young adults

What Story Are You Telling?: Missional Young Adult Ministry (Super Serial Post #6)

Short Reads

I am nervous about writing this post. I’m nervous because it seems that every child of God with a blog has written a post about young adults and the church.

In full disclosure, I’ve written a few (like this one).

Young Adults are having a moment. Every corporation and organization wants to understand Millennials so that they will buy their products. The church is not immune. Pastors in all denominations and branches of Western Christianity are scratching their heads and wondering where the young adults are.

I just love stock photography.

I just love stock photography.

Folks are looking to blog posts, books, other popular pastors, and anyone else who may help them tap into the young adult fountain.

This blog post is part of a series on missional Christianity, so the question here is slightly different than some of the other blog posts out there. My primary concern is not how to get young adults to go to church or even how to make our churches more attractive to young adults.

This line of thinking represents a model of church that the missional understanding rejects. The goal is not to attract young people to sit in the pews, the goal is to reach out and bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to young adults where they are.

Instead of providing the five easy steps to attracting young adults, I will give you two questions to ask when thinking about young adult ministry in your church or community.

The first question is why do you want to reach out to young adults? What is the goal? Are you hoping that young adults will breathe new life into your congregation? Do you think young adults will make your parish a little more hip? Do you think that young adults lead to young families which leads to church growth?

Everyone has a motive. To be clear, the motives listed above are not inherently bad, but it is important to understand what you want from the young adults you are seeking to reach. Young adults have energy and passion, yes. Young adults are often slightly ‘cooler’ than other generations (myself excluded). Young adults often start families and invite friends to church.

These things are true and they shouldn’t be the reason for reaching out to young adults.

The primary reason for reaching out to young adults (and everyone else) is the Great Commission – the fact that Jesus told us to tell the world that we have something they need.

This brings me to the second question to ask when trying to reach out to young adults. What story are you telling?

Young adults have grown up in a world in which they are constantly being sold things. From phone screens to televisions to billboards to every space in between, young adults are used to weeding through advertising to find the content they connect with.

Advertisers know that they need to tell a story through their marketing. The general story is that there is a problem (whether real or made up) and their product will solve that problem. If you tell the story of the problem well enough, you won’t need to work hard to sell your solution.

Christianity has the proto-story. We have the greatest solution to the world’s deepest problem. That is our story. And yet, many churches are telling a different story and it shows.

One common story that I see churches telling is that we don’t have enough members and we want more, no matter what it takes.

Another story I see churches telling is that there are social problems in the world and the church is an organization that fixes social problems.

Your church is telling a story, that is not a question. The question is whether or not you are being intentional about the story you are telling.

Young adults can tell when they are being sold of a bill of goods or a faulty solution. Too often, church leaders guess the story that young adults want to hear and respond accordingly.

Church leaders think, “Young adults love to hang out in bars. They must love to talk about theology in a bar.” Or they think, “When I was a young adult, I loved acoustic guitars in worship. We need a contemporary service to attract young adults.”

I am not bashing these two examples. I know many young adults who love theology on tap and contemporary services. The trouble arises when church leaders think that either of these outreach methods (or anything else) is the magic bullet that will have young adults flocking.

Young adults do not have a “Spidey-sense” for guitar music and pastors in blue jeans.

Someone is singing "Sanctuary"... I can feel it.

Someone is singing “Sanctuary”… I can feel it.

The magic bullet is not a program or event, the magic bullet is to figure out what story your congregation is telling and tell it well.

As I said in my last post about youth ministry, the greatest thing that the church has to offer the world is meaning through Jesus Christ and meaning is something that transcends all settings, events, and outreach methods.

I think the urge to hold bible studies in bars or to adapt worship music to more popular modes of musical expression is a good one. It is the first step in the missional journey, but we can’t stop there.

A priest walks into a bar...

A priest walks into a bar…

We can’t stop once the young adult is at the bar bible study because once that young adult leaves the bar and comes to your church the story changes. Often, things don’t match up. The story you are telling about your church at the bar on Wednesday night doesn’t match the church they see on Sunday morning.

