It’s frightening because it rings so true… Here’s a list of reasons why younger people are becoming less likely to connect with the Episcopal Church these days.
“At this point, I can understand why almost no one in Gen Y outside of their parents’ power wants anything to do with TEC at this point or Anglicanism in general. If you find yourself in the wrong circumstances, you may find (these are real life examples):
(1) yourself driven out of your church because your priest at college is gay (Father Heidt, that is what I call Donatism.)
(2) unable to worship in your eucharistic community because you are sickened spiritually by conflict within it. The Holy Spirit defend such as these!
(3) unable to worship at college for fear of (1)
(4) unable to worship anywhere because you live in the same place all year and have insufficient ideological purity of one sort or another for your home diocese
(5) Unable to worship because those Episcopalians your age you know who take any of it seriously become total nutcases eventually, and you already feel too much like a nutcase as it is.
Add to this the problem of inadequate catechesis and arrogant priests and bishops (of one sort or another). The Holy Spirit forfend arrogance in deacons!
And since Christianity is finally voluntary in much of the US, most of my generation will shake off the dust from their feet. If they are conservative, they will go elsewhere. If they are liberal, they will leave and might raise their children as conservative Unitarians or something (like some Gen Xers I know).”
Note the bit of information at the beginning. These are all things that have really happened.
I’d add to this list the problematic action the Episcopal Church took years ago in deciding to effectively shut down its college ministry centers by deciding not to fund them anymore. So many people I meet became committed Episcopalians in college (like I did). What ever possessed us to shut down our most effective evangelistic ministry?
Read the rest here: Eucharist Was Lovely Yesterday
