According to some, Millennials are leaving the LDS Church in large numbers. How different the numbers are to past generations is never explored. One hint to exaggeration is how high the retention rate remains compared to other similar religious organizations. Probably even more problematic is the focus on the United States, hardly the last place humans exist. By many counts other countries are expanding in number of Mormons, or at least remaining level. The building of Temples and meeting houses testifies to the strengths. They cost money and are dependent on how many members are active. Certainly there are places that are struggling, but many times this is more than offset by the growth of other areas.
Still, there are challenges for the younger generation that haven’t existed to the same extent before. As is usually the case, cultural forces prose a threat to faith. The biggest concern is the rise of “Nones” who reject organized religion in favor of whatever they consider more important. Often times its hard to know what reasons they have, because they are both diverse and not quick to give explanations.
Working off of responses to Calling All Millennials by taking them seriously, the future doesn’t look too bright. In fact, the hope is these are not actually representative. Assuming they are, then civilization itself in in danger of falling apart. It is perhaps the most “look at me, what about me” generation that has ever existed. Social Media has not alleviated the suspicion the future is filled with selfish and shallow people. They have always existed, but the numbers who are influencing the rest of society is growing.
Some representative comments include:
Religion, especially Christianity, traditionally focused on a solution to being lost or sinful. Yet it’s those concerns of sin and alienation from God that also just don’t seem to be a drive with more and more people.
This is backed up with:
Ideology, we don’t really see ourselves as fundamentally flawed/broken/sinful people in need of salvation. I don’t really know what seeing myself as a “child of God” is supposed to practically mean. We may have problems or issues, but they don’t seem like issues in need of divine assistance. It seems like issues we can work out among ourselves . . .
After making a troubling list of grievances, Greg in the comments said:
Finally, I disagree with Clark who says you can’t have a growing church and a challenging one. You simply have to let go of the idea that it’s the role of the institution to make things challenging for believers. Believers should be the ones who rise to greater and greater challenges of their own free will and choice. In the Mormon church you’re either all in or all out, but it’s possible to provide different levels and opportunities for people who are in different places in their lives.
What impression comes out of this is not too kind. Millennials are lazy, self-important, anti-social, know it all’s who don’t take personal responsibility. This generation has become sociopaths bent on destroying all that is good. Harsh conclusion I know, but even they sometimes recognize how out in left field things have become.
For them Church meetings are boring. That is not a new experience, and many members feel that at times. Not the Church’s fault at this point since the wards and stakes by birth year indicate more than half the local leadership consist of Millennials. Considering that probability, Millennials now have been passed the ball and they are dropping it while still blaming those who gave it to them. They can now do some of the heavy lifting to improve talks, lessons, and even primary and nursery.
The feeling of overwhelmed with callings is nothing new. Probably been around since Joseph Smith sent the first Quorum of the Twelve off on missions. However, today’s Millennial family dynamics seem an awful lot like self-imposed problems. The Church warned of working mothers and it was quickly dismissed. There wasn’t even a shift (in the equality department) to maybe working mother and stay at home father. Nope, both genders had to be working to find some kind of status or satisfaction. There are difficulties of modern economics, but that isn’t the Church’s fault. Even the stay at home moms usually have resources available to alleviate some of the stress if they weren’t so darn stubborn and independent minded.
Again, its the Millennials fault they can’t make social connections with everyday situations. E-mails, texting, and online social tools have supplanted face-to-face interactions. Studies have shown without them many cannot understand how to make real life personal connections. Outside of technology, they need “clubs” or “hang-outs” where they can be the life of the party or among the popular folks. One on one situations become a burden and unwanted without a gadget. It used to be introverts had trouble remaining members and now its extroverts.
Most of all, if an activity doesn’t benefit the Millennial in any way then there is no value to the activity. Not having fun, worthless. Not feeling in the mood, waste of time. They are special, and the LDS Church is not immune to having presented them this image, and the world owes them something. They never say exactly other than what was once considered attained through personal hard work. They want to be served rather than serve, feeling that individual self-actualization is the existential purpose of life. For some reason many reject the Mormon theology that teaches no spiritual growth can exit outside of serving others. It is a selfishness that the “self-help” and “find yourself” false doctrines have produced.