Authenticity is so important when reaching out to young adults. Don’t tell a story that isn’t true just so young adults will come to your church. Don’t give them window dressing.

The best way to reach out to young adults is to let your community of faith do what it does best. Don’t try to be a social club or a charity or a concert venue, but simply be the church that you are.

You don’t have to change or add new programs to attract young adults. You must simply live your life on purpose and be fully engaged in the mission of God.

You will need to change if your mission isn’t clear and your story is muddled.

You will need to change if your doors only open in. 

Alan Hirsch and Darryn Altclass say, “Remissionalizing [a church is] about gearing the whole community around natural discipling friendships, worship as lifestyle, and mission in the context of everyday life.”

Reaching out to young adults in a missional way means getting to know the young folks that work in your office or that hang around the coffee shop where you do your work. It means listening to the young adults that already attend your church to find out what story they are telling.

It means living out your faith in a way that points to Christ

It means that we must stop guessing what young adults want and go out into our community to find out what they really need.

It means learning our own story so that we can tell it to those around us.

It doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel or coming up with a new story all together.

Michael Frost sums it up by saying, “When we have no impressive buildings and no swollen budgets to sustain our work, often only then do we realize that the best we have to offer this post-Christendom world is the quality of our relationships, the power of our trustworthiness, and the wonder of our generosity.”

Transformative young adult ministry takes time. It takes the long, hard work of building authentic relationships. It takes effort to learn how to best articulate our story. It takes prayer and study. It takes risk.

The Christian story is the most captivating and transformative story in history. For two-thousand years, people who have lived their lives from within the Christian story have done miraculous things and changed the world.

We need to put the spark back in the story that we are telling. 

I’ll leave you with another quote, this one from Antoine de Saint-Exupery, that describes the reframing that must happen for the church to reach out and impact the lives of young adults (and everyone else as well).

Please note, there is so much more to be said about missional young adult ministry. You can rest assured that you will hear more from me about this topic as I begin my work with the people of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia in the next months.

For now, I leave you with these words, “If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work; rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.” 

4 Myths about Young Adults and Church

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It seems like the heat has died down somewhat around Millennials and Young Adults. There was a stretch last year where it seemed like every blog post or magazine article had something to do with my beloved generation. We were either too lazy and self-centered or incredibly altruistic and compassionate. We were, at the same time, coddled by our parents and forced to fend for ourselves in a economic recession. Each blog post offered the secrets to tapping into this ‘market’ for companies, employers, and anyone else who stood to profit off any insights into the largest generation in America.

Church blogs were no different. Posts offered the new tips and tricks to get Millennials/Young Adults through the red doors of the church. Contemporary music, ancient hymns, bible studies in a bar, no church building, huge cathedrals. The tips and trick were legion. And they were oftentimes wrong.

They were wrong because of the premise with which they started. The idea that any large group of people can be boiled down to a blog post listing of characteristics and traits is foolish (I recognize the irony in that statement as I write a blog post listing). Millennials are the largest generation in America; there is no way that a blog post can sum up their collective interests or common attitudes.

To help spur this conversation on, I have complied a list of the most common myths that I have seen or heard about Millenials and Young Adults, especially when it comes to church:

1. Millennials are monolithic. As I mentioned above, there is no way to succinctly say what every Millennial wants or cares about and anyone who says that they know “what Millennials want” is a)lying or b)trying to sell you something. In the same way that no one can speak for every retiree or every baby boomer, no one can speak for every young adult. What this means for the church is that there is not one solution to the “young adult” problem. There is not one magic program or secret bible study curriculum or perfect liturgy that is going to have young adults flocking to your church.

