A Humbling Walk in Questioning Faith

I am very overwhelmed.

I’ve been going to church services for a couple weeks and it’s been great. A rabbi gave a sermon at one service, I painted a tiny wooden ninja at another. At the Sunday evening service I attended at Humble Walk, something happened. As most of you know, I’m not the most expressive person when it comes to talking about my feelings. But what I experienced at Humble Walk Lutheran Church was everything having to do with feelings.

Whether it was the art gallery space that we were in for the service, the painting of the wooden ninjas beforehand, the snacks, the kindness of everyone, the fact that Pastor Jodi Houge was in jeans, or when she talked about just how simply weird church is in her sermon, I’m not sure. It was probably a combination of all of those that lead me to trying to hold back tears in the back row in my comfy chair. I was in the midst of the one of the best practices of community I’ve witnessed in a long time. It is that sense of community I’ve been waiting to either stumble upon, or have thrown at me.

I’ve never reacted emotionally to a church service before.

My girlfriend and I joke about how we can’t be seen doing cute things because “it’s not punk rock” and that’s sort of how I feel about talking about church. And as a young adult in America talking about church, I realize that it’s rare to hear of other Millennials talking about it as well. I get nervous about talking about my project and this blog because so many people I know and am friends with get uncomfortable with just the mentioning of the word “church.” I get uncomfortable too. It’s become such a taboo thing to talk about that people are leaving the church as an institution to go elsewhere, or nowhere at all.

More and more, scholars are finding a rapid increase in religious nones, or those categorized as “not affiliated” to a place of worship or tradition. This makes me a little bit anxious because of my current plans to attend seminary and eventually become a pastor. 

If people aren’t going to church, is what I want to do relevant?

As a young adult, and maybe as someone who you could call a "none", I want to find out why people are leaving church. I want to learn what people are doing to try and bring us back.

 

That’s a question a lot of faith leaders are asking these days. In response to that, a lot of churches are changing how they do services while maintaining their identities as faith communities. In an interview I had with Rob Fohr, Youth Catalyst at the Presbyterian Mission Agency, he argued that churches need to continue to be who they are and not change in ways that people will like them more (that sounds a lot like some of the relationship advice I got in high school.)

This whole experience is forcing me to come to terms with the fact that if I am to work in a church in my future, I need to start talking about it now so I don't have a breakdown in front of my community members in the middle of a sermon. I need to become comfortable with church again. With going to services and just simply saying it. Church.