Bishop Michael Putney
The Courier-Mail 6th January 1999
All churches should be clear about what they offer modern society.
In the discussion over Archbishop George Carey's new book, New Era, New Church, there has been considerable comment on his suggestion that church services and sermons should be shortened to make them more attractive to modern people.
I am sure that this point is only one minor element in a much more serious study of the church in contemporary society.
His suggestion about shortening church services raises the issue of the relevance of the church and its services particularly for young people who stay away in such large numbers. People often suggest that were church services more relevant youth would be more inclined to attend.
I am sure there is some point in this argument. If music is old-fashioned and sermons are boring and liturgy is ill-prepared, then young people will find it hard to see how such a "performance" could have any relevance to their lives.
Nonetheless, I don't think it follows that the more entertaining Sunday services are, the more likely youth are to be attracted to them.
Firstly, no-one can compete with the entertainment industry, and attempts by ill-funded and unskilled church people to duplicate what is offered by that industry are doomed to failure. Secondly, no matter how entertaining Sunday worship is, what ultimately matters is whether it is more than entertainment and actually offers something which young people would value. If it doesn't, there is no reason they would want to go to church simply to be entertained.
If the church is clear about what it has to offer, and offers it with passion, then it probably matters less whether it does this in an attractive or entertaining way or not. Young Australians, despite their absence in large numbers from churches on Sunday, are often very spiritual and religious people. They look in a thousand different places for an experience of some sort beyond the commercialism, the competitiveness, the isolation, the meaningless at times of contemporary society. Sadly, they don't often look in the churches.
They tend to distrust large institutions and hallowed traditions, yet the church has one thing of enormous value to offer and that is a way to meet God. When they do discover that the church has been offering profound spirituality, ie the possibility of an experience of God, all this time, they sometimes wonder why no one ever told them. However, they are not going to look to the churches for what they are seeking unless the churches make it clear to them and to the rest of society that God is what churches are most concerned with.
One of the things that delights me as Vicar for Youth in the Archdiocese of Brisbane is that I know countless numbers of young people who have an excitement about the church and what it has to offer because they have found God here.
At a rally in southbank Plaza on October 18 last year, there were between 1,000 and 1,500 young people who had come together to rejoice in the fact that they were Christians and members of the Catholic church. Other Christian churches could tell similar stories.
If churches truly are serious about God and what God has to offer contemporary Australia, then this should be obvious not only by the passion they have for the gospel and for prayer. Young people will expect to see other qualities present as well. For example, they will expect to find a group of people who, because of that passion, are hospitable to strangers and caring about each other.
There is no point in bemoaning the fact that young people don't come to Christian churches in the numbers we would wish, if they can't find people there who are willing to offer them an experience of belonging to a community of some kind. People need community to different degrees and have different expectations for the type of community they hope to find in a church. But everyone has the right to expect that being a member of a church will involve belonging to a group of people who take each other seriously and who are prepared to pray with and work with each other.
Another characteristic I think young people would expect to find in the contemporary church is that its love of God would lead to a serious engagement with the contemporary issues of justice and the environment. Many young people are as passionate about the environment today as we were about the gospel when I was young. If they cannot see the connection between the two, then, for many, the environment will always be the winner.
The churches are partly to blame for not making clear over the preceding decades how profound the connection is between the gospel and care for the environment, and they still have a long way to go on making the obvious.
I don't believe the churches have lost young people. I think, rather, the churches have lost the way a little themselves, and it may be young people who will draw us back to what matters most, to God, to each other and to the poor.