Besides being accurate, the teachings we receive on Sunday must also be relevant to the lives we live between Monday and Saturday. That may sound obvious to everyone… but our spiritual and temporal lives have been pulled apart for centuries and it has gotten harder to recognize the relevancy of our temporal lives to our spiritual. Our young adult members live in difficult times, and they need to find that relevancy. So whether the topic is on tithing, chastity, or prayer, the its teaching must include recognition of both the difficulties and the blessings of obedience on this side of the veil and the other side as well. Newton’s Laws tell us that for every action in the physical world there is an equal and opposite reaction. Gospel Law tells us that for every action in the physical world, there is an equally important action in the spiritual world. There are only a few precepts of the Gospel upon which you must have faith. This is one of them, but it is essential for us to understand relevancy.
Email: scottrfrazer@gmail.com
Website: ScottRFrazer.com
S2E18 – Retaining Millennials – Teaching Relevancy of the Gospel
This is the podcast Science and Scriptures, Season 2, Episode 18, or “Retaining Millennials – Teaching Relevancy of the Gospel”
Hello everyone. This is Scott Frazer of the podcast Science and Scriptures. As you may remember, I issued a challenge to my listeners last week. I launched that episode with the sad fact that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is losing many of its young adult members to inactivity. Millennials, born between 1981 – 1995, were the first to leave the church in high numbers, but members of the I-Generation, born between 1995 – 2012, are also leaving.
We could simply chalk this up to a sign of the times, and make no efforts to curb the exodus. Instead, I suggest that we, as church wards, look inward and look forward. There is little we can do to stop the exodus – but we must do what we can. We no longer live in the day of quaint, white-washed chapels, innocence, and avoiding the embarrassment of discussing serious problems. I believe wards will be held accountable for church services that do not encourage attendance for all age groups. We put a lot of effort into making church attendance fun for our Primary and Youth, as well we should. Great effort also goes into making college student wards and institute programs interesting and engaging. But once young adults pass college graduation, they have reached an age where they settle into their home wards. With fewer social opportunities, most of the contact that Millennials have with their church is at services on Sunday.
Last week, we also discussed the responsibility of teachers and speakers to ensure that their lessons and comments are accurate, informative, and up to date. Church doctrine changes with time, as does scriptural interpretation. Teachers and those who comment in class have the responsibility to make sure that what they say is current and true. To broaden your views and strengthen your understanding may mean reading books outside of your normal library. We need to be able to teach new perspectives about the Gospel.
Relevancy
To take a step back for a moment, change is difficult for any church. Religion is grounded in history – and not in recent history, but ancient history. The New Testament is about 2000 years old and the Old Testament is about 6000 years old. Yet interpretation and understanding of those scriptures continue to evolve – and in our studies, we should be aware of those changes. Secondly, change is hard for churches because a large share of their congregations are, well… elderly. Sit in the back of most chapels during ward Sacrament meetings and count the number of gray heads in front of you. Baby Boomers (born from 1946 - 1964) and Generation X (born between 1964 – 1981) are well represented at church services. Change is hard for older people.
Besides being accurate, the teachings we receive on Sunday must also be relevant to the lives we live between Monday and Saturday. That may sound obvious to everyone… but our spiritual and temporal lives have been pulled apart for centuries and it has gotten harder to recognize the relevancy of our temporal lives to our spiritual.
In the days of the New Testament, most people were farmers. They were exposed to spiritual experiences in a variety of ways. They saw their seed crops sprout up in the spring.They saw the beginnings of life with every lamb, calf, or chick born in their stables. Babies were born in their homes and grandparents died there. The seasons dictated their labors. The Circle of Life, if you will, was more a part of their lives, and it was easier to see God’s hand in all things. Not many of us are farmers today, breaking that connection.
In the decades following the death of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church built massive cathedrals for their worshippers. With these cathedrals, they wanted to convey the majesty and greatness of God… which they did. But they also caused more of a separation. The homes of the people were simple and humble. God lived in a massive cathedral, making it harder for people to relate to Him. Prayers became rote, not heartfelt. The separation continued to grow.
