The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 069 - A Completely Different Take on Reaching Millennials with Haydn Shaw
[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to the Carey Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carey Newhoff. Well, hey, everybody, and Happy New Year. Welcome to episode 69 of the podcast. My name is Carey Newhoff. I hope you had an unbelievable holiday. And here we are right back into it. So this is going to be fun. I think 2016 is going to be the most incredible year yet for the podcast. We have had one full year under our belt. This whole thing launched back in September of 2014. And 2015 was an incredible year. But if you're like me, you're always improving. So we are looking to take this up to another level. And I thought we would start this year with a subject that pretty much all of us are passionate about. Most of you who listen to this podcast are ministry leaders. And what I mean by that is you're either senior leaders or leaders in a church like you're hired by a church. But a lot of you are business people who are just really passionate about the church. And so you do something by day, but you serve at your church as a small group leader or board member or that sort of thing by night and on weekends. And you're just passionate about the ministry of the church. And if you're like me and you're passionate about the ministry of the church, then you're passionate about reaching people who aren't in your church. So we just came off our biggest Christmas yet and are opening the doors in January to what we hope will be an unprecedented number of people. And if you're like me, you're really passionate about millennials. You're really passionate about those young adults between the ages of about 18 and 35 wondering what can we do to really reach out to them? And so I've written extensively on this on my blog, carrynewhoff.com. And today's guest is gonna speak into this subject. And he is gonna give a very different point of view than the one that maybe I would naturally have. And that is I don't see a lot of millennials going to most churches. Now we have a lot of millennials who attend our church, but when you look at general church trends, it's not the case. Now Hayden makes a really sort of contrarian argument and says maybe the panic is premature. So we have a fascinating discussion. I think we're actually not that far apart. And when you listen to it, you'll see where you land on that. But he says, hey, millennials are behaving like 20 year olds do. And so it's a very different perspective, but not only that, he offers some incredible perspective on ministering to every generation. You know, if you're Gen X like I am, or maybe you're a baby boomer, or maybe you're part of the elder generation or the silent generation, he talks about all of these generations with incredible insight. And I know you're gonna gain something from that. So because this is such a universal issue. And hey, if you're a marketer, I mean, maybe you don't go to church at all. Maybe you're a marketer. You're gonna get some insight because anytime you kind of look at demographics and how people behave, you learn something. And so Hayden's gonna kick off 2016 for us. And what's really cool is he's got a new book called Generation IQ, which he'll talk about a little bit. But there's a promotion on right now. And you can actually get the book. Details are in the show notes very inexpensively. It's marked down to $2.99. And you can get that at Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Christian book, bookshout, Kobo, places like that. It's called generational IQ. And it's by Hayden Shah, who's my guest. So that's gonna be incredible. And I just wanna thank you. I hope, listen, I want you to know I'm on your side and I will do everything I can to support you as a church leader. We've got some new initiatives coming this year. So this is gonna be exciting. And hey, for all of you who are podcast listeners, if you haven't jumped over to the blog, I would love you to do that. I've got a series running there this week, all about the future of the church and how to kick off 2016 well. And I would love to have you visit and maybe leave a comment. You can just go to my name, carrynewhough.com. And maybe I'll spell it for you. C-A-R-E-Y. And are you ready for this? Who can memorize it? N-I-E-U-W-H-O-F.com. And people always ask me like, "What is that? "It's like, is that German?" It's like, no, it's Dutch. It's actually Friesian. Although probably centuries ago it was German. Anyway, it's much harder to spell than it is to say, it's just New Hough. But carrynewhough.com. We have some great conversations on the blog and it was a privilege to serve so many leaders last year and look forward to seeing even more on the blog and on this show. And finally, before we jump into Hayden, what you could do if this podcast has been a help to you, I would love for you to leave a rating or review on iTunes. And you can do that. That would be awesome. We're at 300 reviews and counting right now in the US iTunes store, which is incredible. But wherever you are in the world, leave one on your iTunes store and then maybe share the love. Post this to your social media. You can post it to Facebook or to Twitter or whatever. And I would just love for you to get the word out this year because we want to help more leaders than ever. So on to generational trends, something that fascinates me and author and generational expert, Hayden Shaw. - Well, welcome, Hayden. I am so glad to have you on the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today. - Thanks for having me. This is fun. - Yeah. - So Hayden, you got a brand new book. It's called generational IQ. And it's got, I would call it a provocative subtitle. The subtitle to the book is just fascinating to me. It says Christianity isn't dying. Millennials aren't the problem. Aren't you millennials? Glad to hear that finally. And the future is bright. All right, so I take it. You knew you were sort of taking a minority position in the church 'cause everyone throws their hands up and I've done this, right? Which is like, okay, what's happening? Millennials are exiting church at record numbers. Churches are dying. And you've got a different view. So tell us a little bit about why you're so optimistic that the church is alive and well in an age where a lot of people aren't sure it is. - Well, let's start with why that subtitle? Because the first part of the book looks at, you know, it looks at some of the recent, there's a chapter that looks at the research on Christianity living or dying. And then there's a whole section for parents of millennials and families of millennials. And so the point is, millennials aren't the problem. The life stage of emerging adulthood is the problem if there's a problem there. And then lastly, the church can have a great future or we can just whiff it completely, strike out, so to speak. And kind of like my Cardinals did even though they had great expectations with the leading record. We just kind of whiff it. And we've all chased teams who have had that pain. - I know, but the Blue Jays fan. - But the Blue Jays did great this year. - They did, they did. - They kept it alive. - And there's the Leafs, yeah. - Yeah, well, as a Black Hawks fan, I just don't even know what to say. Anyway, the future can be bright if we can increase our generational intelligence. And so the first part of the book actually tries to do that. It looks at the four generations and it looks at what are their spiritual strings and weaknesses and it makes the observation that when we were born shapes our relationship with God. - Okay, that's really interesting. When we were born shapes our relationship with God. Tell me about that. 'Cause you are, I mean, you've done a lot of your life's work in generational research, right? What makes boomers different than Gen Xers, different than Millennials, different than whatever this next generation is? So explain that. How is a boomers relationship with God different than the Millennials? - You bet, each generation is shaped by certain experiences. And as a result, we answer the same questions differently. - Okay. - So we answer, you know, what's appropriate to wear to church? And most boomers wouldn't say flip flops. But most millennials say flip flops. And so what's appropriate to get married in? Most boomers would say it's a $32,000 wedding on average, so it'd better not be flip flops. And there are websites that you can buy a blinged up, ribboned up flip flop in any color so that the bride can go down with fancier flip flops than the matching wedding party. So that the mom has one less thing on her list than adding that by hand. Because, and her daughter's mind, I'm just gonna kick him off and dance anyway. - Right, right. - So when we answer the same question differently, you know we're shaped by different kinds of expectations and experiences. And as I'm going through generational research for 30 years, I began to see some patterns. So for example, some doctrines that we argue over, you can see generational patterns in those doctrines we argue over. - Right. - In approaches to church, you begin to see some, the focus on community. It was much bigger for generational xers than it was for boomers. And when you understand what are the key themes of the generations, it makes complete sense that a generation that saw a lot more divorce and a breakdown in community structures would be interested in a community as opposed to the hyper-individualism that marked the baby boomers. - Okay, that's interesting. So the argument would be baby boomers generally who were, what would you call their parents? Elders, I've heard them referred to. - You bet, I call them traditionalists. They're often called builders, they're elders, they're race