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Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in NYC. Completed in 1904 and remaining mostly unchanged as the city grew up around it.

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in NYC. Completed in 1904 and remaining mostly unchanged as the city grew up around it.

Ok, I’ll say it. The Lutheran church is old. It’s old for two specific and distinct reasons.

It’s old because it started a long time ago.
This guy Martin Luther started it all. Luther… Lutheran. I dunno, could just be a coincidence. Luther was a troubled soul (but then, aren’t we all?) who wrote up a list of things wrong with the church and nailed them to a church door in Germany. He wanted normal people to read the Bible, but they couldn’t because it hadn’t been translated in their language. So instead of griping about it to a publisher, he set about translating it himself. The whole thing. Into German. From scratch. Some people rarely open their Bible to read it. This guy spent so much time in it that he could translate the whole thing. We could learn a thing or two from him… But, I digress. My point is, the church is old. How old? Well the list of things being nailed to the door happened in 1517. He published a full translation of the Bible in 1534 (although he finished the New Testament in 1522).

Yes, it’s that old.

It’s old because its members are old.
Seriously. They’re OLD. Even the statistics I could track down are old. In 2001 (yep, 8 years ago is the last time they cared enough to do this), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) sponsored a series of surveys across a sampling of 422 congregations. Here we show the average age of ELCA church attendees compared to the US population.

attendees_age

See anything interesting? Personally, I found a couple of glaring issues with this comparison. While 20 and 30-somethings combine to make up a pretty significant percentage of the US population, they’re an endangered species in an ELCA church. Likewise, if you’re 70-something, you’re in a minority in the US population and yet you’ll find plenty of blue-haired companions in a typical ELCA congregation.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that… I’m just sayin’. If you visit a Lutheran church as a 20 or 30-something, you may feel a bit out of place.

Here’s another interesting peek into their statistics:

clergy_age

This data is more recent (2008) and shows the average age of clergy in Southeastern Synod (solid red line) compared with that of the ELCA as a whole (blue dashed line). I pick on the Southeastern Synod here only because that’s the synod my church is a member of. Yep, they’re mostly between 50 and 60. Now, I don’t want to pick on 50-somethings. I have a lot of respect for the wisdom and knowledge a person can develop over 50 or 60 years. My issue is with a 50-something year old minister trying to relate to a 20 or 30-something year old churchgoer.

Now, if you combine these two factors, you create a perfect storm of old. Old ministers and old members in an old denomination with old traditions.

This is my story of being new in an old church.

  • I'm not sure how much I agree with you here. I agree that many young people are flocking to more "liberal" denominations like ELCA and Episcopal out of a desire to leave more fundamentalist churches, but I'm not sure this is a good thing. I may be young, but I lean toward fundamentalism myself. I'm happy people are finding a "real spiritual community", but I fear that when churches begin to abandon fundamentals and orthodoxy, they weaken the God we claim to love and serve.

    God's power to provide "social justice" stems from His power to forgive sin. When we toss the idea of sin out, we strip God of His power. Not only that, we strip Christ of His sacrifice for the atonement of our sin. It saddens me some to see so many in my generation actively seeking a weaker God in the name of "social justice".
  • Often we focus on age as a sole issue, this ties to the argument of "traditional" vs. "contemporary" worship practices. I believe it's a matter of relevance, what difference are we making for Christ in our world? Social justice is the buzz in the ELCA, but how is social justice in line with God's justice? They are often not the same and sometimes opposing one another, though the intentions are for good. Jesus didn't give soup because you prayed, but He gave soup and a prayer along with compassion, hope, and dignity (great example, the woman washing Jesus' feet with her hair and tears). I believe the greatest struggle we face as a Church is we focus on the distractions instead of what is important and relevant.
  • "Social justice is the buzz in the ELCA, but how is social justice in line with God's justice? They are often not the same and sometimes opposing one another, though the intentions are for good."



    Well said... I couldn't agree more.
  • Richard Kidd
    Well I'm a 46 year old minister in the ELCA. Sometimes I sense "Ageism" against people over 35 in our culture or maybe even over 30 but I do notice the disconnect because the majority of the congregation I pastor is over 50 mainly over 60 and our musical, personal and political tastes are different.
    So I'm trying to relate to people over 50 and the 20s and 30s somethings. Well we all have one person in common-Our Lord Jesus Christ!
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