[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.91″ custom_padding=”0px|0px|0px|0px” next_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row custom_padding=”2px|0px|8px|0px” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Featured Image caption” _builder_version=”3.19.17″ text_font=”|600|||||||” text_font_size=”12px” \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.92″ custom_padding=”2px|0px|37.9062px|0px” prev_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row custom_padding=”0px|0px|18.9531px|0px” custom_margin=”10px|||” _builder_version=”3.0.92″][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_text admin_label=”News Story” _builder_version=”3.19.17″ custom_margin=”0px||0px|”]<\/p>\n
A preacher walks into a bar.<\/p>\n
This is not the setup of a joke, but the start of Jody Ratcliffe\u2019s monthly Sunday worship service at New Brookland Tavern in West Columbia.<\/p>\n
Ratcliffe, a Southern Baptist pastor, started The Church at West Vista after his then-senior pastor at Holland Avenue Baptist Church asked him to think of ways to save their dying church.<\/p>\n
After a few years of deliberation, Ratcliffe decided to plant an entirely new church, one based on the \u201cblueprint church\u201d from the Book of Acts in the Christian Bible\u2019s New Testament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe early church, they were a very relational church, they met in small groups in homes,\u201d Ratcliffe said.<\/p>\n
Much like the biblical Peter, Ratcliffe leads a churchless congregation. Divided into three \u201chouse church\u201d groups, members meet with their house churches weekly. Once a month, the entire congregation comes together for worship at New Brookland Tavern.<\/p>\n
Ratcliffe, who received financial help from the S.C. Southern Baptist Convention to create West Vista, has managed to capture the most elusive age group for mainline churches: millennials.<\/p>\n
According to the Barna Group, a California-based market research firm that studies American religion and culture, \u00a061 percent of millennials, ages 20-34, said they \u201cfind God elsewhere\u201d as a reason for not attending traditional church services.<\/p>\n
Jordan Grimmesey, a 21-year-old student and member of the Presbyterian Church (USA) of the U.S.A. \u00a0grew up in a small, tight-knit congregation in Atlanta, Georgia. She said although her faith has \u201cshifted a little bit more spiritual,\u201d she believes her church fostered her current religious practices.<\/p>\n
The desire for the spiritual over the ecclesiastical keeps many young adults from attending church.<\/p>\n
USC Lutheran campus pastor Michele Fischer said she sees this trend of separation of God and church in young people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe need for God is innate, it is part of who we are,\u201d Fischer said. \u201cWe need something divine, something spiritual\u2026 some people haven\u2019t found that in the organized church and they\u2019ve left the organized church.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many, she said, \u201cThe mainstream church feels inauthentic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAuthentic Community,\u201d may be a modern buzzword for hip churches to adopt, but it carries weight with young adults and teenagers \u2013 78 percent of millennials prefer \u201ccommunity\u201d over \u201cprivacy\u201d in the church, according to the Barna Group.<\/p>\n
In the age of the internet, young Christians want face-to-face, interpersonal relationships with their churches.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0millennials\u2019 preference for an experiential faith over a theological one flies in the face of the authenticity the same age group is searching for, Fischer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing that\u2019s going to be authentic is a faith that is deep,\u201d Fischer said.<\/p>\n
That depth of faith can only be achieved through a community, most usually a congregation, Erik Kimrey said. Kimrey is the head football coach at Hammond School, where he also teaches philosophy of religion.<\/p>\n
About a decade ago Kimrey and a few friends started Theology on Tap, a discussion group where people from any walk of life can come and talk \u201cbig, scary questions\u201d with a beer in hand.<\/p>\n
Kimrey said the program, which meets at Indah Coffee Co.\u00a0once a month, \u201chelps people realize there is a huge diversity of views inside the church and outside the church.\u201d Kimrey said Indah Coffee provides a setting that feels more comfortable than \u201ca rigid setting like a church,\u201d where some may feel uncomfortable to voice concerns or doubts about topics like\u00a0\u201cWhere do we come from? Why are we here?\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the same Barna group study, millennials tend to feel more at ease in familiar settings like a coffee shop or a bar instead of a sanctuary. But, Kimrey said Theology on Tap isn\u2019t a replacement for church, but a supplement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t suggest coming to Theology on Tap to replace church,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019ll never replace authentic community, wherever you find that.\u201d<\/p>\n
One reason young people feel uncomfortable in traditional churches is the \u201cperceived intolerances\u201d many believe mainstream Christian churches harbor.<\/p>\n
