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Tuesday August 7, 2007 ~ 13 Comments
I have a 20-something friend who is a short-term missionary in Spain. Her mission is to plant house churches in the midst of a collegiate community, because in her words, "most of these people would never think about setting foot inside a church." If you want to know the truth of it, very few set foot inside a church in Spain, period. For the most part, churches there are dusty museums that are a reminder of a world that existed in the distant past. If Protestant churches in America don't take the results of the Church Dropout Study and the Young Adult Study seriously, this current reality in Europe is going to be our future. While the Dropout Study focuses on young adults' behavior and perceptions between ages 18-22, the results of both studies have striking similarities. Young Adults leave churches because they don't have relationships and because there seems to be little hope of finding community because there isn't an environment to build it. The Dropout Study tells us only 44 percent of people 18 to 22 found other people like them in the church and only 41 percent said they felt at home. Only 47 percent found the church to be a welcoming environment. These issues were No. 1 in the Young Adult Study as well. Here is the truth at many churches: when you graduate from high school, you drop off the face of the earth. There is no programming for you and there is no sign from the church that you even exist. This was alarming 20 years ago. Today, it's mission critical. Here's why: Nothing could be further from the truth today in America. The average age people are getting married today is between 27 and 28 and climbing. The average age these people have children - if they have them - is climbing radically as well. That structure of the past does not support today's 20-somethings, who are waiting longer to do all of these things, out of both necessity and following the world's trends. When you're a 20-something and you're postponing all of these decisions, who befriends you, supports you, teaches you and loves you in this time of waiting? Many parents are not. With 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce and many more parents pre-occupied with materialism and chasing their own dreams, many 20-somethings get little to no support from their parents. The church is not. Post-secondary education isn't providing this support, either. More and more college students are commuting and going to school part-time because of the skyrocketing cost of education. So, they really don't have a community or a support system on campus, either. I am a very optimistic and idealistic person, so let's take this an entirely different direction. There is a great opportunity for the church to launch out into this opportunity and welcome young adults into the church. They want to know their purpose in life. They want to serve a cause greater than themselves. They crave friendship. They need to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It's time we filled this gap. Jim Johnston is the Director of Young Adult Ministry at LifeWay. Interested in learning how to solve the dropout problem at your church? Come to Profiles: Reaching a Misunderstood Generation at Brentwood (Tenn.) Baptist Church on Sept. 24-25. For more information, go to www.threadsmedia.com/events 13 CommentsComment PolicyComments are welcome on discussion posts. Comments are not moderated but do require a keyword to avoid spam. If this is your first time commenting, please review the comment policy. Leave a comment |
  
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Great reflections....
A definite challenge for the church, and one that I think has serious ramifications as the church moves forward...
I'm throwing some things out here for consideration, would love to hear thoughts and opinions.
1) Many churches (either new church plants or established churches who are holding on for dear life) have been told two primary things for the last little while. A) You have to have a booming childrens ministry. Focus on the children. Do something for the children...which is GREAT and you I think very valuable to a church..but why ---because that's what attracts the parents and families...and why do we want to attract parents and families? Because if we are honest, they bring the tithes and they bring the leadership. That's just how pastors and church planters are taught to think...this is their focus group and if you're going to have the next booming church, you had better focus on the kids first and then that brings the real honeywell, the 30 - 45 year olds with kids...
The problem with that is that YOUTH and 22 - 26 year olds are expensive and require much more emotional, relational, and financial capital to develop as disciples. To truly understand the youth and 18-26 year old culture, you have to dig. You have to mine. You have to not necessarily enter their world but truly in the words of Steven Covey (understand their world). Seek first to understand, then to be understood...and while I agree that they want friendships and community, they first want to be understood which leads me to my next point...
2) We don't UNDERSTAND this group. We don't understand what motivates them. We don't understand what plagues them. We don't understand their day to day lives because to do so would require us to be able to evaluate the cultural, media, and life influences they experience and quite frankly, most 30 - 45 year olds have already moved on from VH1 and MTV. They've moved on from the Top 25 music countdown and movies (other than animated flicks) typically don't occupy a primary timeslot in their week.
