"I caution against the idea that the way to get young people into church is to be hip and cool and have a pastor who wears skinny jeans." Rachel Held Evans could have been talking about any number of much-hyped contemporary evangelical congregations: the Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, for example, whose pastor started a website called PastorFashion.com, or Mars Hill, the Seattle megachurch that dissolved amid controversy in 2014, but left behind a large network of congregations. Many of the fastest growing churches in America are exactly what Evans describes: Places with Sunday morning rock bands and chic websites and pastors who occasionally, yes, wear skinny jeans.
So there's irony in her wry caution: Young people may be leaving the church, but for the most part, evangelical Christian churches are not the ones they're leaving.
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