You stayed up late the night before, woke up late, skipped breakfast, and now you find yourself fighting the urge to sleep while listening to what you feel is a painfully tedious sermon. Your stomach gurgles, and your mind wanders. Before you know it you’re scrolling through memes on your phone and laughing hysterically inside your head. Millennials, does this sound familiar to you?

It happens. Been there, done that.  However, it doesn’t mean that church is not “entertaining” enough. It does not mean either that “they’re not doing what it takes to keep me interested”. It only means that the choices I made during the previous 24 hours were not exactly the best.

Millennials are often negatively labeled as lazy, skeptical, self-entitled, opinionated and easily offended individuals. As much as they dislike admitting it, millennials are often quick to offer an opinion, yet much of the time reluctant to hear one. They feed on the idea that they are as open minded as it is going to get. Yet, ironically their definition of open mindedness often lies on the idea that “only my ideas are worth being open to”.  Millennials are also, as a group, considered significantly less religious than their previous generations.

I am a millennial myself. To be honest with you, I must confess that I find the mainstream idea that churches are the place to entertain the youth quite disconcerting. Something about the thought that it is the responsibility of the church to keep the youth entertained with enough “church fun” least they slip into the incredibly irresistibly and mesmerizing claws of sin doesn’t make much sense. Something about that mentality doesn’t sound right. It sounds wrong, especially so when I read about the lives of young Biblical characters such as Timothy, the little maid, Daniel and Esther. Young people who were not simple spectators sitting on a pew, but who were great examples of faith and courage. They were not  waiting to be entertained. No, on the contrary, they were busy putting their time, energy, and talents to use.

Don’t get me wrong! I firmly believe that the youth do need direction and role models to look up to inside the church. I am all for youth camps, youth activities, and youth social gatherings! These things are important, yes! What I am against, however, is the idea that it is the church’s responsibility to keep the youth entertained. The saddest thing, is that it is not only millennials who have bought into this lie.

A church that plants a generation and waters it with the idea that it is, in fact the church’s responsibility to keep the youth entertained will reap a generation of lazy, skeptical, self-entitled, opinionated and easily offended individuals. Who, at the most minuscule sign of “boredom”, abandon the church, and have the audacity to blame it on the fact that the church didn’t keep them entertained. Thus, creating a vicious cycle of leaders who feel guilty and insolent youth who feel out of place inside the church. With time, both the guilt and the insolence become indifference; creating a massive gap between millennials and the rest of the church.

Dear millennial, if you think that hypocrisy, gossip, and other faults in character are good enough reasons to go M.I.A on the church, then I’ve got news for you. As long as you are working with human beings, you will stumble upon some faults in character along the way.  Does that mean you’re going to quit your job, pull your kids out of school and go live like a hermit?  Will you withdraw from society just because these things are too much to handle? Justifying your wanting nothing to do with the church because of this reason would be unreasonable. As unreasonable as a leper patient justifying an aversion to hospitals, medical personnel, and medications  based on the fact that there are cancer, HIV, and psychiatric patients in a hospital. Is the leper patient any better or any worse than the other patients? Of course not.

We’re all sick and in need of a Divine Doctor.

Faults in character are not a collective problem, they are a personal problem. Just as the details of the disease process and plan of treatment are confidential between a doctor and a patient, so it is the same in a spiritual context. Your spiritual diseases, shortcomings and victories are between you and God.  You are not being treated by the patient next to you, and it isn’t your place to medicate them either.

So, since everything that matters is between God and I, then what is the point of even going to church? Seriously, why go if I can just praise God and have a relationship with Him wherever I am? Why go to church when I can worship Him at home and avoid  human interaction along with the potential drama that it comes with?

Here is the answer:

“For where two or three gather in my name there am I with them”

-Matthew 18:20:

Yes, God is everywhere. And no, one doesn’t need to be in the company of somebody else in order to worship Him. However, there is something special about worshiping God together as a family of believers. If it weren’t that way, then why did Jesus choose to have disciples? How come it is that the greatest manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the Bible happened when there was a group of believers in communion with God and in one accord?

It is time to give millennials back the responsibility and trust that have been snatched away from us. It is time to stop the mollycoddling. Yes, it is time for the youth  to become active members of the church and not just the audience.

Millennials need to be  treated as the  intelligent, enthusiastic, energetic and capable individuals we are. Individuals who have what it takes to move the church forward when fully under the direction of the Holy Spirit.  It was the youth who started the work, and it is youth who will finish it.