For many, church attendance became something one did just to keep up appearances. This is an ancient practice that existed before the days of the Savior. By the way, He did not approve of it. We read in Matthew 6,
“Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”
People continued to seek for God – but often in the strangest places. New Age religion, Far East traditions, and efforts to attain spiritual planes confused the issue. The separation between God and His children got wider. Today, church members still hope to find relevancy of what they learn at church to how they live. Religion is supposed to bring you peace. Don’t we have the promise that “Man is That He Might Have Joy”? We all know that we are living in difficult times. Church attendance is supposed to make our lives more understandable and maneuverable, but the connection is breaking down for many people.
Just like last week, I don’t mean to be critical. I really don’t. But sacrament talks and lessons have not changed much since I joined the church in 1976.Until now, stagnancy did not seem to be much of an issue. But wards have reached a critical point in their history. Younger adults are not finding spiritual fulfillment in their church membership, and they are leaving the church. We can either give up and let them leave – or we can try to update how we teach in Sunday services to give them reasons to stay.
Relevancy of the Spiritual to the Physical
Besides being accurate and up-to-date, church talks and lessons must be relevant to modern-day problems. That can be a challenge. I have heard many times that the veil separating the spiritual world from our temporal world is thin. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that. The veils are thick. The memories of the Preexistence are inaccessible and views into the afterlife are rare. But it is still the responsibility of our ward teachers to view their lesson topics from both sides of the veil. Millennials want to find that Sunday services are relevant to the challenges they deal with on Monday through Saturday. And they deserve to be taught that relevancy. So whether the topic is on tithing, chastity, or prayer, the commandment must include recognition of both the difficulties and the blessings of obedience on this side of the veil and the other side as well. Indeed, teachers have always been asked to explain how the lesson topic can be applied to normal life. But if normal life has so drastically changed, shouldn’t those explanations change as well?
So, let’s move the discussion to teaching Relevancy in Battling Modern Problems
To achieve relevancy, church leaders and teachers must be willing to talk about real problems that people are facing. For too long, we have referred to battling “the temptations of Satan” when discussing latter-day problems. This is great phrase if you want to be vague and unspecific as to what those temptations are. It’s also great to have a fall guy, namely Satan, to blame for those difficulties. Teachers hesitate to ask ward members to look for the source of their problems – and how their own actions may have contributed to them. Many of our most difficult issues are rather embarrassing to discuss. Calling them “Satan’s temptations” is more comfortable, but the label solves nothing. They don’t recognize the problems or allow one to recognize a solution.
As an example of our reluctancy, it took a long time for church wards to recognize the massive effect that mental depression was having on their membership. It is uncomfortable to discuss depression. You don’t want to imply that someone is unstable or in need of medication. It is an embarrassing discussion topic. But the problem became so real that stakes and wards finally recognized the need to do something. They started putting special classes and programs into place to drag depression out of its hiding place and discuss it openly. Then COVID hit, which complicated everything of course. But those programs are now being reinstated. My own stake is starting separate “Self-Reliance and Emotional Resilience” classes for adults, youth, and return missionaries this month. This is a great example of relevancy and I applaud the effort. Our stake is taking principles of the Gospel and applying them to real issues of the day.
Now let’s discuss Finding Relevancy of the Gospel over the Course of Our Lives
Each Sunday, I would encourage teachers to remind their class members to “Zoom Out” or take a wider perspective of their lives. On Monday through Saturday, we Zoom In to the details of our responsibilities. At work, we may check that each cell of our Excel spreadsheet is accurate for that report we are writing. We make sure we have the correct time and place of our son’s soccer game on Saturday. Sunday, however, is the day to evaluate our Earthly lives and assess if we are spending our time on the most important things. I have come to the belief that, to observe the effects of the Gospel in your life, you need to look back at least 10 years, or even better, your entire lifetime. My career was an unmitigated shamble of unexpected job changes and moves. At the time, nothing made sense to me… yet we always managed to stay active in the church. As I look back at that life now, I can see what I learned from each place we lived. I don’t believe that God sent me to those places – earth life was fully capable of giving me plenty of challenges all by itself. But I can see how the church helped to stabilize me, and my family, through those problems. When I can step back and review my life, it is easier to see the relevancy of the church and the Gospel on my life’s timeline.
