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Two cultural realities inform the way many clergy and lay leaders are thinking about church these days. First, it is fairly clear that there has been a decrease in younger people attending church. The Pew Research Center published a report recently detailing the median ages for many Christian denominations in the United States (and for other religions as well); the median age for Episcopalians is 56. Such a decrease has come at a time when millennials have officially surpassed baby boomers as the largest living generation.

But is this transition visible in the turnover of leadership in our parishes? While many factors contribute to the decline of younger worshipers, it is symptomatic of a larger failure of the Church to root parishioners in a life of discipleship and a life of mission, which are ultimately funded and fueled by a robust life of worship and prayer — an encounter with the Triune God.

Second, and quite amazingly, millennials have shown greater interest in traditional forms of worship. Many writers have commented on this trend, but an article in The American Conservative highlights these concurrent realities in the following way:

America’s youth are leaving churches in droves. One in four young adults choose “unaffiliated” when asked about their religion, according to a 2012 Public Religion Research Institute poll, and 55 percent of those unaffiliated youth once had a religious identification when they were younger. Yet amidst this exodus, some church leaders have identified another movement as cause for hope: rather than abandoning Christianity, some young people are joining more traditional, liturgical denominations—notably the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox branches of the faith. This trend is deeper than denominational waffling: it’s a search for meaning that goes to the heart of our postmodern age.

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One does wonder if hard data will substantiate such claims in the long run, but in the short term, plenty of anecdotal evidence suggests that many young people are longing for a greater sense of transcendence in their faith and piety than what may be found in services with less vintage than Pixar films. Indeed, I’ve found this to be true in my own interactions with college students. We live in a frenetic age in which much about our daily existence is in constant flux, and therefore I believe many students long for a piety that does not ride the waves of cultural and theological faddism; many long for a piety that transcends the “cultural now,” and thereby provides a place of solace and quiet in a world of noise.

A former college student and parishioner of mine has an amazing leather bomber jacket he received from his grandfather, and I reminded him that Christian traditions are like his jacket: They have substance and history; they ground people in another time, and thereby, they ground people in their own time. To paraphrase Alisdair MacIntyre, we can only know what to do and who we are if we know what story we inhabit.

Everyone is searching for a meaningful story. A designer friend of mine mentioned recently that “heritage” prints are en vogue. Are they trendy because people long for something different or because they offer real substance and rootedness beyond the present? The answer is Yes.

Similarly, we might ask, are hipsters interested in vintage fashions because they are trendy, or because they offer a fashion with the appearance of timelessness, dignity, and class? The answer is Yes. Who wants to perpetuate the fashion of the ’80s?

Here then, is my proposal: The Church needs to seize upon this cultural moment and pull from the riches of our tradition to meet the longings and desires of the so-called unchurched or dechurched. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here; we can trust our traditions to do more of the heavy lifting of discipleship than our newly baked-up methodologies. For Anglicans, I propose one of the greatest gifts we can give is Evensong.

But don’t take my word for it.

Consider this endorsement from an atheist, “Apostates for Evensong,”, or this article from the Telegraph promising that future British leaders are on campus … at Evensong, or this writer in The Guardian who equated traditional with dull, but to her own amazement called Evensong “shattering and utterly gorgeous.” Just last night I spent some time with a parishioner who came to faith at Princeton through, you guessed it, Evensong, which suggests an apologetic of beauty.

But why are so many Evensong services across English cathedrals and parishes nearly empty?

To be clear, I am not suggesting “if you build it, they will come.” One cannot simply start a service and hope to attract millennials with our “shiny new thing.” There must be an intentional commitment to outreach, relationship, and catechesis. It may be possible to trust in the power of the liturgy alone to make disciples, neglecting the essential relational presence that draws people to the liturgy in the first place (ultimately, through the Holy Spirit). This does not mean, however, that we refuse to build up and hand on the best of what we have, especially in a moment when it might be our most effective tool in the toolbox.

This understanding of Evensong as a tool for outreach and for making disciples is somewhat unhelpful, because it instrumentalizes Evensong, making it something other than a gift given to God as worship. And yet the integrity of the “thing itself” and the effect it has on others simply cannot be severed.

Does the painter make art because painting has inherent value and beauty, or does she paint because the painting can become a gift to others? Again, the answer is simply Yes. Regardless of who encounters Evensong, it is worth offering as a gift. But we might be surprised by who ends up loving it, who becomes transfixed by the “beauty of holiness.”

I wonder, what would happen if churches near colleges and universities or in urban centers made an Evensong liturgy part of their outreach plan? Would our present culture — fatigued by polarization, weighed down by conflict, and untethered from the ancient — receive silence, beauty, and transcendence as a welcome gift from the Church, and thereby encounter anew the Triune God?

