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Last month, we looked at how we attract young people to our church by living out the call of the gospel by getting out of the church building and living in relationship with people. Young people are looking for a faith that is real and lived-out, something that is overtly spiritual, something they can sink their teeth into.

In the midst of sometimes turbulent times for mainline churches, I think we secretly wonder if the mainline has anything left to offer, especially in light of the claims made in articles such as last month’s Tennessean (7/6/08), which claimed outright that young people prefer non-traditional worship.

Pulling from my experiences working with a non-denominational church before moving to Tennessee, I’ve noticed some trends in these alternative worship services. First of all, at the church I was working at, we started experimenting with periods of silence, call and response sections of the service, communion where everyone came forward to the same table to receive—things I have since discovered have been part of the Anglican tradition for a long, long time, and possibly led me to feel more at home here in the Episcopal Church once I tried it out.

Yes, these services usually use contemporary worship music, something that some of our churches in the diocese would find very difficult to incorporate, but I don’t believe that young people’s preference for a church rises or falls based exclusively on the music. Again, I believe it is the way that a congregation lives out its faith and practices community that draws people, not just young people, but people of all ages, to our churches.

And because I’ve witnessed the adoption of practices, if not straight from the Prayer Book, then pretty close, in non-denominational and less traditional churches, I think that what we have in our tradition is a huge asset to attracting people, but especially young people.

So, you may ask, if all this is true, why is there a huge gap of young people in our churches? Well, part of that I think will be the subject of perhaps another article, but I think one part at least is that we as the body of Christ sometimes forget that the body of Christ is a family. And in families, we interact with people of multiple generations; do life with people of different ages; hold gatherings with multiple generations present. It’s easy for us to look to the church to provide our social needs, and as we think of being with friends, we typically picture people our own age. I know I do. But we as the body of Christ are called to more than that. It’s great that we find friends and social interaction at our churches, but we are called to be ambassadors of the gospel (2 Cor 5:20), and to be known by our love for one another (John 13:35).

Imagine what we could be like as we reach out to people in our sphere of influence no matter how similar or dissimilar they are to us, and start doing life with the people around us, including them in our heritage and in the glorious message that we’ve been entrusted to impart.