generation. - Okay. So they were raised by families that stuck together, whether it was good at home or not. For the most part divorce rate was quite low, right? - That's right. - So your argument would be, as the boomers started to divorce and as Gen Xers started to divorce, the millennials and the younger Gen Xers are like, oh my goodness, I don't have any community at home, therefore I seek it out in other people. - Well, you can see it in the show, Friends. My wife and daughter are Friends addicts. - Okay. - I have to listen to it quite often. Your job's a joke, you're broke, but you've got these friends. And so all of the older people in that series were caricatures of real people. The only fully drawn characters were the Friends and then Tom Selleck when he was dating Monica. So those were the only fully drawn characters. Everybody else was a cartoon. And you pick your friends, you create your family because your family of origin was often, whether your family, you love them, but they were often rather dysfunctional or at least appear dysfunctional. So you created a family, you created a community, not uncommon at all for Xers to actually relocate, not to be closer to biological family, but to be closer to people they met in their early 20s that they've grown up with through life together, their chosen family, not at all uncommon. - See, this is really interesting to me on a number of levels and we're gonna drill down in quite a bit of detail on this. But like for example, my wife and I, we're empty nesters. I'm Gen X and we start a new small group tomorrow night and that small group is all people in their mid to late 20s. And I know when I was in my mid to late 20s, the last thing I wanted to do was get together with people who could be my parents' age and learn from them. - Okay, here's the most exciting thing in all the research I did. The bad news is Ed Stetser and Lifeway discovered that 71% of people between 18 and 23 drop out of church for at least a year, even if they were active youth group attenders and leaders. - Right. - That to me is a heartbreaking statistic. 71%, seven out of 10 drop out for at least a year. - Even if they were active and even if they were involved. - Yes, and the one thing that could drop that in half. - What's that? - Adults other than the parents who stay in contact with them, a text message every other week is enough to keep, to recut that in half. A text message every other week from an adult, not their parent. - Isn't that fascinating? - It is. This is a generation who in terms of soft benefits in the business place, in the marketplace, number two in the soft benefits is a mentor. - Wow. - It's not the millennials that want to work from home. People like work from home, that's the answer to the millennials. That's what the conference board of the CEO said. They all got these programs for work from home, telecommute, that way we don't have to pay for your real estate. Now the millennials want to come in to work because that's where you get mentoring. - Wow. - They want flexible hours, but every other generation wants flexible hours. They want mentoring and they want it in the church. They want authentic older adults that they can have authentic conversations as they sort through the questions that are different today because of the life stage of emerging adulthood. I know that's a mouthful right there. - No, that's good. So help me understand, drill a little bit deeper. You've already flagged one issue, which is that, and not all of them who are going to be in our small group are all the millennials at our church or even in the community have had parents who divorced or terrible home life. Some of them have had great home life. So what are some of the other factors that make them long for community? - That's right. Millennials have had the same divorce rate as the Xers, but in the United States at least, the divorce rate's never been over 30%. And so the number of people who've been impacted by divorce are often less than you hear in the press and the media. - Right. - Shanti filled him when I asked her to endorse the book, reviewed it and said, "Your numbers are wrong on divorce. You need to get them accurate." So the galleys weren't done, the galleys were in and yet, and so I was able to make some tweaks and get that more accurate. So anyway, that's one of the impact. - Your numbers were too high and you had to bring them down? - You bet I was doing the shortcut way, which was taking the number of divorces and the number of marriages and then doing simple math on them. - Yeah. - So how do you study? Is it knows that that's inflated, but that's the number you hear. They're actually-- - Over and over again. - You bet 50% is actually a projection on divorce statistics. It's never actually happened. It's what experts on marriage say is the projection of where it will be in 20 years. - Wow. - And so it's never been above 30%. It's not even 50% for third marriages. - Really, huh? - It's only 50% for people who are married before like 19. - Oh, wow. - It's a little over 50% for people who are married when still very young. - Gotcha. Okay, wow. - So it's actually really encouraging news. And, but the idea of community is that as society unravels, as the social, people don't walk to church, they don't know their neighbors anymore in the same way. We tend to live much more hyper-individualistic lives. And even in church, the baby boomers liked a polished church. I love to say that traditionalists, the people over 70, they were influenced by experts, experts telling. And the baby boomers were influenced by entertainers compelling. - Hmm, that's a good phrase. - Yeah, think about that. - Say that one more time. I want to hear that. Okay, so the boomers were influenced by - Entertainers compelling. - Yeah. - So we're asked, you know, you do long sermons with a lot of doctrine. And whereas the baby boomers are like, well, that preacher's boring. And so preachers looked a lot more like television shows. It looked a lot more like a variety show, entertaining, funny, captivating, compelling. And the music was much more polished. And, you know, when I was growing up, the song leader sat with the organist at piano player, 15 minutes ahead of time and pick songs. - Yeah, that was rehearsal, right? - That was rehearsal. Whereas now you pick the songs a month ahead of time, there's scheduling software you determine if you can be at practice, as well as do all the services in a larger church. And so even in smaller churches, there's a lot more polish in the way music works. And so boomers expected that. - Right. And how's that different with Gen X? Let's play that through in millennial. - You bet. Well, you know, the research shows that many exers want the polish of the boomers. That's why large churches, mega churches are still doing quite well. Millennials and exers like the polish. And then others want just the opposite of polish. They want authentic. My millennial, my 21 year old millennial son says, "Oh, dad, I'm tired of the pageant tree. "I like small churches and the authenticity. "I like prayers that feel like somebody "is actually saying them, "rather than they've written them and memorized them." I said, "Dude, you're killing me "because we were dying in those services." - Yep. - The boomers said, "Hell no, we won't go to church." And our parent said, "Well, you're going to go to hell." And we said, "No, a good God wouldn't send me to hell "'cause hell is listening to that organist play week "after week after week." And so we polished the music. We got more compelling sermons. But as a result, we tended to have a more entertainment focus, a more hyper-individualistic focus. And I argue in the book that the boomers of the first generation that began to church shop, not because of a fight, but because there was a radio preacher or somebody that wrote a book that they thought was a better teacher. And so they went for the better voice, the better throat. It was, in essence, the voice television show while you're following who the hot hand is to use a basketball term in preaching. And in many ways that create some real spiritual problems 'cause you can avoid the dark night of the soul for your entire lifetime by just going to whatever gives you the next Jesus buzz, the next hot feeling. - And we've seen a lot of church shopping. Every single church leader listening is going, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup. And podcasting has just made that more interesting because before you used to have to try to get a cassette or a CD or whatever you were on dial up. And now basically you can listen to anyone, anywhere, anytime for free, right? - And what's made that interesting is because it's so free, it allows people to focus on community in their churches. So many Xers are like, "Hey, I don't care if the preaching is of the same level that I, you know, as others do because I can get all of that online. What I care about are the relationships and the authenticity." And so that's one of the angles with Xers and millennials. And I've even heard my own millennial son say, "You know, my minister is a good preacher, but that doesn't matter to me as much 'cause I can hear that from hundreds of people." - Okay, so you say in your book, you say what's really key to understanding what's going on around us is to understand the key characteristics of three, I think it's three generations, right? It's the boomers, the Xers, and the millennials. So can you give us a quick recap? And obviously you can drill into a lot more detail by reading your book, but can you just give us a couple of hallmarks then of how boomers liked it? How can Xers think and behave? And then how millennials think and behave? Because there's an awful lot written and I think we all have like pop knowledge on that. But while we've got