I think it is worth a shot.

About The Author

Fr. Clint Wilson is rector of St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church in Louisville, KY.

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11 Responses

  1. Eugene Schlesinger

    Fr. Clint, this is quite good. I particularly appreciate the care you take towards the end to avoid instrumentalizing the liturgy. When I first began to flirt with more formally liturgical worship, I put great stock in the statistics showing that millennials were attracted to transcendence and liturgy (it makes sense, right? In a post-Christian context, if you’re going to bother with church, you want it to fell like, well, church. There are coffee shops aplenty providing a better version of what passes for “relevance” these days…). This was a “missional” justification for adopting liturgy.

    The more I’ve learned about the liturgy, though, the less persuasive I’ve found that line of reasoning. It’s opportunistic, mercenary, and reduces the worship of God to technique. It’s thoroughly beholden to cultural currents and the Zeitgeist.

    What you’ve done here, though, is to thread that needle in a different way. The liturgy is for the glory of God and the salvation of humanity. But it also happens that there’s a “market” for it, so to speak. And so as a liturgical people we make hay while the sun shines. There may well come a time when the youths aren’t so interested in Evensong. God willing, it will still be being offered to God when that time comes. In the meantime, though, we can rejoice in the evangelistic potential it holds.

    Reply
    • Clint Wilson

      Thanks for your feedback, Gene! I resonate with your experience you mentioned…obviously we have a similar background in this way (having discussed this before in MKE!). I hope y’all are well, and I hope to see you soon. Are you teaching at Marquette?

      Reply
  2. Murray Somerville

    One thing needs to be said — Evensong can be a great way of involving young people in the singing. There’s far more for young choristers to “do” in Evensong, rather than contributing an anthem or two to a basically said service like the Eucharist. Giving young people the opportunity (and the training) to be a part of Evensong is a form of Evangelism in itself — imprinting the tradition of the faith.

    Reply
  3. Guy Hayward

    Thank you for this insightful article. For similar reasons, I set up a website to advertise all the Choral Evensong services that occur regularly in Britain, in a nation-wide online directory of 400 churches – http://www.choralevensong.org – if you find yourself in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland with worship on your mind, have a peruse!

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/guy-hayward-former-choral-scholar-at-trinity-college-cambridge-creates-time-out-style-guide-of-a6709756.html

    Reply
    • Fr. William D. Razz Waff

      What an outstanding service for you to pull together and publish online! I was in the UK three times this past academic year, two weeks each time, and I am kicking myself that I was not aware of the website. I will definitely keep it handy as I do plan to be back on a regular basis.

      Reply
  4. Timothy Yau

    I studied in Cambridge UK, most of the university colleges have Anglican chaplains and chapels which offer a range of services including evensong. King’s College chapel evensong is obviously the most renowned, and is a constant draw to intrigued tourists and choral music aficionados, but it isn’t a hot-spot for students. I graduated in 2008 and as far as I am aware nothing has changed. Compared to other British universities Cambridge and Oxford are probably the anomalies for their consistency of offering regular formal Anglican worship to students and staff. I didn’t see this methodology attracting the majority of the student body. Obviously, things may have changed, and I don’t have any data from other universities, but my intuition tells me that UK millennials are not flocking to evensong.

    Reply
    • Zachary Guiliano

      I think you have a good point, Timothy. Having studied in Cambridge myself 2012-2016 (and sung in an Evensong choir), I think it is true that the service is not a consistently huge draw there for students: though that differs from college to college, and even from night to night. Students might even be more likely to go to a once-a-term, late night Compline service than to the daily Evensong. Oxford has some colleges where student attendance is much higher, however. There is some evidence of it drawing more students there, noted in a few of the links Clint includes in his piece. But the colleges are certainly not packed out day after day.

      Reply
  5. Jonathan Skipper

    Interestingly the cover photo is the choir stalls at Norwich Cathedral. (Norfolk, U.K.) I used to live in the Cathedral Close. There’s a grammar school next to it, but the University (UEA – University of East Anglia) is about five miles away on the other side of the city.

    Reply
  6. Bradley

    I am so damned happy to be a part of an American cathedral that sings evensong regularly, once a week, and as a staff singer at that. It gives the best voices in town something to really teeth into, and makes for a lovely service that is albeit slowly, growing nonetheless. I would question some of the comments here about the students at Cambridge not attending services, as John’s regularly has a good turn-out from the student body. This cannot be over-emphasized, evensong is good for the church, good for the community and great for us singer/musicians.

    Reply

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