Grimmesey said she chooses to \u201cvery much separate my separate spiritual religious experience from other denominations of my own religion\u201d because of these perceived intolerances, some of which include homosexuality and political party affiliations. Grimmesey\u2019s church\u00a0is more theologically liberal than most denominations, homosexuals can be ordained and married in the church.<\/p>\n
Deja Warnock, a 21-year-old member of Right Directional Church International, also believes a church congregation is the only way to foster a deep faith, but she doesn’t think the church is as welcoming as they could be. Warnock said congregations need to \u201copen their doors\u201d to those who may be apprehensive since it is the mission of the church to welcome without judgement.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod says \u2018come as you are,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Warnock works for Your Life, RDCI\u2019s millennial fellowship group, which has over 30 members. But for the past 20 years, millennial dropout rates have been rising in churches. According to separate Gallup polls, the number of Americans who attend religious services weekly has declined from 42 percent in 2008 to 38 percent in 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s at least an American phenomenon, if not worldwide,\u201d Fischer said of the dropout problem.<\/p>\n
Like most things in organized religion, the dropout problem was not caused by a simple, singular issue, but a composite of generational differences, changing perceptions and a rapidly changing culture.<\/p>\n
One factor is time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Greatest Generation is dying,\u201d Ratcliffe said. \u201cAnd that was your greatest boost of numbers from 1960 to 1980.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Greatest Generation includes people born before 1928. In 2017, less than 3 million were left in the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey came back from the war, huge revival. I mean, they\u2019d seen hell,\u201d Ratcliffe said of the generation who made up most of America\u2019s armed forces during the Second World War.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey came back and said, \u2018God\u2019s real.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the mid-20th century the church relied on this age group, who were also bringing their children and grandchildren every Sunday, to fund and fill their ministries.<\/p>\n
Demographics have changed in churches since the eighties, but church programming has not.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe church has a long memory,\u201d Fischer said. \u201cThey\u2019re slow to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ratcliffe\u2019s church is attractive to millennials because he doesn\u2019t rely on long-term programming or an accomplished organ player to draw people into his congregation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur attraction would be the interpersonal relationships,\u201d Ratcliffe said.<\/p>\n
Ratcliffe, the pastor of the house churches, said millennials are drawn to service-based churches, like Midtown Fellowship in Columbia, because they are as committed to Jesus’s call to tend to the poor and sick as as they are about having an authentic Sunday worship experience.<\/p>\n
Mainline churches, Ratcliffe said,\u00a0“feel like, \u2018if we open the doors, people are going to come.\u2019” But he said attendance numbers are suggesting otherwise.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Graham Harmon, a 21-year-old student and member of Grace Presbyterian, an Associated Reformed Presbyterian church, believes differently.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThe Sunday morning service is not an outwardly evangelical thing, it\u2019s supposed to be a gathering of Christians, the gathering of believers,\u201d Harmon said. \u201cNot to say, people are not supposed to come in who are not believers, not to say there isn\u2019t supposed to be an evangelical component.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ARP denomination is conservative and has drawn new members who believe mainline congregations have become too liberal and drifted from the teachings of the Bible. Harmon said he believes many mainline denominations, including the United Methodist Church and PCUSA, have \u201cmythologized\u201d most of the Bible rather than believing in the inerrancy of the Bible.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThey keep a lot of the way things look and feel in the service, right, but I think they\u2019ve abandoned, in a lot of ways, the historic Christian understanding of a lot of things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The millennial Christian dilemma isn\u2019t the only issue plaguing Protestant congregations.<\/p>\n
In late February, the United Methodist Church at its annual assembly refused to allow homosexuals to be ordained as ministers in the faith, something Fischer believes will cause many churches to break away from their denomination, \u201cnot unlike the schisms we saw in the Civil War.\u201d<\/p>\n
But religious experts say this type of turbulent change in the Christian faith isn\u2019t new.<\/p>\n