you, you've spent 30 years researching this, tell us what your take on each generation would be. And then we'll follow through on how that actually impacts church attendance trends, engagement trends, and whether the earth is spinning out of control when it comes to millennials and the Christian faith, so. - Got it. Well, let's start with the traditionalists. It's interesting that that-- - And they were born when? Give us a rough markers. I'm a Gen Xer according to your book. - You bet, 70 and over. - Okay, 70 and over traditionalists. Our traditionalists, and so there's a famous painting called American Gothic and it shows this farmer with his daughter looking very unhappy and it's a classic painting. - Oh yeah. - Well, the very next year and right upstairs in the Chicago Art Institute is a Picasso picture where you can't tell where the woman is and where the chair is and they're both flat and it looks like she's a fish with both eyes on the front of her face. And so, you know, people are like, well, what generation was the most rebellious? I gotta ask that at NASA, which generation is the most rebellious? The traditionalists? Because most people had American Gothic view of life. There were all these ideas, especially in urban centers beginning to bubble up. And there were these two worlds going on simultaneously. And so, traditionalists, many of them were very conservative and keeping the traditions alive and yet all of the challenges we face today, intellectually and challenges to the faith and challenges in terms of reaching and keeping our children, all of those ideas got their start in the oldest of the generations. - Yeah, that's very interesting, you know. I hadn't made that connection, but if I can just sort of interject for a second. I mean, Picasso was active from the 19 teens through to the 60s, maybe even a little bit later. And then that's where deconstructionism, I mean Foucault and Derida and others, that whole sort of existentialism that started in the 19th centuries became nihilism in its extreme form. - And you're right, I hadn't really thought about the fact that our grandparents or great grandparents really were the brokers of all of that because they look so traditionalist, but they're actually rebellious. And that's where the seeds of the sexual revolution were sewn long before the boomers came along and grabbed that. - Actually, actually the medical records show that half of our grandparents not married because it was time to move that relationship forward. So the first sexual revolution happened before the Great Depression and the Great Depression lowered skirts and raised inhibitions because when you can't afford them, you don't need a baby. - Right. - Yeah, and so our grandparents were not as chaste as we think of them. And now there were some differences we can get into later if there's time, but they weren't as chaste as we think of them. And there were some challenges going on in terms of the way people thought. Now, in rural areas or outside of urban areas or academic university communities, they had less of an impact, but those ideas began to get talked about and that all bore fruit then with the baby boomers. And it looked like there was a huge generation gap. - Well, instead of a huge generation gap, what we had was this coming to life of these very different ideas. And the baby boomers were actually less rebellious because they were simply carrying on the values that they were taught, which was a faith in psychology. You can't trust theology to tell you how to live, but psychology has the answers for how you lived your life. And so I would suggest that being one of the strengths of the baby boomers is a willingness to talk about problems that used to be hidden in addicts or in basements. And nine times more likely, Umber towns found when he researched baby boomers, baby boomers were nine times more likely to go to a therapist and get help in their previous generations. At the same time, a lot of confidence in psychology, many boomers know the ins and outs of psychological theories don't know much about scripture. - Yeah, that's probably true. So psychologically driven, scriptural literacy dropped. Sexually was a very promiscuous generation. I mean, when you look at they were the ones that would stalk, they were the ones in all of that. Is that true or is that just a stereotype? - It's both. Ironically, the boomers talked about pot. It was the Xers that actually smoked it, but didn't talk about pot. - Really? - Yeah, so the Xers smoked pot much more than the baby boomers ever did. As Yankalovich, the greatest expert on boomers has said only 2% of the boomers ever protested. - Really? - But because television was this new medium, it made it look much bigger than previous rebellions looked because it was in your face all the time. - So they were actually more conservative than we give them credit for. - They were, what was going on was a shift in values from sacrifice to self. And when the boomers are called the meat generation, it's actually quite accurate because as a society, we shifted from trying to survive to exploring, we don't have to worry about lunch, so we went to exploring inner space. And that's a great thing, but it can lead to what I call in the book, Hyper Individualism, where it is about me and what I want. And even spiritual life gets wrapped around that. And church hopping is just one example of Hyper Individualism. - So no war anymore, you know, there was Vietnam and so on, but no, not quite the large global battle that the First or Second World War was. And then the birth of consumerism, the real advance of that, and then the birth of the meat generation would really be characteristic of the boomers. - Oh, you bet, because as Janklovich notes, there was a major shift from sacrifice to self. - Yeah. - And in that major shift, a lot of things get explained and a different focus in spiritual life. No longer do we sing songs, historical hymns, kind of the greatest hits of the church. The songs, you know, the song we sang most as I was growing up is that's how it feels with God's love once you've experienced it. Fresh like spring, you want to sing, you have to pass it on. And so it's not a bad song, it's corny, it's not a bad song. It won't make the top 100 of all-time songs. - Probably not. - And it captures that idea of me and Jesus and rock and roll, you know, rock and roll love songs, the kind of light FM that works in churches, it carries the lyrics of love and relationships where they will be in Jesus. If we can just get seven minutes alone soon, it's going to be so great. And their love songs, you know, if anything, I'm not a fan of rap music, but rap music does theology a whole lot better than rock and roll does. And so the music we selected made a certain kind of reinforced, a certain kind of focus on a relationship with God. We brought God close, but then that had some implications when we took it too far. - Well, and then as you say, hyper individualism, a lot of people criticize contemporary church music in the last 40 years as being hyper individualized, it used to be collective and we, the sense of the community, coming before God and now it's Jesus and me. Okay, so that's interesting on boomers. Take us through Gen X, which is my generation, people born between 1965 and 1965. - Yeah, 1965 and I cut them off around 1980. Others cut them off around 75. It has to do with whether you use the birth curve or whether you use purchasing trends, survey numbers and voting trends. - Okay. - Yep, but that's it by the experts differ. So I put them at 1980 and Xers. We talked about community already. We talked about being heavily influenced by divorce, mainly societal instability. Both of the United States and Canada faced some big drops in economic growth. The great, the great stability of 20 years was over and suddenly there was up and downs and with far more women working than before it changed the game. And society didn't have the same support structures we did, we do now and today. So you don't really hear boomers feeling the effects of divorce, feeling marginalized or different in some way nearly as much as we do with Xers. And as shows about blended families got a lot more attention than because it was kind of a new idea and a new concept. Generation Xers tend to be much more cynical about things and their political shows are cynical. The Simpsons have run for 20 years because their family was not quite leave it to beaver. - Yes. - And so as a result, they tend to withdraw from organizations and institutions. And they tend to look past hype. And so they've had some struggle. We worry about the millennials walking out the door. The generation that has struggled the most with institutions has been Generation X. They've created their own families, they've created their own institutions. And as a result, community becomes a really big factor in much of their literature. And then the whole emerging church movement community was a big deal, collaborative leadership rather than polished worshipper or a commanding senior minister. And so when you begin to understand these the generational research, you say, oh, no wonder we go through scripture with a different lens. It's shaped by the generational influences that raised us. - Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, and that's very true. I mean, I remember growing up and one of the first economic terms I learned as a kid was stagflation. That idea of a stagnant economy and high inflation because they usually run in different cycles. Fascinating. - Okay. - So I was late '70s, early '80s, but now we've got millennials from 1980. You say till about what, 2001 is where you drive a lot. - 2001 is where I cut them off. - Yeah. - Nobody knows for sure. - So that's a lot of our kids who are listening and maybe a few of the listeners who