Author: Megan Yoshioka

By Megan Yoshioka

Kaleb Eisele is the founder of the storytelling platform Humans of Adventism. Although he grew up Adventist and is a member of the Adventist church today, at one point in his life, he left the church. As a young person and a member of the Millennial generation, he felt unheard and like his opinion did not matter within the church.

“When I left the church, I didn’t feel like my voice mattered,” Eisele said. “I felt like my job was to be quiet and to do what I was told — kind of to just accept the offering plate job. Or, accept the choir singing job, which I didn’t want to do. 

“Honestly, as someone who is working full-time, in college, married … I really felt like, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to be a junior deacon. I’m sorry I don’t want to join the choir. I have plenty of things to offer the church, but not those things.’” 

According to Eisele, his stepfather, Tim Baumgarten, played a significant role in his decision to return to the church. Baumgarten is a member of the Baby Boomer generation and, as a corporate trainer, works often with the topic of intergenerational communication. He applies his skills at work, in church and even within his family.

“One of the great things Tim has always done in our relationship is just ask my opinion,” Eisele said. “And I think that was something really important to me as a young person in Adventism.”

In an interview with our journalism class, Eisele said his decision to come back to the church all started in a living room. On Saturday afternoons, Eisele said he and his family of three different generations would sit down and talk about difficult topics, including religion. In those discussions, Eisele said he felt that his family genuinely desired to get to know him and understand his perspective, even if they disagreed.

“It was really early into those discussions that I felt something different, something that I had been lacking in my other church experiences,” Eisele said.

Through those conversations, Baumgarten said he started recognizing generational differences between himself and Eisele. He also noticed the generational gap within their church and saw a need for better understanding. 

“The more I dove into this, the more I started understanding how much none of us knew about each other — and it went in two directions,” Baumgarten said. “We kind of took the living room talks and introduced them to the church. And it really began this journey. It really began to open up our folks.”

Eisele started feeling more heard within his church. He recalled one day when he was invited to speak at the church board meeting about a social media strategy and creating a church Facebook page. Regardless of the board’s decision to accept or reject his idea, Eisele said he just appreciated the fact that they created a space for him to speak and share. 

The board actually ended up asking Eisele to present his idea to the rest of the church body. Eisele said he went before the church, introduced the idea and explained the importance of the internet in today’s society. After his speech, two older men approached him.

“Afterward, I had two older men, probably in their 70s or 80s, come forward and say, ‘If you’ll do this for us, we’ll pay for it,’” Eisele said. “‘Whatever equipment the church needs, we’ll buy it. We don’t even have to micromanage it, we believe in you.’ And that really changed things for me.”

Intergenerational communication led Eisele back into the church and opened opportunities for him. It set the foundation for trust between him and older church members. And, according to Eisele, “It all started in a living room.”

“As somebody who was raised Seventh day-Adventist… [and] decided to leave the church for several years, intergenerational communication is something that was very important in bringing me back into the church experience, back into connection with my Adventist family,” Eisele said.

According to generational researcher Chuck Underwood, a generation is determined by shared core values. Different generations may value different things. So when it comes to the Adventist church, do different generations value different aspects of the church? I interviewed nine Adventists across four American generations: Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials and Gen Zers. Interestingly, all nine Adventists shared a common value: relationships and community. Maybe the gap isn’t as wide as we think it is.

Click the pictures to see each response.

By Megan Yoshioka

Lisa Bilbrey Hyder is the president of the League of Women Voters (LWV) of Chattanooga. She grew up as a Baptist and was baptized in the Adventist church about 10 years ago. Her roles as a wife, mother and president of the LWV of Chattanooga give her a unique perspective on women’s roles in marriage within the Adventist church and in society. 

Hyder observed that Adventist marriages, in general, tend to more closely follow traditional gender roles compared to marriages outside of the Adventist church. However, she also noted that more couples today are moving toward equal-partnership in Adventist marriages and generally in the United States. 

To hear the full interview with Hyder, click the link below.

By Megan Yoshioka

What was the driest sermon you ever heard preached in church? For me, it was a sermon I heard when I was in high school about the fruits of the Spirit. A very kind, knowledgeable pastor who looked to be in his 70s prepared a long, doctrinal analysis of each fruit. As much as I wanted and tried to be engaged with those important messages, I just couldn’t do it. 

After church, I asked my mom what she thought of the sermon. She said it was different from what was usually preached, and she didn’t mind it. She said it was just “old school” and commented, “I haven’t heard a sermon like that in a long time.”

Apparently, different generations have different styles of ministry.

Southern Adventist University Religion Professor Elie Graterol has 17 years of pastoral experience in the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church and has witnessed to many people of varying ages. Over the generations, he noticed a change in the effectiveness of different ministry approaches.

For older generations, such as the Baby Boomers, acceptance of religious doctrines precede church membership and involvement, according to Graterol. However, in order to witness to younger generations, he saw a need for method adjustment.

“For Millennials, it’s mainly, ‘Yeah, what the Bible says is cool,’ but that must be preceded by a very strong sense of fellowship and belonging,” Graterol said. “Fellowship and belonging will open the door for a Millennial to embrace the Bible. In the past, it was the opposite. The Bible opened the door for a Boomer to belong in that particular group or church.”

Interning Pastor Xavier Baca also recognizes relationship building as an effective ministry tool. Baca has been interning for the Wahiawa and Waimanalo SDA Churches in Oahu, Hawaii, since August of 2020. Although most of his experience has been witnessing to younger people, he found a common denominator across all ages regarding ministry.

