Finding Faith ... in learning to love all the people where they are at

EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2021 I began a new venture writing a newspaper column titled "Finding Faith" for the Forum Communications Co. network of newspapers and websites. I was asked to contribute to the company's ongoing conversation about faith, lending a Lutheran and fairly ecumenical approach to the discussion. The column was published in several of the company's papers and websites, including The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. This column originally appeared as a "Finding Faith" column on June 16, 2023.

The Rev. Devlyn Brooks at his home church, Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn.

By The Rev. Devlyn Brooks

How do you talk about Jesus? 

That was a question posed by the keynote speaker to a room full of lay church leaders and ordained clergy at the recent synod assembly that I attended.

The speaker was Kara Powell, the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute and a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary. She was specifically talking about the findings uncovered during a recent study of congregations across the country that have grown the number of young people who are attending. 

And what did the study find was happening in churches where they are “growing young?” That the places of worship “hyper focus on taking Jesus’ ministry seriously,” and that “they don’t get stuck in the quagmire of Christianity.”

For many, those may seem very logical statements, but as people of faith, we should see them as profound. Please take note!

While young adults -- generally considered ages 18 to 30 in the church -- are telling us they feel this way, I’d be willing to wager that many of the growing number of folks who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious” regardless of their age would say the very same thing. … Jesus they are drawn to; church not necessarily so.

This wasn’t the only revelation that came out of Fullerton’s study. There were a number of findings that helped explain how churches that were attracting young people were doing it. But a central theme was that these weren’t your grandfather’s churches, as the old adage goes.

What the study should tell us is that many of our churches were “calibrated” for a world that doesn’t exist anymore, and maybe never did.

So what to do, right?

We can sit around during our after worship coffee hour and gnash our teeth that people “just aren’t coming to church anymore.” Or we can get serious about the fact that we need to change church culture.

Granted, it’s a scary prospect, changing the way our beloved churches have worked for generations. But the truth is the church has always been ever changing, evolving both in worship practices and its doctrine. And we seem to be living through another age of great upheaval in the church that is likely going to produce some anxiety in some.

But I am hopeful because we have a very active and present God, who works with the best and the worst of our human practices. And so I have to believe that shaping a new church that focuses more on Jesus’ ministry and less on dogma is a good thing, a holy thing.

I firmly believe that if we can just figure out how to love all of the people where they are at all of the time, that God certainly will be in the middle of that and help us to envision what the new church will look like. Amen.

Devlyn Brooks is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and serves Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He also works for Forum Communications Co. He can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com for comments and story ideas.