are listening right now. And well, actually quite a few, actually anybody in their 20s, right? Is a millennial by that stretch and you can even take it up to by your definition 35. - That's right, right. - Okay. So in some of our kids, some of us who are a little bit older, our kids fit that demographic. So tell us a lot about, well, tell the listeners about themselves. - Well, I think one of the key factors in understanding millennials, you already mentioned Foucault and Derrida and for Xers. - Sartre wrote at the same time as well, I was thinking. - You bet, you bet. And so postmodernism began to happen. And so the Xers go into school under one world of you and come out under another. And so they come in under modernism, they come out under postmodernism. And I call that in the book because the book is written for lay people, even more than pastors. We call the book true for you and not for me. Try to summarize the whole idea, postmodernism. - Relative morality, right? So in other words, hey, hey, that's great. I'm glad that's probably true for you. Jesus is your savior, but he's not mine. Hey, it's right for you to wait until marriage, but that's true for you, not true for me. - And you can see it in the fact that 69% of evangelical young people have sex before marriage. - Sure. - And even more for the main line, people in main line churches. And so the idea is, for many of them it's, yeah, I shouldn't be doing this. For others is, you know what, that's true and it's great if you can do it, but that's just not working for me. And it's a version of Christianity that I would call to use the old missions term, syncretistic, where we synchronize it with other things that seem to make more sense. And in the book, I use Miley Cyrus as a great example of that. And one of her songs, she talks about haters and the Baptists and her parents and people who are saying, only God can judge you. Well, that's true, but you know who loves you, she sings. Anybody who doesn't love you is a hater 'cause only God can judge you. And hey, what's true for you may not be true for me. And this book is not how we figure out how God judges us. And actually, I talk in the book about this radio show I heard where they were doing this game of what's worse. And one of the questions was, would you rather be prejudiced or a cannibal? - Oh. - Wow. - Cannibal one. - I was gonna say, I can only imagine who won and that would be cannibal. - I would rather eat people than think badly of them in bigoted ways. And so, now that's crazy town, but even more than that, you can see it in the papers the last couple of weeks, USA Today on what day was it? Thursday of last week, USA Today had an editorial on young people, students who are petitioning, who are protesting for safe environments. And they wanna teach you're expelled there. - Can you say that again? We had a little breakup. They were protesting what? - Safe environments. - Okay, gotcha. - Yeah, and so it's a big theme on a lot of university campuses. And that is it needs to be a safe environment. So the syllabus needs to warn us when there are passages that may open past memories or past pain and a person needs to have the option of not reading that book and reading something else that won't bring up that past pain. It needs to be a safe place. University is a safe place. And so, not only free from prejudice, but free from re-inflaming old hurts. - We'll do our best to link to that editorial in the show notes, by the way, that was mid-November 2015. So we'll try to find that. And by the time this airs, we'll try to have that link for you in the show. - You know, I've got it in my suitcase. So I'll be happy. - Oh, great, great, great. - I'll send it to you. So the point of it is it's that idea of judge not because judging is the ultimate sin. The greatest crime or the greatest sin is to judge another person. And Christian Smith's incredible research were as followed millennials over the last 10 years. He takes a look at their moral foundations, how they make moral judgments. And well, about 20, well, about 25% of them who were raised in church make some moral judgments based on what we would call theological foundations. Even those who were raised in church and in Bible teaching churches often make psychological judgments rather than theological judgments. - Yes. - And even answer theological questions with psychological terms. So psychology has truly won. It has become the fog that shapes our thinking today. - Okay, well, this is good. We all just did our generational IQ 101 class. Thank you so much. This is super helpful because it really does show how psychology and worldview has shifted from generation to generation in a helpful summary way. Now let's circle back and let's talk about engagement in the church because that is sort of what you're talking about these days and what a lot of us are interested in. So the way a lot of us see it is millennials and not engaging in church, the future of the church is not bright to contradict your book title, subtitle. And that Christianity maybe is dying. And so you're saying, no, no, no, no, not necessarily that just all arises out of generational misunderstanding. So help us walk through that. Why, I mean, do you think millennials are flocking to the church in droves then or what are you seeing, Hayden? - Nope, they're not flocking to the church in droves. - Okay, first Christianity isn't dying. Let's start there. - Okay, sure. - The statistics simply don't show Christianity dying in the United States. I was just talking with a gentleman from Montreal who was talking about large cathedrals with few Catholic people there in Quebec. And so in Canada, Christianity has shown a greater decline. - Yeah, I was gonna say in my community, we've shuttered or seen so many churches shuttered in the last two decades since I've been up here. - And some are growing, our church is growing. There are a handful of other churches that are growing, but yeah, it's not 1995 or 85 anymore. But okay, fair enough. So in Canada, you've seen a bigger collapse, but not so much in the US. - In the United States, church attendance is down about 10% over the last 40 years. - Okay. - And so is that good news? - No. - Is Christianity will be gone in three generations like we hear so often? - No. - Can I ask one more question? 'Cause I know we have a lot of listeners in New England, I have friends who do ministry there, all along the West Coast, Seattle, all the way down through California. You have a Bible Belt and SoCal, but a little bit of one anyway. So what about people who would say, "No, I'm not in the Bible Belt, I'm not in Texas." And even my friends in Texas or Atlanta, they're like, "It's not as easy as it used to be." But like, are there regions where the fall off is pretty rapid in the US? - Oh, you bet, for example, I'm here in Chicago, just south of Milwaukee. - Yeah. - Milwaukee is one of the most unchurched communities in the United States. And my son is a church planter in Rhode Island because Rhode Island is one of the more unchurched areas in the country. And so New England, for example, to your point, and Seattle, Oregon, all of those places on the coast where you find the bluest of the states, where you often find less interest in conservative Christianity and institutional religion. - Okay, so we're on the same page in terms of what we're saying, but you say, but that still doesn't mean Christianity isn't dying. - No, that's right, Christianity, there's simply no statistical indications that Christianity is close to dying or we're close to Europe, as people often say. In the '40s, Gallup discovered that 96% of Americans believed in God. When asked the same question in 2011, 94% of people said they believe in God. And so a 2% drop is not the, what was me kind of statistical crisis. Now, I think we have a challenge and that challenges what people mean by God. - Right. - So if we take that into account, that's a different game. And I agree with Christian Smith. He talks about moralistic therapeutic deism. I call it be good, feel good, live your life because moralistic therapeutic deism is quite a mouthful. But the fact that many of our church young people believe, answer questions with psychology rather than theology and believe in a Christianity that's not actually Christianity. My worry is not that the church won't be here in three generations. My worry is the church we have won't be worth having because moralistic therapeutic deism is a shell of the good news that the true Jesus is. - Yeah, and I mean, to some extent, when you read David Kineman's research with the Barnard group, he'll say when you look, yeah, 90% believe in God or whatever. And we'll talk about the rise of the nuns in a few minutes. But he would say when you look at a traditional evangelical, Christian worldview of do you believe the Bible is true is Jesus the way, the truth and the life, that stat has dropped significantly over the years or do you have different data? - Well, there is a different data on that. Barna's data, Barna's data tends to be more negative than Gallup's data or the social survey data that the US government does. And so you gotta have to pick your way through that. The fine folks down in Baylor often take on Barna's data in the press, even in the Wall Street Journal saying, well, that's not accurate. And so you've got different sociologists that interpret the data in different ways or get different results on their surveys. So the way I say it in the book is it's not as bad as we think because it was never as good as we thought. - Yeah, I've got that written down. It's not as bad as we think because it was never as good as we thought. Tell us what you mean by that. - Yeah, we heard that 40% of the United States is born again, is evangelical, you know? And it was never that big. - So it was never