By Karen Y. Stevens

If you haven’t heard about “Yanny vs Laurel” then you aren’t watching the news, or on Social Media. You Tube has a variety of clips; all state they have proven its Laurel, or proven it’s Yanny.

The thing is, it’s both.

When my kids were still in high school, they told me about this pitch that adults could not hear. (I could not hear it, but it was extremely loud to them). Only people under the age of 25 or 30 could hear the pitch.

The Yanny vs Laurel is the same principal.

You hear Laurel if you hear lower registers better, and Yanny if you hear the higher ones. Usually, younger people hear the higher pitch.

This made me start thinking about the communication gap between teenagers and adults, which lead me to thinking about “why is it two people can be in the same Doctors appt, or any conversation, and hear two different things?”

I know my husband and I will argue about conversations. I’ll swear one thing was said, and he will say the opposite. Anyway, this lead my thought process to why young adults don’t go to church. Are they not hearing what I’m hearing? According to Pew Research – Millennials (born between 1981 – 1996) are less likely to attend church than members of Generation X (1965 -1984) were, and twice as less as Baby Boomers (1946 – 1964) were as young adults.

The number one reason the young adults left the church is because they had troubling, unanswered questions about the faith. Do you think we should look at this, and try and change the way we express Jesus? Do we think it’s the Youth Pastors not expressing the faith properly? Or do we think it’s the parents, or the society around us? Do the young adults hear something we don’t hear? Are we trying to figure out what they are hearing, in order to correct any mistakes in that communication?

This is important to me, since one of my children has not returned to the faith, he was taught. He will go to church with me on special occasions, Mothers Day, Easter, Christmas, etc.

Asking your adult child why he doesn’t like church, is not like asking him why he doesn’t like broccoli, which by the way, he does like broccoli. You can’t offend broccoli by saying bad things about it, but you can offend people by telling them what you don’t like about their faith; which is why he probably will never say.

I know prayer is a huge factory, and we should all be praying for that age group since we lose so many to the world. But someone out there can solve this problem. They can come up with a solution to figure out how to communicate the gospel of Christ to young adults.

There are so many people spending a huge amount of time, trying to figure out the Yanny vs Laurel solution. Surely someone out there, can spend as much time trying to figure out the disappearing young adults from the church problem.

 

 

Karen Y. Stevens is founder of Orange County Christian Writers Guild