Will Removing the Decalogue Bring Millenials Back?
By Joyce Gulledge Harris, 4th Episcopal District
Having been a life-long member of the AME Church, I am having difficulty understanding why some pastors and other AME Church leaders believe that changing our order of worship will bring people flocking to our sanctuaries on Sunday mornings. There is a push to bring back millennials to the AME Church. One thought is to remove the Decalogue, thereby making the worship service more contemporary and appealing.
This proposal causes significant questions for me. How will we make the clarion call to let others know about this important change? Should we put flyers on cars in public parking lots? Should we use social media so that others know we are becoming more contemporary by excluding the Decalogue? Could it be that people are leaving our Zion or not attending our worship services for other reasons?
Could it be that as AMEs we are not true to our roots, have abandoned who we are, and are not excited about worshipping God? I asked a former member of an AME Church, a Generation Xer, why he and his family left the church. Chief among his reasons was how unimportant our order of worship seemed to have been.
Initially, he said, “It was the liturgy.” He immediately clarified that it was not the liturgy but how we approached it. For example, we were not excited about worshipping God and we recited the call to worship like it meant nothing. He recalled that when he and his family attended worship service in the South, they were excited when they said, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.” He also shared that he taught his children about the AME Church at home because he wanted them to know about their heritage and history as they were not being taught this at church. He believes that we change things on a whim. The AME Church had become unrecognizable to him.
I asked where he is currently attending church. He and his family joined a nondenominational church in the city where the clergy and congregation are excited to worship, are organized, and follow a prescribed protocol. He is active and is a member of the operations team. He has no plans of returning to the AME Church.
Perhaps we should maintain the integrity of our denominational tradition as described in Bishop Frederick Hilborn Talbot’s Foreword for the Second Edition of Walking Through an Order of Worship in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Perhaps we should be authentically excited about worshiping God. That just might be the keys to slowing the decline in attendance or church membership. Although Bishop Talbot was referring to the music in the AME Church, maintaining the integrity of our denominational tradition in all aspects of African Methodism may hold the key to our improved worship experience.
Joyce Gulledge Harris is the president of the Samuel “Sam” Mosley Lay Organization at Wayman AME Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