that true. Our golden days, our glory days were never that glorious. - That's right. And it comes up in the nun study that you mentioned. You know, there are people who said they were Christian who their neighbors would have spit out their beverage on their back porch if they'd heard them answer that survey question because they would have said, you are not Christian. - Right. - But everybody claimed to be Christian 'cause there was social expectations for that whereas today we're much freer to not pick anything. And so born again, as you pointed out, as Kidman points out, when you ask the questions, do you believe the Bible is accurate and do you share your faith? The number of people who define themselves as evangelicals drop dramatically over those that say they're born again. - But you would, and I mean, David's been on this podcast episode 24 and I use his research all the time. Big fan of David and what they're doing. - I am too. - But the question, I guess, if I hear your argument right, you would say if you were to retake the poll 20 years ago, 30 years ago and ask it more accurately and people answered more honestly, you would have discovered that there was a significant portion of nuns in the '70s and the '80s and the '90s and maybe it wouldn't quite rival what we have today but people just feel more free to say, yeah, I'm not a Christian. Is that what you're saying? - Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. - Okay. - That's actually, that's good. - The number of people who pray, the number of people who believe in the divinity of Jesus has remained, as Robert Whithnow, kind of the rock star of church sociologist out of Princeton as he's pointed out, it's remained virtually the same for 40 years. And now what's different is how people interpret it. Two thirds of the millennials believe the God of the Bible is the same God of all religions. - Right. - They're the same God. So the God of the Bible is the true God. - Yeah, you hear that all the time. - They also believe that they're the same God, that all religions have really the same God. - Yeah, that's a big stereotype. I mean, I've taught about that in actually trying to counter that. It's like, you can't just say that Christianity is the same as Islam is the same as Judaism. I mean, any Muslim would say, no, we're radically different than Buddhism and radically different than Hinduism and radically different than Christianity. But we in the West seem to say, no, it's all the same. - Precisely, those are ideas that got root there with the traditionalists and the Picasso represented that are coming to full fruition now. So in short, is Christianity gonna be gone in three generations? No. Do we have a lot of work to do for the future to be bright? We have to understand that we are in a different world that looks at life differently. And I love the story that Jaxa told in his book on the Duns, on Leaving Christianity. - Okay. - He talks about this, a friend of his who begins to question his faith. And his father and minister ships him off just overnight to a mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. - I read that. - Yeah, but then he says to Drew, he's so rationalistic, I'm influenced by Eastern thinking. And he's so rationalistic, I can't relate to any of his arguments. So his father didn't understand postmodernism or true for you and not for me. And so he's actually having arguments that were meaningful to him and then they're missing his son. My worry is that we won't catch up with where thinking has gone. And so we'll still be having conversations with where it's been. And then I don't think the future is so bright. I don't think Christianity to die. I just think that we won't be able to counter the psychological fog that distorts the gospel. - Yeah, I think you arguing your book that that was influenced largely by enlightenment thinking which is very rational, very didactic. But in fact, the postmodern worldview is very unrational, irrational that way. Is that what you were saying? - In many ways, yes. The idea is that no one person can be right and believe they're right and everyone else is wrong. It's just too arrogant. So we have to come at answering questions a different way. We can no longer say, well, the Bible says, not because the Bible doesn't say it, but because they don't believe that the Bible is the final word on that. And so the real question is, why does the Bible say it? If God is great and God is good, then his commandments and instructions are actually great and good. And so let's start with the great and good part and then talk about, oh, by the way, the Bible also says this. - Yeah, this is good. We're gonna finish up today on the future's bright. But let me ask you about the big claim that millennials aren't the problem because there has been, I mean, there have been books written. I've written about it on my blog and we've talked about that before we went on air. But why in your view are millennials not the problem? - I think the millennials are not the problem because the new life stage of emerging adulthood is if there's a problem, it's emerging adulthood. - Okay. - And I think we've misplaced where we placed the problem. - So tell me what you mean by emerging adulthood. I know I had a conversation when this podcast started episode six, I think, with Ted Cunningham, who talks a lot about delayed adolescence and the problems that's creating. Is that what you mean? Is it delayed adolescence? - Yes or no, delayed adolescence is a synonym for that, but most people have moved beyond that to call it emerging adulthood. 'Cause delayed adolescence makes it sound like it's a negative thing. I don't think adolescence is a negative thing, I think it's just a thing. In 1890, the word had never been invented. - Yeah, that's right. - And so today, if you had a youth minister who was acting as if adolescents didn't exist, parents would pull him that person aside saying, "Hello, you need some introduction to youth ministry classes here. You're dying, dying." Whereas because emerging adulthood has only been about 10 years out there, most people don't know it. And I think the research is pretty clear on it. The five stages, the five markers of full adulthood, they don't happen until 27 or 28 now, for many people, in urban areas, sometimes not until 30. - Yeah, do you have those at the tip of your time, the five stages? 'Cause I think these are important. And I think as soon as you say that, people will realize, "Oh yeah, that doesn't happen until you're almost 30 now." - Here's what's interesting on surveys, people over 30 believe adulthood. Full adulthood doesn't start until 28. On surveys, people under 30 believe that full adulthood doesn't start until 28. It's one thing that the generations agree on completely. (laughs) - That's rare. - Yeah, and so here they are, marriage, children, picking a career, being pretty sure this is the career you wanna pursue the rest of your life, finishing your education and being financially stable enough to consider buying your first home. - Gotcha. Yeah, then you're an adult, right? And then you're no longer a teenager or whatever, you're an adult, you're grown up. - Yeah, so let me speak a word to parents. There are simply no Christian parenting books for people in their 20s for emerging adult. And so that's why we put those three chapters in there, 'cause it's right now the only resources there. And parents will say, even a business conference has pulled me aside, my kids in the basement, what is wrong? I had a mortgage and a kid at 25, and they're a barista part-time and master of worlds of warcraft. What am I gonna do? - Yeah. - Well, you're gonna chill because it's a new life stage where assembling your identity and figuring out who you wanna be, 'cause you're gonna work until 75 if the current trends on when you can retire and get government support, when you qualify for that, if the current trends in life expectancy, you got a lot of years to work. And what you wanna be when you grow up, parents are saying you gotta find something that makes you happy. Most of our parents said you gotta find something, figure out the happiness when you're off my dime. - Right, right, that's very true. And the elongated work career is true. Chris Brown's a guest on a podcast, this podcast. He was saying 70% of Americans have less than $10,000 safe for their retirement. So people are gonna be working a long time. That's interesting. So millennials, obviously, there's that emerging adulthood. What's your term? It was new to me. - Yeah, emerging adulthood, you bet. - Emerging adulthood. - Yeah, you got it. - So that's different. So what are you saying, then? That they just stay in that teenage phase where I'm not gonna make my faith my own for longer, but when they hit those markers, they're gonna come back to church? Or what's the argument with that? - That's the big question. Even the fine folks at Baylor who tend to be the most optimistic. - Right. - They even say they've been out a long time and children are what bring people back to church. - And do you think that's still true? 