All that said, a broad brush cannot be wielded without violence to those deserving of praise. Many of those who are considered Millennials are faithful members of the Church. They do see the problems and work hard to overcome the weakness of the flesh and culture. Because they don’t always have the support of peers, staying true to what they believe can be overwhelming. A post looking at some high profile examples was basically ignored. There is hope that the future is not all bleak. The question remains if the focus will continue to be a Witness of the Savior or Warning of coming judgement.
New Post: The Millenial Generation Troubles: According to some, Millennials are leaving the LDS C… https://t.co/IzqHrQSeB0 #LDS #Mormon
RT @Millennialstar: New Post: The Millenial Generation Troubles: According to some, Millennials are leaving the LDS C… https://t.co/IzqHr…
TheMillennialStar: The Millenial Generation Troubles https://t.co/7aPdOyjfha #lds #mormon
Good post, but don’t get me started on Millennials. Everything you say it’s true and then some. That post on Times and Seasons it’s pretty good example of Millennials thinking, and they are quoting none other than Jana Reiss, whom I personally don’t know but through her writings and posts, a person I consider too liberal to be giving advise to young lds adults. They propose to have Millennials giving talks in General Conference, because they need to be heard, oh, my goodness! Don’t they even understand the purpose of GC.? It’s a meeting where General Authorities give us counsel and guidance. If Millennials want that privilege, they need to become GAs. What will they want next?
The presenting of an alternative to the one put forward by God’s anointed is as old as the earth. And the requirement has been and always will be one of coming to God and not the other way around. The categorization into boomers, millennials, x’er’s, etc. is an artificial construct foisted upon us by the unwittingly minions of mammon to divide us. We each are only spirit children of God clothed in flesh tasked with seeking out and discerning the voice of the spirit, and then imparting to our spiritual siblings when we become aware of the singular nature of the gift God is waiting to bestow on each one of us. No one generation’s challenges are or were more or less than that we each faced in our own time, because each generation comes equipped with that they need to face the challenges in overcome them, because His “grace is sufficient for all men who humble themselves and come unto” Him.
Anyone who is bored in church has not yet had their Enos moment, and until they do nothing, and I mean nothing, will make it spiritually interesting to them. What that person is saying is that the flesh is bored. The church exists only to aid the family, and the family exists to model the pattern of heaven on earth in doing the work of God, that is to bring about immortality and eternal life of each of God’s children.
Some youth in this generation lose their way, it is true, but it is not the fault of the Church, or meeting formats, or anything else institutional–it is the fault of the family and the individual. Yes, the church fighting hard to better equip parents and individuals with the information they need to combat fleshy facts, but there is no fleshy fact that can withstand the witness of the Holy Ghost. We really have no choice but to continue to bear the word and let those who have ears to hear, hear.
Here’s the best explanation I’ve seen, a book by Dr. Bruce Charlton:
Free online: http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.com/
You can get Kindle or Paperback editions on Amazon.
—
As background, you may also want to read:
(Also free online) http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.com/
And also available as Kindle or paperback at Amazon.
I think if we were to parse statistics, we would see that as many are leaving the church today as have left in other generations. Millennials might leave for different reasons than generation Xers did, but being a member of the church has always had its challenges.
I don’t have statistics to back this up, but it seems like Mormon teens serve missions at much higher rates today than they did 20 years ago when I served. Back then, loads of active teens never made it to a mission and then drifted into inactivity. The Millennial generation might be stronger than any previous generation just by virtue of the increased number serving missions.
By the way,
thanks Jetboy for just telling it straight. I love Clark’s posts, but the commentary over at T&S often devolves into such as you are talking about.
To build off of Nate’s comment about more Millennials serving missions:
You’re probably right about that, with the age change, more people can go.
Remember too what we are taught in The Book of Mormon, that there must be opposition in all things, and that we cannot know the good without knowing what evil is. So the more good there is, you bet the more evil there will be trying to counter that. But Pres. Hinckley taught on many occasions that it’s a great time to be a member of the Church and that there are many good and wonderful things happening. We have to seek those things out, and put them first.