Taking a broader viewpoint of your life can actually be a spiritual experience. Have you ever noticed when you look up at a star-filled night sky you can be filled with awe? Within the first moments of looking into the universe, you realize how small you are in a very great space. On one hand, that realization is humbling. But then you realize that your small part is just as significant as anyone else’s. Life is more than just working on Excel spreadsheets. To be reminded of that fact, you must sometimes lift up your head and contemplate your own relevancy to the cosmos.
A note of caution here – Relevancy should not be sought for in the myths and faith-promoting rumors within the church. Many church members love to identify miracles as proof of God and the truth of the church. One problem is that people define miracles very differently, so a miracle to one person can be chalked up as a coincidence by another. For that reason, I would suggest that personal miracles should be kept personal. Many “miracle stories” circulate throughout the church for decades. We live in the Age of Skepticism. It is probably time to abandon stories about the exploits of the Three Nephites or other heavenly messengers who fix broken-down cars on a remote highway. In his book Real vs. Rumor – How to Dispel Latter-day Myths, church historian Keith Erekson exposes the truth about the stories that circulate widely in the church with no basis of fact. In the introduction, he quotes President Harold B. Lee, when he stated,
“It never ceases to amaze me how gullible some of our Church members are in broadcasting sensational stories, or dreams, or visions, or purported patriarchal blessings, or quotations or supposedly from some person’s private diary.”
Erekson goes on to address the storied miracles that exist about the history of the church. I learned much from this book and recommend it highly. Rumors have done a lot of damage to the reputation of the Church when they have been used to explain doctrine of the Blacks and the Priesthood, polygamy, etc. Fantastical stories do not help our cause when discussing the Gospel with Millennials. Most all of them will be much too skeptical of whispered, unsubstantiated stories about miracles to believe them.
Relevancy in The Creation
To understand the relevancy of the Gospel in our lives, we must go back to the beginning. The Creation is one of my favorite discussion topics. To explain the very complex subject of Creation, I have concluded that natural processes and Evolution did most of the heavy lifting. First, the Earth had to become a habitable place with seasonable temperatures, oxygen, and water. Then evolution had to fill the planet with plant life, insects, and animal life. But this evolution had to receive some direction by God, especially in the development of Man. The proposition that our complex, life-filled world and mankind could be caused by random chance is, in my opinion, nonsense. This combination of physical and spiritual is the only way the Creation makes sense.
The point is that the Creation was accomplished by a combination of spiritual power and natural processes. Both the Spiritual World and the Physical World were required. However, there are still millions of people who reject that truth and argue that only the Physical World exists. They don’t believe in a Spiritual World, so they never look its relevance in their lives. That is their choice of course, and they may deny God their whole lives if they wish.
But the Creation was only the Beginning. The joint physical and spiritual aspects of the Creation are shared by every other facet of our lives. For example, in the physical plane, tithing provides monies for the Church to function. But that is not why I pay tithing. When you pay tithing, you do something significant as you recognize the Lord’s blessings in your life. That act changes you in both mind and spirit. You increase your spirit’s capacity for appreciation, generosity, and faithfulness. When you pray as a family, you grow closer and perhaps better understand the person offering the prayer. Spiritually, you lay the foundation to become an eternal, celestial family.
