The other month, I attended a conference thick with members of the clergy. It had everything you would expect: bad bagels for breakfast, a hurried nondenominational prayer to kick things off, and meeting rooms stacked with priests, rabbis, and imams grateful for a day off from the pulpit. I didn’t need to read the day’s agenda to know what was coming, though; I had but to wait a few minutes before someone was sure to get up and wax poetic about The Young.
And, sure enough, someone did, a lovely pastor with a sonorous voice and sincere demeanor. It was all well and good for us graybeards to huddle together and talk about what needed to be done in our houses of worship, he said, but none of that was particularly relevant because, if you looked around the room, you’d see no one younger than thirty. How, the man concluded his impromptu sermon, are we to attract new generations of believers unless we court them, hear them out, and welcome them in with offerings they value and desire?