'Cause I've read data that say that's not true. Robert Whithrow, now it's from 2007, but Robert Whithrow, like I said, the rock star of research, he suggests this, that you can explain the difference between boomer church attendance and millennial church attendance by singles. Millennials, married millennials, have almost the same church attendance as boomers who were married in a previous generation. - Interesting. - Boomer singles came to church far more than millennial singles, especially millennial single men. And because singles are much larger today and people remain single longer. And because when they marry, they have children later. The question is, are the neuropathways going to be so worn that even when they have kids, they're less likely to come back? - Right, in other words, they've now got a decade of habits away from the church. So is there enough muscle memory to use David Kinemans phrase to bring them back into church? And they're kind of like, some people are going, "Ah, I don't know." - And so the question I think the church has to answer is, I don't think they're right. I think that's where the nuns are coming from, definitely the more millennials who are nuns. Nobody disputes that. They dispute as the drop as big as it seems to be. - Okay. - Yeah, nobody disputes that there are more millennials who are nuns. The question then is, can the church be both attractional and missional? Because I think what the nuns prove is there's a whole group of people that no matter what they do, they're not coming, what we do, they're not coming through the front door. - Yeah. - So in the whole attractional missional debate, here's my philosophy, be attractional and missional, get going. - Right on. - Yeah, and so we ought to attract the people we can attract, but the nuns show us that there will be people who do not see the church as a source of help. And that's much greater in the blue states than it is in the red states. - You know, Jerry Gillis, I think it's episode 62 will link to us in the show notes. He talks about how he turned his attractional mega church into a missional attractional mega church. Fascinating. I think he may be onto something. And I know the pressure we get at Ken Exes Church, not pressure, but the comments that we hear at Ken Exes Church from the under 35s are, what are we doing for the community? What are we doing for the community? I mean, and so we do a lot. We partner with food banks, we have international ministries and all that, but that is the heartbeat in a way. It honestly wasn't for our community, for my age, it would be like, hey, what we're doing on Sundays, we're doing that for the community. We're trying to reach people, right? - Well, that's exactly right. And people will rub shoulders with somebody else and say, wow, you know, I guess I always thought Christians were, I don't know, but you're not like that. And that opens up conversations, which opens up opportunities to say, do you worry about what you're passing on to your children? And people do, they worry about their kids. And so kids are still a powerful factor, but they don't have the muscle memory and they don't see the church as a source of help. Ed Stetzer's research on loss, a millennials who no longer attend church, you don't see themselves as church. It was stunning of the nuns, a millennial nuns, over two thirds of them don't think of the church as a place they would go to if they needed help with some problem in their life. - Exactly, yeah, and you think about that. I think about all the unchurched people within an hour of where I'm sitting doing this interview with you in Canada, North of Toronto. And I would think, you know, for a millennial that's struggling with an addiction or broken relationship or, oh my goodness, I can't believe my empty and Esther parents are getting a divorce. Who am I gonna talk to about this? They're probably not thinking church and they're not thinking pastor. And so this is interesting. So as we process all of this, and this is super helpful, and I just appreciate the nuance in your discussion as well. It's just great to have, 'cause we all sit there with this problem, right? We're church leaders. We all sit there at our board meetings and staff meetings and our personal prayer time, trying to crack this nut, and it's a tough one to crack. And it is complex. But for those who are saying, okay, I understand the argument that the church isn't dying, sure, maybe it was this bad in the 70s and our polls just lied to us 'cause people were too polite or felt that there were certain answers that maybe have changed. And maybe, okay, there is an emerging adulthood issue going on now, but our church is smaller than it's ever been. The church seems weaker in our community than it's ever been. And even I talked to lots of mega church pastors who are like, yeah, we're a little bit concerned about the 20 to 35 year olds 'cause we're all getting a little grayer around here. What do we need to do? First of all, what do you say to that and then what do we need to do? - What I say to that is, yes. That's the case in a lot of places. The single heart, I think the biggest challenge the church today faces is five generations. We've never had it before. God's greatest blessing is 30 more years of life in the last 115 years. - Oh, that's interesting. Okay, so-- - And I think more people will go to hell because we live 30 years longer than any other factor because we used to adjust naturally to the younger generations and now we don't have to. By force, we have to do it intentionally and it is hard to give up what we have come to rely on for security, a sense of solidarity, a sense of stableness in a changing world. And I think the fact that we live 30 years longer will impact the ability of churches to make those adjustments. And many of them will die because they can't change. - Whoa, you just froze me in my tracks. I've never heard anybody say that before. That's fascinating. Because people don't change well and I have a passion around change. I wrote a book about it, right? I've got a passion around change. You're saying because we live another 30 years, people are unwilling to give up their entrenched practices and people will be in hell because of that. That's fascinating. - Churches used to change adapt to the younger generations more often and there were fewer of them. - Yeah, you're right. I mean, you're dead at 55, 60. I mean, I talk about this, my parents all the time, they're in their 70s. And I remember when I was a kid, if somebody died at 60 or 65, I'm like, oh well, they had a full life, right? And that's probably the perspective of a 10 year old. But I mean, there was truth to that. When someone died at 60 or 65, a generation or two ago, that was like, well, they almost saw retirement. Oh well. My grandfather's, my grandfather died at 65 and I thought he had a ripe life. I'm 52. I don't think 65 is old. It is not a ripe life. - Yeah, I'm 50. I do not think that 65 is old anymore. - Yeah, that's exactly right. And so because of that, but I also watch myself getting older. I mean, I watch myself going, nope. I used to think I could go to any church and now I'm thinking of that music was every week, I would, I don't know, I don't know. And so I'm going through what everybody goes through as they get older. I like what I like and I don't like what I don't like. - Yeah, and I know that's true. And I've, you know, it's funny turning 50, you think about a lot of things. And I've spent the summer praying with my elders and I'm like, I wanna make the next 30 years of my life not about me. Because I know how selfish I'm getting and I wanna make it about the next generation. I wanna make it about my kids, my kids, kids. I wanna make, and hence we're moving into a community group with people who almost could be my kids. - Which will be great for you and great for them because millennials really do want conversations with people who are older and can help them through the choices they face. So that's the first bit of advice. What are four things that any church could do immediately to impact millennials? - Number one, start changing. That is worth the price of admission even though this is a free podcast. But you know, that is great. Number first is you may have to ask the question differently. Why don't they come to my church is not a legitimate question. They don't come to your church 'cause they don't like your church. That's the answer. - Yep. - All right, so what does our church have to do differently so that we can reach them for Jesus? That's the question. - And this goes to change because we, I mean, if you're a 40-year-old, 50-year-old, 60-year-old church leader, you've got all kinds of scars you can show about how hard it was to change your church to make it what it is today. And now your kids look at it and millennials look at it and they go, yeah, and we don't like it. And you're like, well, we do. So we're just going to stay the same. - Well, when my son, who's a worship minister in this, he's 25, almost 26, he's a worship minister out in New England, he says to me, oh, I love the preaching at my home church. But wow, you're so old school. All that Chris Tomlin music. - Oh yeah. - And he's got their guitar solos. I'm like coughing up a lung right there between the second verse. Like, you would not believe the wars we fought to get drums in the house of the Lord. Play that funky music, white boy was a fight to the death. - So what is he into? He's a music dude. - You know, it's more Americana and they slow down the, it was, last week I did church consulting in a church of 120. And it was the charismatic, 58 year old woman who said, tell the 24 year old worship minister to speed up the song. I'm dying here, speed up the songs. I thought, I don't even know how to process this. This is a whole new world. - And will one generation relinquish the church to the next? That's the transit. I'm going to start preaching here, but that's okay. Keep going. - No, no, you preach because here's the second question. I think we've asked, we spent years saying, what do we do to reach the younger generation? The question is, what do we do with the people who have another 20 or 30 years of life and service who are going to feel like they have been put out to pasture? - Or why are we so reluctant to get 20, 30 and 40 year olds around the senior leadership table? That's the other question we have to ask, right? - It's a great question because in the olden days, young men were invited to the table. - Now we exclude them and it's like, oh, you can help, but