“I think the most important aspect, no matter what age, is giving people an experience with God,” Baca said. “If people have no experience with God in any type of religious activities or social gatherings in church, then it’s going to be harder for them to want to stay in a Christian church.” 

Baca found that building relationships with others is a successful way to help people experience God. He explained that once somebody forms a connection with another person, it allows that person to be an influence for God.

“Once that relationship is built up, then I truly believe that the influence can be put in,” Baca said.

In regard to witnessing to any generation, Graterol also emphasized the importance of maintaining a strong connection with God.

“When you are connected with the Spirit, you will attract people,” Graterol said. “If you are a genuine Christian, you will earn the respect of all the generations, regardless of their perspective and worldviews.”

In the past 15 years, the North American Division (NAD) of Seventh-day Adventists (SDA) has been experiencing a shift in generational demographics. The Baby Boomer generation surpassed senior generations as the NAD’s largest age group in 2013, according to a General Conference (GC) survey reporting age demographics of SDA members in North America.

Members from senior generations — those born before the year 1946 — are declining in numbers due to increasing age. The percentage of members belonging to the Millennial generation is also decreasing in the NAD. Generation X and younger generations — those born after 1994 — fluctuate in membership percentages.

According to Monte Sahlin, vice president for Creative Ministries of the Columbia Union Conference of the SDA denomination, fluctuation could be due to survey method differences between the GC and the NAD. 

These results differ from the NAD’s 1980, 1989 and 1996 demographics. During that time period, members from the Greatest Generation, also known as the World War II generation, started declining in membership percentage, and the Silent Generation, the generation between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers, fluctuated in percentage. However, the combined percentage of the World War II and the Silent generations was still greater than the Baby Boomers’ increasing numbers. Along with the Baby Boomers, Gen Xers increased in percentage each year. Data was not gathered for Millennials and younger generations during that time, as most members from those generations were not born yet.

I created a timeline of the NAD’s generational demographics from 1980 to 2018. The 2008 and 2018 NAD survey percentages and the 2013 GC survey percentages were provided in a presentation by Sahlin to our Interactive Journalism class. The 1980, 1989 and 1996 percentages were obtained from Sahlin’s 1998 report, “Trends, Attitudes and Opinions in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America.”

Click the image below to view full details of the timeline. The timeline is interactive, so make sure to click each tab for more information.

In 2018, Christian polling firm Barna Group reported that the percentage of people who identify as atheist or agnostic doubled between people born from 1999 to 2015 and people born before 1946. Although engagement in faith practices such as prayer and Bible reading are similar throughout all generations, younger people are less likely than their elders to identify as Christian, according to another Barna Group study conducted in 2019.

Considering the huge role Christianity played in founding the United States, how did the religious identity of the country change so much within less than a century?

According to Chuck Underwood, a generational researcher and the founder of The Generational Imperative, Inc., World War II played a significant role in changing the United States’ religious mindset.

“After World War II, six million fighting people came home from the war with the mindset: ‘How can I worship a god who would let that war happen?’ Many came home and passed on that value to their Boomer kids, and Boomers to their kids, and so on.”

Although the mindset originated with the World War II Generation, aka “The Greatest Generation,” Underwood said this generation still embraced the traditional religion in which they were raised. The change in religious perspective more greatly impacted Baby Boomers’ lifestyle choices. 

“The prior generation said, ‘I need to fit my values to my religion.’ Boomers said, ‘I need to find a religion to fit my life,’” Underwood explained. “… Boomers wanted to explore or find faith or spirituality that fit more closely with their unique, core values. … [They] were the first to seek out a faith that fit their values, and they are still looking.”

Elie Graterol served the Adventist Church as a pastor for 17 years before becoming a full-time professor at Southern Adventist University’s School of Religion. While pastoring, he observed some of the traits Underwood reported among Adventist Baby Boomers.

Concerning Adventist conversion among Baby Boomers, Graterol said he saw mainly two patterns. He noticed that some Baby Boomers did not find fulfillment in pursuing self-gratification after rebelling against older generations’ values. They turned to the Church to find fulfillment and found it in Christianity. He also observed that some other Baby Boomers inherited their parents’ value of biblical principle and followed Adventism seriously.

Unlike the Baby Boomer generation, many people belonging to Generation X did not inherit a strong value of biblical principles from their parents, according to Graterol, who is also a member of Generation X.

“My generation was the result of this ‘free life’ of the Baby Boomers,” Graterol said. “A lot of unwanted babies are a part of my generation; a lot of divorce and brokenness are part of my generation. … So, my generation grew up without a point of reference simply because — and I am talking in a general way — they didn’t have parents — again in a general sense — who were with them and devoted time and attention and care and love toward them.”

Generation X grew up in a time where two-income households were more common, according to Underwood. Many Gen X children stayed at home alone while both their parents worked. In addition, Underwood noted that technology at that time was mostly solitary, unlike today when people can interact virtually through social media.

Because of this, Graterol noticed members of Generation X tend to value a sense of community in church. However, their desire for fellowship is not as strong as that of their successors, the Millennial Generation. 

“Millennials, in particular, they will not come to church looking for theology,” Graterol said. “If they are looking for theology, they will just research it in Wikipedia or Google because they have access to that. They come to church because they are broken. They are looking for a place to belong.”

The spiritual and emotional damage caused by World War II trickled down to younger generations in the United States and in the Adventist Church. As a result, people today may approach religion differently from previous generations. However, the root of the situation remains the same for all: a desire to fill an emptiness and heal the brokenness in their lives.