What the Young People Are Saying

Based on a survey she did for her work at the Office of Outreach, Rachel shares five trends in how young people respond to the General Church. -Editor

For the past year I have been an intern with the New Church Office of Outreach (of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, which is referred to throughout this article as 'the New Church' or 'the church'). Last April we put on an outreach conference in Glenview, IL with the focus of finding ways to reach out to the younger generation because so many young people today are just not interested in the church. Leading up to the conference I decided to do a survey of young people (between 18 and 35) who have some connection to the New Church. The survey got almost 300 responses that were enlightening, challenging, and showed how strongly young people feel about the church even if they are not coming to services. After reading the results multiple times there were five main themes that I picked out in the responses.

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A Church That Appeals to Young People

Sasha shares her perspective on what drives young people to reject religion. She believes the solution lies in our living the religion we embrace with our lips, wedding truth to compassion and forgiveness. -Editor

It seems to me that the passion driving any church is the sense of having a body of truth that the rest of the world needs. Some privileged understanding of who God really is, and what God really wants from us.

So wouldn't it seem natural for young people—who are driven to find something real, true, and just—to feel drawn to churches?

Maybe so. But after talking with many disheartened teenagers who’ve given up on religion, I think it may come down to an essential component they find missing in their church’s message: compassion.

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Why Swedenborgians Need to Pay Attention to the Emergent Movement or Similarities Between New Church and Emergent Church

Bronwen became aware of the Emergent Movement in 2010. She brings the reader up to speed on what this movement is and then draws connections between it and the New Church. There is a lot to learn by engaging in this conversation. -Editor.

Being the church is an emphasis found in the emerging church that strongly speaks to me. It reminds me of the passage Divine Providence 101 whereupon arriving in the next world after death “one is not asked ‘What church were you were a member of?’ But ‘How have you lived your life?’” At the same time I find the theological conversations in the Emergent Village to be especially thought provoking and interesting in the context of the impact of the New Church in the world and on Christianity.

In the summer of 2010 I read the book, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier by Tony Jones. I swallowed this book whole. I read with speed and enthusiasm about an emerging theology that transcended organized and institutionalized religion, and spoke to a Christianity that emphasized being the church. The parallel between this new Christianity and the New Christianity that I had grown up with were impossible to ignore. For the first time I felt that New Church theology was being accepted by other Christians. Is this emerging theology/Christianity a product of the New Church movement?

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5 Things to Consider When Introducing the Church (or any belief/topic) to Strangers

Greg and Alexis offer clear advice for how to introduce the church to the unacquainted. They emphasize personal integrity and the human relationship, rather than focusing on the mere transmission of fact and opinion. -Editor.

1. Don’t start with particulars—especially heated topics.

When introducing the New Church you should stay away from details and complex teachings. There are some details that are fairly easy to grasp, but they are not important for the first conversation, no matter how important they seem. For example, you would not want to kick off a conversation by explaining the intricate process one goes through as they enter the World of Spirits. Swedenborg’s authorship is also something that need not come into the initial conversation. Instead, discuss the New Church’s doctrine. Give the doctrine authority by saying “my church has always believed… [insert foundational teaching].”

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Heart and Lungs Part 2

This is the second part of Brian's essay on what the church would do if it were aligned entirely with the correspondence of the heart and lungs. The first section can be found here. -Editor

In the first half of this article last week, I launched a discussion of the true meaning of the place of the church specific—meaning the church which has the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg—as the heart and lungs of what we call the Grand Man, the human form of society.

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Heart and Lungs

Brian explores what the essential actions of the church ought to be in light of what the heart and lungs correspond to in Swedenborg's writings. This essay is the first of two on this topic. The second part is found here. -Editor

About fifteen years ago I fell into a late-night New-Church-camp conversation with two cousins of mine—who were, like me, church-indoctrinated from birth—and Martie Johnson. Martie would go on to become a minister and Navy chaplain, but was at the time still a rather wide-eyed newcomer to Swedenborg and the concepts in his Writings, and was probing us for information.

At some point, one of us mentioned the Grand Man, and Martie stopped us.

“What’s that?” We explained how heaven is organized in the human form, with societies performing functions that correspond to the various parts of the body, and how that same human form is reflected in the earthly church, human society, nature, and creation itself.

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