Open Letter to Young UM Leaders

I'm a baby-boomer. I feel that the wider Christian church in which I was raised in the 1960s had already lost God. People went to church because it was the done thing, it was what respectable people did. Back then - as is the case still now in many places - to not attend a church, any church, was to commit social and business suicide. Yet that church of the 1950s and 1960s seems to be the one that people look back to as somehow having had real faith. Those of us who want to grapple with real and authentic life issues and not smile our way through our faith and pretend that everything is rosy because 'Jesus loves me this I know' get labeled the liberal apostates who are ruining the church. Maybe it's the old hippy in me, but I'm more than happy to be part of a church that is truly counter-cultural and truly follows Jesus. I don't want a 'successful' church because Jesus was not a 'successful' pastor. I'm happy to be labeled a heretic if that's what it takes to have authentic faith. To be honest, I never know if people bemoaning the demise of the church want to embrace me or if I'm exactly the sort of person they want to say 'good riddance' to?