If there’s one thing the church in North America likes to wring its hands about, it’s the shrinking number of actively participating young adults in our congregations. Questions like “Why are they leaving?” “Where are they going?” and “What can we do?” have spawned hundreds of articles with titles like “Five Reasons Why Millennials (fill in the blank).” Those articles have been circulated through church offices and passed along to councils by concerned parents and family members. However, many of these well-meaning attempts are written by older adults and lean on characterizations and generalizations that don’t necessarily reflect the on-the-ground experience of young adults in today’s church.
Perhaps that is what makes YALT’sMomentum such a breath of fresh air. The blog, run by the CRC’s Young Adult Leadership Taskforce, has been delivering straight-from-the-source articles from a diverse group of young adults from across the United States and Canada for almost three years now. Instead of nicely packaged, connect-the-dot answers to simple “What do we do now?” questions, Momentum regularly features insightful and challenging posts written by CRC and RCA college and seminary students, young lay leaders, and newbie clergy members. Topics range from big-picture issues like changing church culture and re-imagining denominational systems to personal reflections on what it means to live, work, seek justice, and love as a Christian young adult in our increasingly post-Christian society.
What’s most refreshing about the blog is that authors are encouraged to write on topics they feel passionate about. So what you get delivered to your RSS reader or your Twitter feed is very real, which is something you don’t always get in a church blog culture that is often obsessed with clicks, likes, and page views. The posts come straight from the heart, and many are intended to start a conversation, trigger a new thought, or push back against an established assumption.
So rather than have your opinion swayed by the latest Millennial trend analysis, let Momentum help you to listen well to real voices speaking on real issues facing real people in our church today.
About the Author
Derek Atkins is an associate curriculum editor for Faith Alive Christian Resources.