Newton’s Laws tell us that for every action in the physical world there is an equal and opposite reaction. Gospel Law tells us that for every action in the physical world, there is an equally important action in the spiritual world. There are only a few precepts of the Gospel upon which you must have faith. This is one of them. Everything you do in life either prepares you or makes you less fit for the afterlife and the kingdom you will merit. Still… there is evidence for this concept. I have witnessed people whose lives of despair were changed for the positive, as they patiently fought their way back from the edge. I have also witnessed church members who took their lives of joy and a hopeful future – and then wrecked those lives with bad decisions. In both cases, these people’s spirits changed, as did their outward appearances.
To teach Relevancy, teachers must constantly teach the overlap of the Spiritual and Physical World.The Spirit makes up most of the overlap for which we should seek. However, there are others. God’s creations witness to the existence of a God. As Alma witnessed to Korihor,
“The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.”
We need to teach young adults to find hints of the spiritual in their busy lives. They can find awe in looking into the night sky. They can find peace and contentment in walking through a silent forest or gazing over a beautiful lake. Such peace distills upon one’s spirit, and one needs only to recognize it as such.
A glimpse of the spiritual can occur in church classes as well. Experienced teachers in the church can tell when they have said something to get their class to pause and really consider a new perspective on the Gospel. There is this wonderful moment of silence. It seems like everyone is holding their breath to perhaps hold onto the fleeting touch of the Spirit. A few people nod their heads in appreciation. Gospel teachers live for such moments and will not break that contemplative silence in the classroom until it is absolutely necessary.
Often this spiritual response occurs when the teacher makes a connection of Gospel principles that many in the class have never considered before. You can almost see people’s brains making the new connections and looking for reasons to disagree with the new idea. Very often, hands will go up all over the classroom as class members wish to express their responses to the new concept and, perhaps, refine their understanding of it. I think that teachers sometimes undervalue the need to teach new perspectives. Much more frequently, classes review old ways of thinking and then spend the rest of class time exclaiming how wonderful those old principles are. But rarely do such classes bring about the “moments of silence” that indicate you have really touched your audience.
As most teachers know, such moments are extremely difficult to create. If you have a crying baby, a roaming toddler, or a person with a persistent cough in the room, creating a moment of silence is made more difficult. But those moments are essential for the success of any class, be if filled with young adults or old.
To bring this two-episode discussion to a close, I believe that we can help the Church retain more of its members if we actively participate in improving the quality of our Sabbath meetings. Church speakers or teachers hold most of this responsibility, but so do congregations and class members. To repeat, it is up to you what you wish to believe regarding the Old Testament accounts and other interpretations of the Gospel. The Church gives us great latitude in the beliefs of its members. Whatever you choose to believe, you should be aware what other interpretations exist. Thus, you can more wisely choose what you want to believe and be able to freely discuss the full range of beliefs with others. The benefits of having such an educated membership are great.
As I mentioned last week, if you too have child or other family member who has left the church, this is the one, significant thing that I suggest we can try. In reality… it’s the only thing I can think of to do. Because if that family member can someday be enticed to attend church with you, you know that you will desperately want your house of worship to be in order. You will pray for a spiritual sacrament meeting with well-prepared talks. You will hope the people around you stay off their cell phones and quiet their fussy children. You will enter Sunday School class, hoping the discussion will be interesting and not beset by fussy babies, faith-promoting rumors or long-winded stories.
To attend truly interesting church services each week is a huge blessing – not only for an errant child who may attend church with you on special occasions, but for the rest of the congregation that attends weekly. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ, we should expect a welcoming, learning environment each week. It’s our choice how we approach the Sabbath. We must start by respecting our own church services and doing all we can to improve them.
So, like last week, if you agree with today’s episode, I ask that you please forward it to a friend. There are many wards and branches in the Church, and I hope you might see the value in my suggestions. Hopefully, ward memberships in the church will see the value of trying harder to make church services more engaging and educational. Change is hard, but we need to keep trying.
In any case, thank you for the time you have spent listening to this episode. Once again, this is Scott Frazer of the podcast “Science and Scriptures”. Have a good week and take care.