Listening to, learning from and worshipping with young people

The Rev. Canon Dr. Sarah Kathleen Johnson, director of Anglican Studies at Saint Paul University, offered some reflections at the recent Synod of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa, including some insights on young people and Christian worship.

As a part of a strategic visioning process in 2023, the Anglican Diocese of Toronto hired Johnson to analyze responses from 45 listening sessions with more than 500 lay Anglicans who were invited to imagine their local church and the diocese five years in the future as having new life and to consider how they might get there. Johnson said that she expects the anonymized responses she examined would be common in Anglican and many Christian congregations in Canada and the U.S.

A predominant theme (discussed in 42 of the 45 listening groups) was that their congregations consist mostly of older people, and they need to attract younger people. Johnson quoted one typical comment: “We are in crisis mode. We have to do things differently to attract more people, especially the youth.” Young people are mentioned 3.5 times more than Jesus, she noted wryly. This problematic pattern reflects what Johnson describes as “an ecclesiology of survival—a vision for the church that is primarily focused on attracting young people in order to sustain local institutional structures in familiar forms for their own sake.”

“This way of thinking about the church is deeply disconnected from the realities of the contemporary Canadian religious landscape.” The Canadian population is aging, and most of the population growth comes from immigration, Johnson pointed out. “Younger Canadians are more likely to be recent immigrants. More than half of recent immigrants are non-Christian or non-religious. Christian immigrants are most likely to be Roman Catholic or evangelical. Recent immigrants are very unlikely to be Anglican. Before 1946, 26% of immigrants to Canada were Anglican. By the year 2000, that number was 1%.” Furthermore, throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, each generation born in Canada has been successively less religious than the preceding generation in measures of affiliation, belief, and practice.

So, while it is important to welcome newcomers who are Anglican into our parishes, it is unlikely to result in a significant demographic shift. Similarly, she added that “it is important to be intentional about passing on our faith within our own families and to younger generations, but this is also unlikely to result in a significant demographic shift.”

The Canadian population looks very different in 2025 than it did in 1960, and Anglican parishes will look different as well. “The ways that participants in these listening groups speak about young people suggest that they do not know this or have not taken it to heart. The overwhelming focus on young people and an ecclesiology of survival is closely linked to what I call a transactional approach to mission,” Johnson said.

“The underlying transactional assumption is that the church must identify the needs of younger people and that meeting these needs will bring them back to the church, which will in turn meet the needs of the church,” she explained.  In addition to being harmful in the context of ministry with young people, a transactional approach to mission and an ecclesiology of survival are theologically problematic, Johnson said, noting that both the Anglican Church of Canada (in its Transformational Commitments) and the Anglican Communion (in its Five Marks of Mission) understand mission as participating in God’s action in the world bringing about God’s reign rather than maintaining church institutions.

People focused on trying to attract younger people to church often focus on the style of worship. Johnson said that participants in listening groups suggested a variety of liturgical changes, yet more than any other topic, they discuss music. “Upbeat music and different instruments help attract young people,” one participant said, summing up the misguided theory. Johnson says that there are several studies that call this assumption about musical change attracting young people into question. There is also some research that suggests that young people appreciate a diversity of liturgical practices, including research with emerging adults who are drawn to traditional liturgical forms, she said. “I am not arguing that traditional liturgical forms will attract young people to the Anglican Church. Instead, I am arguing that a focus on style is problematic, regardless of the style in question.”

She added that “A focus on musical style is a red herring that is misleading and distracts from more relevant questions, including facing demographic realities, challenging the underlying transactional framework, and developing a more robust understanding of what it means to be the church today.”

Frustrated with a lack of research focused on listening to young people themselves, Johnson has teamed up with Emily Snider Andrews and Nelson Cowan from Samford University, a Christian university in Birmingham, Alabama. “Young People in Christian Worship Experiences, Stories, and Values” is a bi-national, multi-site, mixed methods ecumenical study of how teenagers and emerging adults experience Christian worship. “The purpose is to listen deeply to how young people age 13 to 29, experience public Christian worship in a range of liturgical expressions, Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical, and charismatic,” Johnson says.

“The goal of this research is to amplify the often-marginalized voices of young people and to integrate their insights into liturgical theology and congregational practice in order to support their full conscious and active practice in worship and to enrich the liturgical experience of all participants,” she said. “Our focus in this qualitative research is listening to highly religious young people. We are complementing the qualitative research with a nationwide survey in the United States conducted in collaboration with Springtide Research Institute.”

The research is still in progress, but Johnson shared a few of the responses they have received when asking 18 to 29-year-olds the question “What do you wish older people knew about how younger people experience Christian worship?” Young people name and reject the transactional framework, she said, quoting some responses: “We don’t need to be catered to. Things don’t need to be dumbed down for us. You don’t need to make things cool or edgy or punk or hip.” And, “Young people don’t like to be pandered to. Don’t do something because, ‘Oh, this will get the young people to come to church.’” These same kinds of comments are made by young people who attend megachurches and Latin mass and small mainline Protestant congregations in Canada and the U.S., Johnson said.

Participants in interviews often say they can only speak for themselves.

They underline that young people have diverse experiences and values when it comes to worship.

So it is important to avoid preconceived notions of what people want and instead be very open.

Even within one generation, people have very different styles and tastes. Participants express a desire to be heard and valued as equal members of the community. Emerging adults in interviews want to be treated as ordinary participants, not token representatives of their generation. One made the clear-sighted point that “It doesn’t feel like it should be my job to tell you how to get all the other young people in church, because I’m already here.”

“One of our goals in listening deeply to diverse young people in this research is to encourage others to listen deeply to the teenagers and emerging adults in their own contexts, in our diocese here, in our parishes, and in our families,” said Johnson. “The goal of listening is not to ask what young people want to facilitate a transactional approach to mission anchored in an ecclesiology of survival, but instead to listen for stories and values that can teach us all about worship, so that together we can explore the mystery of encountering the divine in scripture, song, and prayer, in water, bread, and wine, in relationship and action, so that together we can give glory to God from generation to generation.”

More information about the Young People and Christian Worship study: https://www.samford.edu/worship-arts/young-people-and-christian-worship.