The older generation, the congregants said, had drifted away from Jesus’s example.

“What the church has done wrong is that it has created these ‘holy huddles’ of Christian magazines, music and schools that have set them apart from the world because the world is bad,” said Mr. Beckemeier, who grew up in an evangelical family. “Instead of doing what Christ did, and bring light to the world, they retreat from it.”

Image We go where people are because we feel like Jesus went to the people, said the Rev. Darrin Patrick, founder of the Journey. Credit... Virginia Lee Hunter for The New York Times

Younger evangelicals focus more on “the ethic of Jesus” than on political issues, said Adam Smith, editor of the religion and culture magazine Relevant. They gravitate toward practical social action, Mr. Smith and others said, like working with poor, academically troubled inner-city schools, a priority at the Journey, or against human trafficking. While older evangelicals are also involved in such issues, younger people shy away from their emphasis on political organizing.

“They are very much turned off by the suit-and-tie power brokers of the evangelical right,” said David P. Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Georgia.

Within American evangelicalism more broadly, there has been some rethinking of its image and priorities. Younger evangelicals feed that new drive and are beginning to lead it. Their efforts have resonated with some older leaders, but they have also created a backlash.

Jonathan Merritt, 25, is a graduate of Liberty University, the son of a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and himself a former Republican precinct chairman in Georgia. A seminarian, he now calls himself an independent conservative. In March, he introduced an environmental initiative urging Southern Baptists to do more to combat climate change, saying their current position was “too timid.”

After beginning with 44 signers, the initiative now has about 250, including pastors, university professors and the current and past presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention. But Richard Land, president of the convention’s powerful advocacy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, did not sign the initiative. He said his group had concerns about it that they had made known to some signers, who then rescinded their support.

On May 15, Mr. Land’s group introduced its own online petition called “We Get It!” that questions the science around global warming and warns that “millions of people around the world are threatened by extreme environmental policies.”