you can't lead. - That is exactly right. - So they'll start their own church, if there's any left. - And they will and sometimes they do it online and sometimes they do it other ways, but yes. And so the older generation is like, well, what happens to me? Well, I had a whole chapter on what do we do with boomers and traditionalists and the boomers have reinvented every era and they're going to reinvent retirement. And that's what churches are not ready for boomers who have corporate experience saying, "Pastor, I don't want to fold the envelopes. What I want to do is show you a hiring system that will increase your success at hiring for 50% to 80%, which is the top end of the national average. I did it in three other places. I worked, I'd like to help you here. - And so what's the answer to that? - Well, the answer is churches need to go beyond spiritual gift surveys and even Gallup's strength finder and start looking at skills. What are the skills that people have developed and look, most of us, as Carl George, my mentor pointed out to me, we tend to recruit people and hire people who don't make us feel insecure, but we've got all kinds of boomers with experiences now that will make ministry leaders feel insecure and loving our insecurities and bringing in other people with expertise as we don't have will transform, will transform the church in a new era. - So do you think that's kind of a, hey, I don't have to lead and I don't have to be the top dog, but I can help? Is that the kind of team we'll put together in the future where older leaders would be like, all right, I don't have to be the lead whatever anymore, but just let me help. - You know what, I think this. I think older leaders, and I say this in the book, older leaders, I say to them, you know what? If you want a service that's like, that has occasionally the kind of music you want, put together a Sunday night service with hymns or marinothicoruses or whatever you think is your era and put it together. Do not ask your worship minister to be out another night. You know how to organize things and you want to take time away 'cause you're retired. So make a team of people who rotate who's in charge depending on who's in town this month. And share the leadership and with the younger generations, you know how to lead from the side. One of the beauties of older generations was we learn how to get stuff done when we're not in charge. Learn to lead from the side and mentor from the side and then feel free, feel free to pop back in small groups with your own generation 'cause nothing feels like home like people who catch our musical references and remember the entire theme song to Gilligan's Island or Bonanza, right? - Yeah, yeah. I can sing Gilligan's Island, not Bonanza. But there you go. Yeah, that's true. So this is fascinating. You know what? The awesomeness of what you said completely derailed me. So just continue wherever you were going because-- - All right, well, number one, number one is this. We got to ask different questions. The question is now why won't they come to our church? The question is what would we have to do? Well, the second question is what do we do with the people who are older whose church it's been if we're going to take it away from them by making it younger and for another generation? What do we give them in its place? That question never gets asked. And so no wonder we can't do change management. One of the laws of change management is don't take something away without something else in its place. And then thirdly, understand emerging adulthood. If that's one thing any church leader can do is begin to get Christian Smith and begin to read on emerging adulthood and his great research on emerging adulthood and the church. - Okay, we'll link to some of that in the show notes. - You bet, and by the way, I wrote a book that summarizes all of that. So it might be-- - Well, that's even better. We'll link to that. Is that your previous book? - No, this one actually focuses on emerging adulthood. I only did three pages on it in the last one. - Gotcha, okay. - And then so get to know emerging adulthood fourthly, get adults connected with millennials. What you're doing in your small group, as I said earlier, somebody who will text, why should the school system determine the fact that this'll make me cry? Why does the school system say that 70% have to drop out of church? - I agree. - The school system stops at 18. If 23 is the vulnerable age, student ministry goes till 23, it is a no brainer. - Yeah. - Now, it doesn't mean that you invite, you'll invite your seventh grader and your 22 year old to the same amusement park outing. That's a little awkward and kinda creepy. - But it's relational and it can be organic. It can just be, I know this guy and I know he went to the university here, but when he's in town, we're gonna have coffee and I'm just gonna text him. Nobody pays me to do that, I'm not his leader, I'm just his friend. - What happens on small churches, in some ways it's easier because the people who go off are known to everybody. In bigger churches, you may have to peel off a couple of sponsors each year to follow that group through. - Now, we've done that with our student ministry. We encourage leaders to hang on for that critical year because I remember when my son went to university, my oldest, he just said, "Dad." He had pretty normal childhood. I mean, we had moments and all that stuff, but it was pretty stable. We didn't move a lot, he's only lived in two houses, went to the same public school all of his years, same high school all of his years, and then everything is upended and he's like, "Dad, everything changed." And that's very disconcerting. - There are a thousand questions to think through and a whole different worldview and a whole different set of values to sort through. And so that will make a big impact. And then lastly, I think we've got to deal with, be good, feel good, and live your life. Now, what I don't say ministers, you've been preaching the wrong gospel. I'm not that kind of guy, honestly. - This is a moral therapeutic day in a day, right? - That's exactly right. And here's what I think. I think the psychological fog that is developed, that psychology is the new theology in our world today, that we've got to cut through that. And so if we don't recognize it's there, we can't cut through it. And here's really kind of a game of jiu-jitsu, I would suggest for ministers. All right, there's some great research on moralistic therapeutic deism. Why don't we use that research to say, here's what most people believe, even people who are Bible believing church folks. And by the way, where do the millennials say they got it? They told in the interviews that they got it from their parents. And so the boomers think, answer the questions the same way. So how do you fight that? You actually use the psychological, sociological research to say, here's what most people believe, but here is the God of the Bible. And the God of the Bible is a God of beauty and power. And along with beauty and power comes judgment. And the ultimate sin is not the judge. The ultimate sin is to think that we can ultimate sin is to think we can live lives of freedom without judging. And to begin to help people understand that what you believe Christianity is, isn't Christianity. Then if they reject the faith, they're rejecting the faith. My worry is that a lot of people who say they're spiritual, but not religious, have not rejected Christianity, they've rejected, be good, feel good, live your life. And that's the tragedy. It's a version of Christianity that we've been presenting. So Hayden, let me ask you, are there one or two preachers or communicators? And I think what I hear you saying, let me preface this a little bit, is don't just ignore the current of thought that's happening, that moralistic therapeutic deism that's out there, the feel good, live good, et cetera. Because if you just ignore it and say, here's the biblical worldview, you're not gonna be able to bridge those worlds. So you have to sort of understand it, present it and say, but let me show you a better alternative. Is there anyone who's doing that really well? Who are your favorite voices on that these days? - You know, a lot of folks follow Tim Keller because of his abilities. - I was gonna say, he's a guy who comes top of mind on that. - To cut through that, but now that you've asked me, I'm drawing a complete blog. - No, that's okay. Andy does that to a certain extent, Andy Stanley, but Tim Keller has just a sea of millennials following him in New York City. And he's a boomer, he's, I think in his mid-60s. And he does such a masterful job of presenting what everyone in the room believes and says, now, let me introduce you to the gospel. Boom, boom, boom. And this is why that's not true. - All right, and here, this is gonna be a problem for some of the exers because as Bill Highbose pointed out, when boomers were going through their thing, there were intellectual questions, there were rap discussions, there was parsing apart rock and roll songs and what they mean and late night discussions. And the exers came along and went, whatever, true for you, not for me. Let's get pragmatic. What people want are pragmatic. They wanna, they wanna faith with the legs, with hands and feet. And that's true. But as Barna, as Kenaman points out in his latest book on why millennials have left the church, is of the millennials, of the six reasons millennials give for why they've left the church for intellectual. Bottom line is intellectual is back. And many exers, matter of fact, my seminary went out and hired some folks because of a big grant to communicate to young people what to do with your doubts and understand the faith and worldview better. And when they pulled together some large church ministers, they