Today I taught the primary lesson about King Limhi’s people and Alma’s people. Those who stayed behind when Alma fled the threat of Noah’s army displayed many of the characteristics attributed to ‘millennial’s’. The example of a really rotten ruler who led them to indulge in a variety of sins led them to an attitude that seems somewhat entitled when you consider that they went to war against their overlords three times, each time being more diminished. Eventually their community became one of the best in the area of Zarahemla, if as some scholars suspect, they are those who settled the city of Gideon. Hard knocks remove the kinks. Lately I’ve been impressed by several young families who are displaying the best of our culture and how they are raising their children and living the Gospel. Some of them got to their current status by wandering through the wilderness for a while.
I recall similar comments being made about my generation, the “Baby Boomers.” There were concerns among my parents’ generation that we were selfish, lazy, hooked on TV instead of reading books, etc. Rock and Roll was full of drugs and sex, we were bound to be completely degenerate! It was Boomers who started “living together” as opposed to marrying, who made divorce easy, and who had a “it’s all up to your personal beliefs” morality.
In my generation, it seemed there were lots of “fence sitters” who are now inactive as they grow into their senior years. Among those who are inactive, I see exactly the kind of problems this writer mentioned–they are self-centered, focused on getting what they want (an RV, a big house, a retirement with no strings, etc.) instead of serving. Why is there so much problem getting senior missionaries? Because my generation have either failed to plan financially to afford it in their retirement years, or because it gets in the way of the RV lifestyle, or because they have taken such poor care of themselves that their health won’t allow it.
On the other hand, the Millennials I see at church every week are incredibly dedicated to the Lord, to their families, and to serving in the church. They hold down full-time jobs, go to school, and somehow make time to be Scoutmasters, Young Women’s presidents, Bishops, Stake Presidency counselors, and numberless other callings. Those who are not involved in the church, unlike my generation, are not “fence sitters.” The gulf Nephi described has become a deep and wide one–and the commentor who said “it’s all in or all out” was exactly right.
My point is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Moaning about the sad state of the youthful generation is something that has been going on for as long as humans have been writing things down! Our challenge is only that the divide is wider and clearer as we approach the coming of our Savior. Baby Boomer, Gen X, or Millennial…it’s all the same. We have agency, and we can go down the broad road, or we can stay in the strait and narrow path. We can work together without focusing on the differences created by the changes in society, or we can create divisiveness and discord by seeing problems where there are only differences. We are all united as Saints, and we are all working for the same goal–the kingdom of God on the earth. Until we are there in our hearts and minds, we will not be a Zion people, nor will we be ready when the Savior returns.
I tend to think that youth/YSA retention has been, or at least was, slipping over the years. And the church made big changes in response.
The evidence I see was the “raise the bar” changes in 2002, new youth teaching methods for Sunday school and YM/YW implemented in the 2006-2008 time frame (I forget exactly what year), and finally the mission age change in 2012.
Those three things are all related. Because the boys who were 18 and age-ready to go on a mission in 2012, were baptized at 8 years old in 2002 when the raise the bar went into effect, and the “raise the bar” program of mission preparation started in primary. So those boys who got baptized in 2002 had their whole church membership under the new “raise the bar program”.
Then those same boys had the new instruction system when they got into YM.
So to me, it looks like the Lord had it all worked out in advance, and rolled it out in sequence for that age cohort to implement the new system of going on a mission at 18.
Prior to 2002, there were two big problems. First, too many young men were going inactive between age 18 and 19. Second, thousands (I heard over 3,000/year), were coming home early from their missions, and not just over worthiness issues, but mental/psych, and just being generally unprepared.
So the age drop to 18 was the main thing to help stem the inactivity rate. And the 2002 change and the 2008 change laid the ground work to _prepare_ those boys for the earlier mission age.
So in effect, in reality, missionaries sent out since 2012 really have been the best prepared that the church has sent in many generations.
The 2012 missionary cohort, and all cohorts since, are the “new breed” having spent their _entire_ church membership (since baptism at age 8 in 2002) under the “new rules” of mission-prep.
This new group, those embarking since 2012 and coming home since 2014, will be the ones to watch. The youngest are 22 now, and generally have two more years of college. That will be the group closely watched by those who have access to the confidential churchwide statistics, in order to see the effect of the three major changes (raise the bar, new teaching system, age 18 missions).
