I’ve written a lot about the relationship between those at or beyond midlife with the local church. (Click here, here, here and here.) We Boomers and older Gen X’ers have shaped modern evangelical church culture. And many of us have grown increasingly disenfranchised from the very subculture we helped to create. While some have found fresh meaning and energy to serve in their second adulthood, nearly half of those who responded to an informal survey I ran on this blog a little over a year ago told me they had downshifted their involvement in their local church – or had left it entirely. Click on the “here” links in the second sentence above to find out more about what I heard from those I’d surveyed, as well as some of my preliminary conclusions on the subject.
Of course, those of us at midlife aren’t the only ones. The Millennial exodus from the church has been well-documented.
The modernist mindset in which we at midlife have been immersed during our formative years has loosened its grip on Western culture. It’s a jolt for many of us midlife adults to see how this shift away from modernism has had on the way our Millennial children think about God, the world, the church and just about everything in thought and culture that’s not carved from granite. Modernism has not influenced our kids’ lives the way it has ours. [Read more]