said, this is really not what millennials want. What they want is an active faith, not an intellectual faith. And frankly, that's just not what the research shows. It's what their generation wanted. The millennials want the ability to answer questions and the single biggest predictor. And this is Cornell, not even religious researchers. The single biggest predictor of whether or not you're gonna walk away from the Christian faith for good. You're gonna be not a nun, but a nun. Is whether or not you had questions and people would talk those real questions through with you. Is church a safe place to have intellectual questions? Can you sort that through? And the best research out of Southern California on what families path on their faith. Families that are rigid on their doctrinal beliefs are half as likely to pass on their faith as families that allow their children to explore other denominations, visit other churches, and even go to other denominations and to swallow hard and say, huh, I guess I'll visit you in the instance part of heaven. I like the church fathers. I don't think they're authoritative. Can't believe you become Orthodox. Where did it, what happened? God bless you that we still love the same Jesus. It just takes, your prayers are just more liturgical than mine. And when we get to heaven, we'll enjoy that. We'll enjoy that together. Until you can do that, the chances of you passing on your faith to your children drop substantially. - Hey, I remember Cara Powell. I think she was episode four. One of my favorite, probably my top quote of hers is that what's not toxic to young people's faith is doubt. It's unexpressed doubt. And if our churches can be exactly what you're saying, Hayden, the kind of places where young adults can actually engage the deeper questions. You know, it's interesting as we're recording this, we did our first ever at Kenexas Church where I serve bonus message. We've never done that. But I spent almost an hour interviewing. We're talking about evil. And I didn't want to do this on the weekend, but I think we need to go there, spend an hour interviewing a guy with his doctorate in missiology focused on demonology. And we went right into demonization, all that stuff. Young people are fascinated with that stuff and they want deeper answers. And so we're exploring ways to go deeper into that stuff. And, you know, the answers are there. Christianity actually stands up to intellectual scrutiny, which is the good news. And I can't believe an hour has gone by. Oh my goodness, this has been fantastic. - I'm so glad, can I tell you one story? - You can tell me whatever you want. - And then I really will quit. 'Cause I often don't quit on this topic. So my son Josh reads the book. And he's got dyslexia, so that's ironic. Dad, can I buy a copy on the Kindle, which what people don't know is that authors can get paper books very inexpensively, but you gotta pay full price for Kindle. Like, great, let me pay full price for my book so that my son can actually hear it rather than read it. And he says to me, this part about intellectual doubt, so true dad, he said, I had a lot of doubts. And this, I didn't know, 'cause this is the kid who was quiet. He said, I had a lot of doubts and I loved my sponsor. And I was really close to my small group leader in high school, but I just never felt like I could say, well, what about this and what about that? He said, I would not be in the faith, except for a conversation we had when I was a sophomore and you and I both had something we had to do and we drove to our family reunion separately. And I mentioned, I decided I would stick my toe in the water and mention doubt. And you talked about the doubts that you've had and what you've had to do to work through those and how you carried out like a virus, like chickenpox, you carry that every so often. It flares up and you have to work that through again. He said, for me, that was completely liberating. He's my dyslexic kid who's a theological junkie. He simply went through apologetics podcasts from the time he was a freshman in university all the way through to today. And so now he's the one that fills me in on advanced theology, even though that's what my seminary degree was in. So here I am just a month ago, finding out my own son is saying, if we couldn't have had that conversation. - I don't know where I'd be. - That's exactly it. We gotta make safe places for our kids and understand the questions they're asking, even if it means we gotta put some weekends learning some of the new things in philosophy, not 'cause it's fun, but because we're playing for keeps on this one. - Yeah, Hayden, this has been amazing. And I know this won't be our last conversation. And I just wanna thank you. Thanks for your heart. Thanks for your passion. Thanks for your expertise. And thanks for the fact that, you know, at 52, you're digging into this issue, not running away from it or hitting cruise control. I know you've helped a lot of leaders. And the answers aren't simple, but I think conversations like this and really looking at what the data has to say. And building relationships with millennials. You know, not sitting around with people our age going, what's going on? But actually, you know, diving into the deep end with the next generation is really gonna be hopeful. And it is the gospel. The good news is God's got more invested in this than any of us do. And so that's powerful. I know people are gonna wanna learn more. They're gonna wanna get to know you. I would encourage you to read the book. Hayden's a great writer. It is easy to read. And it isn't written just for pastors, although I imagine every pastor will wanna get a copy of it. Tell us about the book. Tell us where to find it. And you got some free resources as well. You wanna make people aware of. Gotcha. Yeah, the book called Generation IQ. Christianity is a dying, millennials not the problem. Future is bright. You can get it on any of the Christian sources, many Christian bookstores published by Tindale. And you can also go to my religious website and that's www.Christianityisnotdying.com. If you're interested in generational application for your church staff or for your organization, that would be www.mygenerationalcoach.com. So that's the business site for the first book sticking point. But my best friend who's an executive pastor of a large church, he said, please make some videos, short videos that I can show my staff that other churches can show their boards, small church, big church. You can, there was some questions at the end for discussion. So if you go on the website, click on Christianityisnotdying.com, click in the upper right hand corner on the paper clip, post it note. You'll go right to a set of videos. You don't have to pay anything. You don't have to sign your name in for anything. You can just play them right there and they go for seven minutes. And at the end are three questions for a discussion. And there's actually two additional ones. One for churches in small communities where you don't have any choice but to reach five, all five generations. And another one for big churches that are really targeted toward a generation and aren't facing generational challenges now. And there's one about what to do with the baby boomers because I think they'll have as much impact as the millennials will in terms of throwing us a curve ball. - Hayden, this has been fascinating. Hayden Shaw, thanks so much for being a guest today. Really, really appreciate it. - Thank you for having me. - What fun? - Well, that was a fun conversation, man. I'll tell you, made me think a little bit differently. I am still passionate about reaching out to millennials and we'll do everything we possibly can to help them discover Jesus, choose Jesus. That's what we're all about at Kinexis Church. And we're moving into our, I think, biggest year yet. And I imagine you are, at least that's your hope, right? So that's sort of what we wanna do in this podcast to just help you as much as we can with practical ministry tips. And if you want more, you can get everything in the show notes. It's just carrynewhough.com/episodes69. And remember, that site is about more than just show notes. We have lots of discussions on the blog and I try to publish a lot of helpful articles for church leaders and leaders in general that don't really make it to this podcast. So if you're not a blog reader, I would love for you to become that. And then we've got some really exciting things coming up this year. Ravi Zacharias is gonna be back on the podcast early on. We're gonna hear from Perry Noble again. Perry's got some fresh stuff he's been working on. Can't wait to have him back. Dave Adamson, who does social media for North Point Church, is gonna be one of my guests. So is Whit George, who is the executive pastor at Church on the Move in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Great guy, Matt Keller, Jenny Catrin, Jonathan Pearson, Rob Sizik, Rusty George. I mean, we got some incredible leaders coming up. And much, much more. So best way to make sure you don't miss anything is to subscribe. You can do that for free. And again, anytime you share this with leaders, I'm so grateful. And we go, oh yeah, one more thing. We got some bonus podcasts. So we've got some Ask Carries coming up in January. I get so many questions from you and they are phenomenal. And they will pop up randomly on Thursdays. And again, if you subscribe, you don't miss that. So listen to Hope 2016 is off to an incredible start for you. We are back next week with episode 70 and some more leadership love. And I really hope that today helped you lead like never before. You've been listening to the Kari Newhoff Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change, and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (gentle music) [Music]