According to Julia Dent of Accelerated, “The harder churches try to be cool and trendy, the more Millennials are joining the mass exodus from the church.”
For years, churches have been trying to find new ways to attract Millennials, two thirds of whom believe churchgoers are “a lot or somewhat hypocritical.” Churches have tried everything from deploying hipster pastors to making their sanctuaries less church-like.
As a Millennial, I have a message for churches: Please, just stop. We don’t need outreach that looks like the latest emoji trend, which features the tagline “Scripture 4 Millennials” and translates the Bible into emoji. That’s right. On the Bible Emoji Translator website, you can enter your favorite Bible verse and out pops an emoji-version of scripture. Or as the translator puts it, “Enter ur fave Bible verse on the left emoji awesomeness appears on the right” (thankfully, there aren’t any symbols for words found in the Bible like prostitute or concubine or circumcision).