Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Sunday fun day: Nontraditional services attract millennials
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A few months after becoming pastor of Parkway Baptist Church, a 21-yearold Armour Stephenson III sat down with his deacons — almost all men older than 40 — and laid out plans for his own version of the great flood.
“The entire dynamic of our church was about to change,” Stephenson recalled of the fateful 2006 meeting. His first decree: “Stop wearing suits on Sundays.”
No suits? In a black Baptist church? One deacon later compared it to an NBA coach telling his players they could no longer wear sneakers. Stephenson was just getting started: Services would be shorter and start later. Hymns would give way to contemporary gospel. And the choir would now be called “the worship team.”
The congregation’s response? An exodus. Membership dwindled from about 300 to a low of 85. “Any time you’re shifting culture, there’s going to be some casualties,” Stephenson said.
But now? The church, rechristened City of Truth, has bounced back and then some, with a congregation of more than 1,000 — so many that Sunday services were moved this year to the nearby Southeast High School auditorium. And, strikingly, in a time of millennial apathy and aversion to church, a vast majority of the worshippers are younger than 35.
“The role of the church is to see a need, meet a need,” Stephenson said, sitting next to his wife, Jessica, in their Lee’s Summit, Mo., home. “Those changes were about doing an introspection on what the need was and being willing to do everything it takes to meet that need. If that meant tearing down walls of tradition, so be it.”
The Kansas City Star reported that, in 2015, a Pew Research Center study concluded that America was becoming less religious due in part to millennials distancing themselves from organized religion. Only 27 percent of Americans born between 1981 and 1996, the study found, regularly attended weekly services.
As a result, some area churches and synagogues have created
special programs that cater to younger members.
But a handful — most notably, perhaps, City of Truth Church on the East Side and The Cause Church on the West Plaza — now cater almost exclusively to millennials.
“I think millennials get freaked out by the rules and rituals of traditional religion,” said Jenna Felsen, a 20-year-old student at the University of Missouri at Kansas City who was part of a good crowd of young worshippers who didn’t bolt for their cars after the Sunday night service but — as is typical at The Cause — lingered in the lobby.
“A lot of times tradition is employed by the church at the expense of turning people away, at the expense of unnecessarily offending people,” Stephenson said. “At the expense of souls into the kingdom.”
By updating long-considered immovable church mores — dress codes and preaching styles, attitudes toward the secular, a willingness to discuss the taboo — and embracing modern music and technology (Stephenson preaches not from a Bible but from his iPad.), these churches brim with youthful vivacity.
The Revs. Kyle Turner, 36, and wife Liz, 37, say they had “discerned a call” to build a church for younger people when they moved to Kansas City from Oklahoma in 2009.
The weekly session, part church and part pep rally, begins with the overhead lights low and the neon high as the worship team — electronic keyboard, bassist, guitarist, drummer and a couple of vocalists — begins strumming the chords to “This Is Living” by Hillsong Young & Free, the popular Christian music group that got its start at Hillsong Church in Australia. Hillsong now has churches worldwide, including a New York branch famously attended by Justin Bieber. The Cause is an affiliate.
The song sends the packed sanctuary into a frenzy; the crowd jumping along and clapping in unison, a clear explanation of why the “The SixThirty” is known as “the rock star service.”
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
For years, tradition was the guiding principle of Parkway Baptist.
But in 1995, when Stephenson’s father, Armour Stephenson Jr., became pastor of the church on Swope Parkway, he set about tweaking that tradition. For the first time, women could hold church positions. The choir could sing without the ceremonial robes from time to time.
But still, men were expected to wear a suit and tie, the same way women were expected to come in a modest, respectable dress. High-ranking church officials sat in chairs on the stage, flanking the minister, and deacons and other exalted officials filled the front pews.
January 2005 brought a sudden, tragic catalyst as Stephenson Jr. and his wife, Shirley, were killed in a small-plane crash in Johnson County. The accident devastated Parkway and thrust a young Stephenson, who had practically no pastoral experience, and his wife of just six weeks into a daunting leadership role.
“I’m 21. My wife [was] 19,” Stephenson recalled. “We had to begin thinking how we could attract people our age into the church. I wasn’t trying to force anyone in the church to become younger. I just wanted those we were trying to reach to feel welcomed.”
So he nixed the choir robes completely and told the new worship team they would lean toward a more contemporary gospel sound. (Think less Mahalia Jackson, more Kirk Franklin.)
“There is strength and value in every generation,” Stephenson said. “But even with that in mind, we all should be more focused on who we’re trying to reach instead of who we’re trying to retain.”
Traditional churches alienated younger worshippers, said Kyle at The Cause, because they were “talking about stuff that wasn’t relevant to people’s problems.
“We have to authentically care for people and have conversations that actually matter to them. How do they deal with their self-image when everything is so plastered in this Instagram society we live in? How do they find worth?”