Just a few things to note. (I have a Millennials/Nones post I’m planning as a followup at T&S but I’ll probably wait a week before posting it) First I think people paint with too broad a brush. Millennials like Gen Y and Gex X before are fairly diverse. We’re talking about trends that started really getting going with Gen X and that simply have gotten bigger. However even among Millennials only about 1/3 are what we’d call Nones. So it’s easy to exaggerate.
That said, I think it undeniable that many of the things that ground the church like the very notion of sin and the significant of authority simply aren’t assumptions many of the population hold. That means we need to think through how we deal with them. I’m not sure this is a flaw in Millennials who are simply reflecting their environment and how they were brought up. I’d not that this is actually fairly similar to Asia where I think we also struggle – especially relative to Evangelicals who have a lot of success there. The Church largely developed as an answer for certain stresses in Protestantism and that’s where we’ve largely focused on proselytizing with the exception of Latin America where we had a lot of success with Catholics.
None of that changes the fact that sin and authority are important issues. They are. But I think we need to rethink how we talk with others if we simply take it for granted they are important.
Bookslinger, my recent post at T&S makes me question how well prepared the 18 year olds are. I think there are prima facie reasons to think they are less prepared. I personally suspect the age issue is significant. However if it does improve post-mission retention the Church will keep it. It’ll be hard to tell whether that is working from public data except perhaps US self-identification surveys.
The recent Pew data had retention drop from 70% to 64%. I tend to distrust the Pew data somewhat but if that is a real drop then that’s recent and concerning. I’m pretty skeptical our retention was ever more than 70%. Data from those earlier eras is problematic (often very small unrepresentative samples sizes). I’m looking forward to the next ARIS survey. It tends to have Mormon populations as smaller than Pew (1.4% vs 1.6% — and Gallup tends to get 2%). However it’ll be an Apples to Apples comparison since they’ll use the same approach. They tend to get better data regarding retention too.
As a Gen-Xer, I personally haven’t noticed more young people leaving the church now then when I was a coming on age in the 1990s. What I have noticed is that, thanks largely to social media, those who choose to leave now are more vocal and getting more attention than those who left back in my day.
Reading through the reasons on why people are leaving, with the exception of LGBT issues which weren’t prominent 20-25 years ago, I see the same excuses that people in my generation gave when they left: church is boring, I don’t believe in the prophets, my time is sucked dry by job, parenting, callings, the church is too conservative.
Though I can’t speak for those who are leaving today, one commonality my friends and family had before they left church was that they weren’t reading scriptures on a daily basis, not praying, or doing the basics. It’s easy to become disconnected from the truth and the Word of God when that happens.
Clark, pehaps it’s possbile that the young elders are less mature but better prepared spiritually and mentally, and better filtered mentally/physically/spiritually.
The “honorably excused” category gained a lot of traction post 2002, and I think that helped with filtering out, or delaying until ready, young men who were not mentally/emotionally capable/prepared.
So I think wards/stakes and the missionary dept are doing a better job post-2002 keeping out of the missions elders who just shouldn’t go. That alone raises the “average”, by whatever metric, of post-2002 missinaries.
2012 was a real game-changer, not just in the age change, but those elders had the “full effect” of the 2002 (RtB) changes and the 2008 (new youth curriculum) changes assuming their families and wards correctly implemented those changes.
The 2012 missionary cohort also had a “lifetime” (okay, 10 years, ever since they were 8/baptized) of _seeing_ RtB “good example” missionaries go out and come back. In other words, they were not “tainted” (or were less tainted) by the too frequent bad examples of pre-RtB (lower standards/less prepared) missionaries going out.
Examples, good and bad, and family traditions are generational. Attitudes get passed on from father to son, even uncle to nephew, older brother to younger brother, older cousin to younger cousin, and older cohort (ie, less than a generation) to younger cohort. If your dad, uncle, older brother, older cousin, any ward member who is 4 years older than you got away with something, there is a tendency for you to expect to get away with the same thing.
2002’s Raise the Bar was the program to put a stop to that. And my observation or thesis is that the 2012 missionary cohort, having been “trained” (in the new system) since their baptism in 2002 is the first “true 100%” RtB cohort. Those guys, IMHO, are the church’s best recent effort at making an “Army of Helaman.”
