgoer -- just like her.

Contributing: Bob Smietana, The Nashville Tennessean; Jens Manuel Krogstad, The Des Moines Register; Alesha Williams Boyd, Asbury Park Press; John Wisely, Detroit Free Press

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