It's amazing to me how quickly we forget what we felt like when we were their age. It's amazing how immature we are to be able to consume, understand, and objectively evaluate their influences without being tainted by them.
They are a generation more informed, connected, and wired than any other in history and yet they find more and more people who can't even relate to them. Who don't possess the first interpersonal skill it takes to build solid relationships...LISTENING. People who can't disarm them. People who can't speak in their language. They crave the friendships, but they won't latch on to just anybody. You have to be authentic...you have to be real, you have to be believable. And most in that generation are not finding people that they see as believable...
Sorry for the long comment...but wanted to get the conversation going...critique as you see fit...
Marc,
It's not too long a post because everything you said is directly on target.
Your point 1: If we did invest in this age group, I think we would be surprised by their immediate investment back into the church, both from a serving and giving perspective. 70 percent of the volunteer leaders at McLean (Va.) Bible Church are under 30. And if you want to talk about giving, take a look at Passion. Passion is funding their worldwide ministry through the gifts of young adults.
Your Point 2: We really don't understand. We don't understand how hard it is to get started in life, to stay employed in the world today, to work the shifts and duties no one else will and how lonely life can be for someone who has moved across the nation or the world to start a career.
That's why LifeWay is hosting the conference Profiles: Reaching a Misunderstood Generation on Sept. 24-25 at Brentwood Baptist Church. We want to help everyone in the church understand this generation and how to reach them.
During our research into this generation, one young man asked this very troubling question of us.
"The military wants us. Politicians want us. Big companies want us. Volunteer agencies want us. Why doesn't the church want us?"
We have to change the dialogue with this age group so they will KNOW we want them.
Amazing comment, Marc. And great follow-up, Jim - I really liked that quote.
Linda Osborne just ran through the study with us minister-types out here at Glorieta's Collegiate Week. I'm a big fan of Lifeway Research - thank you for providing us (and especially our churches, who can sometimes be slow to listen to us) with real data on a super-real problem.
I was out at Glorieta Saturday through Monday, and I am sorry I missed Linda's presentation. I am certain she did a great job with her own perspective, looking through the lens of Collegiate Ministry.
The great thing is that this conversation is taking place. It's an answer to prayer.
Jim,
Great insights... and I really look forward to learning more about Threads.
Ed
I have just caught up on the previous discussion and thought I would join. I work with college students in Birmingham, AL; we have 6 colleges/universities within 20 miles of each other. If you drive 40-45 minutes SSW, you will hit Tuscaloosa, AL; college ministry there looks completely different than Birmingham. Auburn is on our SE; even there ministry looks different from both T-town and the Ham. Students from our church go to either Auburn or Alabama; very few (if any) stay here. Then, adding to the mix, we have a whole host of students who come in to go to school in the Fall/spring. That sets the stage for our 18-21 year olds. Fun, fun, fun!
It seems that the question on the table is: How do we reach this age group so they will become part of our local bodies of believers?
Do we offer them programs? Not likely. Community is right. We get them together; but for what? What purpose do we cite as the reason they gather? On what do we base our community? That's what draws - the purpose behind the community. They can have community anywhere, and DO! Go on campus any one minute.
We have cited as our purpose for gathering: Knowing Christ and maturing in Christian faith. There are others, too.
So, I pose that question, what are we telling them is the reason for community. The more solid the answer, the more solid the community, and the greater the turnout.
Community is absolutely a correct answer.
Another building block for community we found in the Young Adult Study is service/missions.
Even unchurched young adults believe they should be making a difference in the world.
They told us social action is a compelling reason they wanted to join with a church.
I believe they feel that way because they were made in the image of God, who is the ultimate giver of good things to His creation.
If you let this generation know they are gathering as a community to make the world a better place, they will come.
And when those that are lost serve shoulder to shoulder with God's people, they see Jesus Christ in action and they are saved.