Those guys have been back for 1 to 1.5 years now. Give them 3 to 4 more years to start having children, then another 18 years to raise a missionary, and _that_ cohort will be the first without the supposedly “bad examples” from the previous generation.
Or course, there will be a transition period. The effect technically should be observable in small degrees starting with the 2003 cohort of missionaries.
Didn’t Pres Eyring say something recently about taking a generation to make a change?
—
On a tangential note. There is a sea-change coming. The excrement will hit the fan in 2024, 11 years after the SSM movement picked up steam in 2013 when it was legalized in several states. (Some states started in 2008, but 2013 was the knee of the curve.)
Somewhat like 8 year olds growing up under RtB since 2002, and being under that influence…. 5 year olds since 2013 in those SSM states have been growing up with “gay is okay” in their school curriculum (school curriculum started to be rewritten to include gay examples as each state made SSM legal). In 2024, kids who were 5 in 2013 will be 16 years old and start to sexually experiment. There is a new paradigm coming for that age cohort. And traces are showing even now among 16 year olds as the transition slowly takes effect. The slippery slope and “margin creep” is happening now, but it will be a few years before people really wake up and admit it. And it will be too late. Bisexuality and “pro-choice” sexual-orientation will be the new thing. And _that_ will be a big battleground, and it will take an “Army of Helaman” to stave it off within the church, as long a children of church members go to public schools and are exposed to mainstream media.
So, yeah, I’m saying the Lord raised the bar in 2002 and implemented new youth curriculum in 2008 (or whenever that was), not just because Mormons were getting slack, but He saw how badly the world was sinking.
My own experience is that being spiritually mature is great but it doesn’t make up for being socially immature. I don’t mean that in not learning but just basic cognitive development. I think at 18 a significant minority of people are still developing in key ways.
As I said it’s possible I’m jumping the gun on the statistics but my sense is they’ll simply not be as good missionaries as in the past. If that’s what the Lord is willing to sacrifice for longer term goals that’s of course fine. So I’m not criticizing, just noting trends.
Regarding bisexuality and choice. It’s already happened. It’d largely started with Gen-X and accelerated quite a bit. So it’s not a new thing it’s a thing that happened a decade ago.
Missionaries would be more effective in someways if they were older. But youth also has strengths.
An ideal program for teaching the gospel would probably have an experienced elder of at least 30+ years paired with a less experienced one. In principle the D&C says as much.
But when family is factored in this would not be a good choice… Still there something about the idea of general authorities, bishoprics, stake presidencies, etc going out as full time missionaries paired with a younger elder.
The fact is we call the Youth not because they are most effective. But because it’s both convenient and invaluable to their personal growth.
When God wanted the best of England to join the church here called Brigham, et. al. Their age and experience, certainly makes them more effective.
So we don’t need more Millennials but less. In the day of declining birthrates, increasing lifespans, this actually makes sense.
I’m not agitating for anything like this though because I realize theres plenty more I don’t see and understand.
But I would love to see high priests called to temporary full time missions 🙂 If every elder was paired with an HP we’d double the number of missionaries again. But would they accept the call?
I’ve got a precious little grand-daughter now, all bright new. In the decades that come, it will be interesting to see what challenges she faces, and how she handles those challenges.
I wonder what they will call her generation, the ones born in the 2010s.
If I look back into Church history to the time when leaders were the age of modern Millennials, there were many who became great and good. But there were large numbers who displayed an immaturity that modern Millennials can’t achieve.
If God’s Church could survive the errors of the youth of 1840s Nauvoo, His Church can survive the errors of today.
Ideally what we need are more stake missionaries IMO. I went on a stake mission paired full time with a regular missionary when I was 18. That was fairly common in the mission I grew up in. I think it prepared me tremendously for my mission and obviously it also helped expand the number of missionaries working.
While full time stake missionaries is difficult (especially now with the switch to 18 years) I do think calling more part time stake missionaries as callings is extremely fruitful for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is a kind of permanence in the area when it’s rare for full time missionaries to be in an area more than 6 months.
Meg that’s a very good point. While in some ways modern generations don’t have maturity thrust upon them, the way it was in the past in other ways we’re far better educated and prepared.