This project explores the claim that the Black Church is dead and is therefore the reason for the exodus and absence of Millennials among its congregation, an absence that adversely affects both the local church and the community in which it sits. In response to the increasing numbers of young adults who have left the church to become “Nones” and those who have left seeking to find an ecclesial space that tends to their spiritual, cultural, and justice-engagement needs, the African Methodist Episcopal Church has attempted to ascertain a remedy for these departures. While the pious church of our founder, Bishop Richard Allen, has sustained congregants over the years, the prophetic church of the Twelfth Episcopal Prelate, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, has not been tested in my congregation as a hypothesis for reengaging this demographic in both the worship and the work of the church. This project proclaims that the creation of an alternative African-centered ecclesial space by and for Millennials can disrupt the pattern of this demographic exodus. Through traditional African religious and cultural rituals, lessons in economic justice for community engagement, African-centered hermeneutics, and opportunities for meditation and contemplation in the worship space, some Millennials will find what they have declared to be missing in the traditional church of Allen.
