BLOG 7/8/15. MARRIOTT HOTELS, AIRBNB, AND THE CHURCH
From time to time I have responded to the number of articles about how the Millennial generation is leaving the church. My sense is that they may have been doing quite the opposite, except that they are only leaving the traditional church institutions and then creating for themselves new forms of the church in unexpected places.
My point has been illustrated recently with the report of the panic that the Marriott hotel chain is facing globally. Over the years Marriott has created a whole chain of luxury hotels globally to cater to the desires of the Boomer generation in their global travels. But along comes the Millennial generation that is not at all interested in such hotels, and who travel internationally more than the Boomers, but rather desire Airbnb places to stay, and local color places to investigate, along with the eateries of the local neighborhoods. And as if that weren’t enough, what with the Millennials being a huge generation, along comes the younger generation that is an even larger generation, and who travel even more than even the Millennials do, and who are attracted to the same Airbnb and local places to stay and to eat, and who are not the least interested in Marriott’s hotels.
Marriott has employed major research agencies to help them know how to attract these younger generations.
The traditional church institutions could learn a lesson from Marriott here. Not only are the Millennials less and less attracted to those traditional church institutions, but the majority of the world’s population is now under 23 years of age, and are not at all captive to what has been in the past, but are those forming all kinds of new companies, ideas, cultural forms, . . . and communities of Christians. The older traditional church institutions still seem to think if they can add more activities, or ‘spiff-up’ their institutional forms that they will attract more of these younger generations, but such is not at all the case.
One must stop and realize that Jesus commented that it was he, himself, who would be irresistibly building his church, but he never indicated the form of that church. He was calling out a people to be the communal form of his new creation, or his new humanity, but it wasn’t captive to any ecclesiastical form. It would be like leaven, and permeate its multiple contexts. It would always be recreating itself to meet changing circumstances. So it is that the younger Christian generations are focused on relationships, and on the lifestyle of that new creation—there is a focus on whatever it takes to incarnate reconciled humanity, and to be mutually encouraging, supporting, and creative, and to have integrity with the life and teachings of Jesus. Such emerges in multiple forms and in unexpected places.
To such communities, for the emerging generations, the familiar old institutional churches are easily and readily ignored. The emerging churches (to return to the hotels phenomenon) are much more reflective of the Airbnb than of the traditional hotels, that have been so sought out by the older generations.
It will be interesting to see where all of this goes. I, for one, think that there is enormous hope for that which the Millennial and iY (or whatever the younger generations is to be called) will be creating by way of fruitful and creative communities. I’m sure they will redefine neighborhoods, and communities of God’s new creation to be incarnational in those redefined neighborhoods that the older generations never imagined.
Stay tuned . . .
