Ministry and Millennials: A Growth Opportunity At a time when many see the decline in religious affiliation among young people as a crisis, Angie Thurston and Casper ter Kuile, both MDiv ’16, see a growth opportunity. Co-authors of the study “How We Gather,” Thurston and ter Kuile say that millennials hunger for the kind of experience traditionally associated with religion—and that secular organizations like the fitness community Crossfit are proliferating to meet the need. “There are all sorts of religious elements to Crossfit,” ter Kuile said during a presentation at HDS last April. “Different workouts are named after different people—fallen soldiers or police officers—so there’s this ritualization of grief. You have a workout of the day, just like if you were saying the Lord’s Prayer in this church over here and I’m over there. There’s a sense of connection across space. [Founder] Greg Glassman talks about how he wants to shepherd a flock. It’s a real phenomenon.” Thurston and ter Kuile work to bring the resources of ministry to groups like Crossfit, the Dinner Party, Daybreakers, and many others stepping—often unconsciously—into the religious space. Last November, the two brought 50 leaders of these new secular communities together for a conference at HDS to build relationships with each other, learn skills, and share wisdom. They also brought leaders from different religious traditions into the conversation to share their own experience and best practices. The result, Thurston said last April, was that group leaders were able to move past their “knee-jerk reaction to religion.”
ANGIE THURSTON
“Over the course of the conference, leaders of the secular communities began to use, unbidden, the language of faith,” she said. “At the end of our time, we did a closing circle. Usually people would name the things they were hopeful, afraid, and proud of. Person after person replaced the word ‘hope’ with ‘faith’.” Ter Kuile, who came to HDS with an interest in activism more than in religion, said he could identify with leaders of secular groups who don’t think of what they do as ministry. After taking courses like “Introduction to Ministry Studies” and “Meaning Making,” however, he realized that the skills of religious leadership—the ability to organize a community, to speak with power, to listen, reflect, and draw on the wisdom of the world’s faith traditions—could make his work for environmental justice more effective. As HDS moves into its third century, ter Kuile says that the School is in a position to offer leaders like him the knowledge they need to work for a better world. “The people we’ve been building relationships with are doing ministry,” he said. “They would never have considered coming to Harvard Divinity School, but the core of what we offer is exactly what they need. In fact, some of the people who came to the conference last fall are applying to HDS because we’re able to have conversations that people want to have but don’t know how to. We just need to talk about what we offer in ways that people can hear.”
CASPER TER KUILE
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