Last June 21st, I reluctantly accompanied my friend Sarah to Times Square Summer Solstice for Yoga, appropriately titled: "Mind Over Madness." Every year, thousands of people descend upon two Broadway plazas throughout the day for their chance at a free yoga mat and one of a dozen outdoor classes.
Sarah's reminder text jarred me awake at 6:30am, too early for a summer Saturday. The sun belligerently blazed through my window. "Who'd want to do yoga in Times Square?" I thought. "Who'd want to do anything in Times Square?"
But I said yes. So a caffeinated walk, train-subway ride, and winding queue later, I found my mat space and took in the scene. Decked out in Athleta and Lululemon, the die-hards had already staked out the front row and were pretzeling their limbs. Newbies sat in their sweats toward the back.
Soon we all began to move, breathing and chanting the sound of "Om" in one of the busiest intersections in the world. We stretched our spines, surrounded by three-story neon signs advertising Target, Gap, and Gatorade. We worked our down-dogs and twisted our arms, bombarded by the noise of taxis, tourists, and street vendors. We balanced in tree pose, trying to find a steady gaze-point amid the motion of digital ticker-tape.
As the instructor invited us to choose stillness and breathe into our center, I tried to block out the smell of roasting almonds and rotating hotdogs, and realized that in Times Square's teeming panoply of gods--commerce, image, technology--here more than anywhere people hunger for calm and peace.
As a church minister, this quiet center is something I strive for. Seminary classes instilled in me the virtue of "a calm non-anxious presence" with which to visit parishioners in the hospital, counsel a couple, or preside over a burial.
I'm also a yoga instructor, teaching students to move and flow to a series of poses and Sanskrit words originated in India. Yoga helps me with church, and faith informs my yoga.
In Times Square the billboards and flashing images all point to what is new. But I spend my Sundays preaching the oldest news in the book--that God made us and knows us and sends us out to love. It is a story, yes, but like yoga, it's a several-thousands year-old practice.
In denominational conferences and local church board meetings, the custodians of mainline churches bemoan the absence of young adults. They lament the shrinking number of those under 30 identifying as Christian, fearing for the future of long-standing congregations like the 165-year-old Reformed church I work in just north of New York City.
According to the Pew Research Center's Demographic Study on America's Changing Religious Landscape, published in May, a full 35% of those aged 19-34 now identify as religiously "unaffiliated," and it's in large part due to young people leaving the mainline Protestant traditions, with a -3.4% change in the last seven years.
Some assume young people don't want religion--that they're tired of superstition and dogma, unmoved by empty ritual, and left cold by old traditions. That may be true. But I believe they want to go where there's fire in the belly. Where people ask old questions with a newly lit flame: What does it mean to be human? What does it look like to live well? What do I trust in beyond myself?
As a pastor--a "shepherd"--of the traditional church, I am invested in these questions. Not because I'm intent on preserving buildings and endowments, but because I care about my generation and the ones to come. I don't lose sleep about whether my denomination will survive, but I do long for young adults to know the power of a Love greater than themselves.
Throughout my share of transitions and losses, marriage and divorce, moving and starting over, faith has sustained me. Christian community has carried me. When I meet for coffee with an agnostic friend, or go on a date with a non-religious guy, I find myself wondering what it would take for God to be real to them, too.
I'll admit a secret of spiritual survival: I moonlight at other churches. I drop in on services totally different from the ones I lead just to see what God's doing around the city and revive my own faith.
At the New York City Hillsong Church conference this past October, I clapped and sang at Madison Square Garden among 5000 people, most of them under 40. Hillsong is an Australian-based Christian movement, newer and more evangelical than the church I serve, and stylistically, it's a world apart. Less than ten blocks south from where I'd saluted the sun in June, video footage and performance art breathed fresh air into the Apostles Creed. Thumping bass and laser lights beat to Hillsong's signature music. Tattooed preachers with Aussie accents read from The Message version of the Bible.
Praying with pierced Brooklyn twenty-somethings on my right and dancing with Nigerian mothers to my left, I again felt the surge of synchronized passion in an unlikely place. Some say it's unfortunate these young adults don't come to our traditional mainline churches. But young New Yorkers who race to the train, smile at cranky customers, kiss in beer gardens, and dance late on rooftops don't want to sit in hard pews and be good; they want to jump up and down and experience God.
For churches ready to change, let's ask a few questions:
How will we define church as something beyond what happens in our building?
How will we convey enthusiasm and passion in worship, especially through diverse music?
How will we nurture and utilize the leadership of those young adults who do come, and speak to what matters to them?
How will we partner with churches of young adults and imaginatively serve our communities together?
The Gospel isn't going anywhere. But young adults are going everywhere ...except our churches. It's time we wake up to the sun rising outside our windows, and care.