That is a huge trend in young adult ministry --evangelism happening through service. We just have to be very intentional and state clearly that we are serving in the name of Jesus Christ because His love calls us to action.
Good stuff, Mr. Linton. I'm excited about your ministry there and glad I've gotten to see it first-hand. The community of which you speak was a huge blessing to us that week.
Another college minister mentioned something like this in our discussion this morning at Glorieta, but it's on my heart, too: I do hope that at least one part of our strategy will be teaching real, biblical, church as simple obedience, too.
Not to take away from everything we do to draw "collegians" - including many who, at first, couldn't care less about obeying. But at the same time, I've known many students who truly do want to follow Christ but truly don't know that this includes church. For them, a dorm Bible study or a good group of friends suffices, and they have rarely heard real teaching to suggest otherwise.
I wonder if our overcorrection from every-time-the-door's-open legalism has resulted in a very, very weak biblical apologetic for good ol' "churchmanship." I am the first to argue for everything we've already said - draw this tribe based on who they are, not based on who we are or who we've been. But please make a biblical argument alongside our felt-need-meeting - in youth groups, while they're still in their "free trial" (I love that line), but again when they're in college. And help those who know to disciple their friends unto this end, too, because they may regain many who have left the church.
The Bible's words on church are just as living-and-active as all the rest, and they will work within us to make us the church-lovers we're called to be. Students haven't "gotten over" truth-teaching. I've watched it bear great fruit all week here, with incredibly bold words day and night.
Some of the fruits of the church can only be heart-known AFTER obedience, not before. I obeyed; now I know the church is beautiful.
And all the while, we're "lifting a finger" - and far more - to help this obedience be pleasant and fruitful.
My observation is that this generation has seen the results of disobedience and they are ready to embrace absolutes and obedience to God.
The churches that are doing best at reaching this generation are those that feature strong, in-depth Bible teaching, require service and commitment and are unapologetically evangelistic.
Sounds like the definition of a healthy New Testament church to me.
Wait a minute! "Filling in the age gap" is merely reworking the same strategy that has so clearly failed.
The American church has made the way we do church too complicated. Only recently in the history of the church have we decided that we need to have a "booming" children's ministry and an "intense" youth ministry. Now that these things have failed, we think we need to have a "fill-in-the-gap" young adult ministry? Why have we separated everyone? Why have we allowed the church to accept the worldly virtue of comfort and self-focus?
In heaven, the church will be unified in every way - age, race, gender will not matter. Only Christ will matter. Why have we "improved" on the New Testament model? The simple solution is to bring the generations back together in worship... together in service... together in evangelism... together in community. Community implies diversity. Acts 2:44 "All the believers were together and had everything in common." Is anyone brave enough to give up the age-segregation mentality and lead God's people to trustingly experience the messy-and-difficult unity that God designed?
Join me in praying for it.
Great stuff. Ed, I think you are really going to like the Threads initiative. I look forward to spending some time together soon and establishing some ways to partner together in greater ways! Jim, great thoughts.
On the subject of uniting generations ...
I agree we have done a poor job of helping everyone fit together.
That's why we are recommending as a best practice of Young Adult Ministry that mentoring and intergenerational ministry play a vital role.
Young Adults need a whole church family to love and disciple them -- not just people their own age.
The more we can do this kind of thing in churches - the better off we'll be. I'm a youth minister, so I'm all for same-generational ministry too as long as it is never divorced from the body! I do believe that same-generational ministry is a cultural concession to meet people where they are.
That's because cross-generational ministry is totally counter-cultural. It's impractical and doesn't fit 'church-growth' models. But as we lead people into these kind of relationships, they will grow more and more as believers - and as human beings. Making the initial connections seems to be the challenge. I've noticed that as teens are pursued relationally by adults (especially older adults) they grow to cherish those friendships. It is these relationships that give teens and young adults a lasting connection to the church.
I think it takes leaders who are willing to accept the short-term fallout that will accompany forcing the generations together. People leave churches over this kind of change... I know. It's not an easy road - but neither was bringing Jews and Gentiles together!! Thanks for the conversation.