Religious scholar Phyllis Tickle\u2019s 500-year Rummage Sale theory says that the Christian Church undergoes a great cultural shift every half-century. Fischer believes the church is in the midst of one right now, caused by the onslaught of the internet and the secularization of America.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The church doesn\u2019t look like it did 50 years ago, Fischer said, and it won\u2019t like it does now 50 years from now. But, Fischer believes the fundamental beliefs written in the 2,000-year-old text still hold true today, and will hold true forever.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cGod is still God,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd the church has always changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_image admin_label=”Image 1″ show_in_lightbox=”on” show_bottom_space=”off” _builder_version=”3.19.17″ custom_margin=”||2px|” custom_padding=”|||” animation_style=”slide” box_shadow_style=”preset2″ box_shadow_horizontal=”4px” box_shadow_vertical=”4px” src=”http:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/churchw4_ZN.jpg”]<\/p>\n
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[\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label=”Caption 1″ _builder_version=”3.19.17″ text_font=”|600|||||||” text_font_size=”12px” text_line_height=”1.4em” custom_margin=”8px|||2px” custom_padding=”|||”]<\/p>\n
Southern Baptist pastor Jody Ratcliffe started the Church at West Vista three years ago. His unconventional approach to church has made his congregation mostly millennial, a rarity in mainline faiths.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image admin_label=”Image 2″ show_in_lightbox=”on” show_bottom_space=”off” _builder_version=”3.19.17″ custom_margin=”||2px|” custom_padding=”|||” animation_style=”slide” box_shadow_style=”preset2″ box_shadow_horizontal=”4px” box_shadow_vertical=”4px” src=”http:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/churchw1_ZN.jpg”]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label=”Caption 2″ _builder_version=”3.19.17″ text_font=”|600|||||||” text_font_size=”12px” text_line_height=”1.4em” custom_margin=”8px|||2px” custom_padding=”|||”]<\/p>\n Lutheran pastor Michele Fischer said the church is \u201cslow to change,\u201d which is one cause of the mass exodus of young adults and teenagers from mainline, or traditional, Protestant churches.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image admin_label=”Image 3″ show_in_lightbox=”on” show_bottom_space=”off” _builder_version=”3.19.17″ custom_margin=”||2px|” custom_padding=”|||” animation_style=”slide” box_shadow_style=”preset2″ box_shadow_horizontal=”4px” box_shadow_vertical=”4px” src=”http:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/churchw5_ZN.jpg”]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label=”Caption 3″ _builder_version=”3.19.17″ text_font=”|600|||||||” text_font_size=”12px” text_line_height=”1.4em” custom_margin=”8px|||2px” custom_padding=”|||”]<\/p>\n USC student Jordan Grimmesey stated she prefers a more spiritual religious experience over a traditional one, a rising trend in yong adults.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image admin_label=”Image 4″ show_in_lightbox=”on” show_bottom_space=”off” _builder_version=”3.19.17″ custom_margin=”||2px|” custom_padding=”|||” animation_style=”slide” box_shadow_style=”preset2″ box_shadow_horizontal=”4px” box_shadow_vertical=”4px” src=”http:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/churchw3_ZN.jpg”]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label=”Caption 4″ _builder_version=”3.19.17″ text_font=”|600|||||||” text_font_size=”12px” text_line_height=”1.4em” custom_margin=”8px|||2px” custom_padding=”|||”]<\/p>\n USC student Graham Harmon believes mainline churches are losing numbers because of their shift to theological liberalism, or the progressive interpretation of the Christian Bible.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image admin_label=”Image 4″ show_in_lightbox=”on” show_bottom_space=”off” _builder_version=”3.19.17″ custom_margin=”||2px|” custom_padding=”|||” animation_style=”slide” box_shadow_style=”preset2″ box_shadow_horizontal=”4px” box_shadow_vertical=”4px” src=”http:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-05-at-1.20.46-PM.png”]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.91″ custom_padding=”0px|0px|0px|0px” next_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row custom_padding=”2px|0px|8px|0px” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Featured Image caption” _builder_version=”3.19.17″ text_font=”|600|||||||” text_font_size=”12px” \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.92″ custom_padding=”2px|0px|37.9062px|0px” prev_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row custom_padding=”0px|0px|18.9531px|0px” custom_margin=”10px|||” _builder_version=”3.0.92″][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_text admin_label=”News Story” _builder_version=”3.19.17″ custom_margin=”0px||0px|”] A preacher walks into a bar. This is not the setup of a joke, but the start of Jody Ratcliffe\u2019s monthly Sunday worship service at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":18745,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[67,39,97],"tags":[564,631,630],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18548"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19009,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18548\/revisions\/19009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}