2. Millennials aren’t interested in organized religion. The Emergent Church movement capitalized on the myth that the “church of the future” wouldn’t look anything like the institutional church that we all know. I contend that the Emergent Church movement blew up in popularity because of baby boomers and Gen X-ers, not Millennials. Many of the young adults I have talked to about the institutional church are fully aware of the sins of the past and the blunders of the recent decades, and yet, they are interested in being a part of the community and bringing about positive change from within the church. Organized religion is not going to suddenly disappear because young people aren’t interested. If anything, organized religion will disappear because it has lost sight of its original purpose and lost its soul. This is especially true of Christianity in America. The “Great Decline” could be linked to the  mainline churches losing their ‘saltiness’. Jesus warns that we (the Church) are the salt of the earth, but if we lose our saltiness we can never get it back and we will be thrown away. Millennials, for the most part, aren’t opposed to the institutional church, they just wish that we would embrace our saltiness. They are drawn to Jesus but they can’t seem to find the same attractive, “Other-ness” of Christ in the average church.

3. Millennials all want to hang out in bars. The newest trend in the mainline churches is to host bible studies or hymn-sings in local bars. “Theology on Tap”, started by the Catholic Church, was the first organized effort to take the church into the saloon. It seems to have all the things that the mainline churches love: alcohol, community, and a very clear way of saying that we are NOT like those other, prudish Christians. We’re cool. We’re hip. We can pray and drink at the same time. The issue is that not every single young adult loves hanging out in bars. Alcoholism is a problem for young adults, just like it is a problem for every other age group. In fact, many young adults come out of college with an extremely unhealthy relationship with alcohol. There are many young adults who are alcohol dependent, but have no idea that their drinking isn’t normal because of the current zeitgeist around alcohol. There are also young adults who just don’t like to drink or hang out in bars. Some think that the Church should be different from the culture, not just a copycat. How many folks, not just young adults, are automatically excluded from church events because they are held in bars or because alcohol is the underlying theme? An article in the June issue of Christianity Today calls on churches to reconsider their relationship with alcohol in light of the commandment to “love our neighbor”. If your neighbor (or parishioner or young adult seeker) is struggling with alcoholism, how loving is it to host a bible study in a bar? At what point do we recognize that we are sacrificing inclusion of all people for the sake of being ‘relevant’ and ‘cool’. If you are a young adult (or anyone) who thinks they might have a problem with alcohol, please follow this link.

4. Millennials can be attracted, if only we have the right [liturgy, programming, leadership, whatever]. The moment that the Church stops seeing Millennials as a group to be attracted is the moment that Millennials will feel comfortable in church. It feels wrong to talk about tricking people into coming to church, but that is essentially what churches do when they pretend to be something they are not to attract young adults. By adding programming and other things that are out of character for the local church, we become salespeople who are trying to repackage Jesus so that he is more palatable. The truth is this: Jesus doesn’t need our help attracting people. The Word of God has been calling folks to himself since the beginning, with or without the exciting new programs the Church has invented. Young Adults are not the target audience for a new marketing campaign, they are people who need the love and peace of God like everyone else. We cannot afford to be reductionist about the people in our churches, because the mission of the church is far bigger than Millennials – it is about the holy, ordinary people of God…of all ages. The source of most sin is disunity, which may be why on of Jesus’s last commandments is a call to unity. If we focus on the wide variety of people in our churches, of all ages and stages in life, perhaps we will see our unity and our saltiness return.

Doomsday Preppers (Church Edition).

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People love to talk about why the church is dying. They have graphs, numbers, and possible causes.

What people don’t have is a solution. Some suggest that churches need to be more open and accepting; others say the church needs to be more tech savvy; while others say that denominations, themselves, are the problem. There are endless posts bemoaning the slowly dying church. But much like the character in Monty Python’s Holy Grail who is trying desperately to put his father on the cart of dead bodies before he is actually dead, I see this conversation about the dying church as a little misguided.

In fact, I say its all rubbish.

In keeping with the increasingly popular blog format of list-making, I propose a few reasons why the seemingly endless talk about the “end of the church” is not helpful or needed.

1. “The Body of Christ has died once, it cannot die again.” I wish that I could claim this wonderful insight, but it comes from Bishop Susan Goff of the Diocese of Virginia, where I am a Postulant. It came in the context of a talk she gave to my seminary class during our retreat last year. She said that the church can never die because its mission is too serious, its existence is too needed, and, most importantly, it is called for by God. This does not mean that the church will always look like it does right now (but more on that below). The Early Church would be shocked if they saw the church today – not because of any failing morals, but because there is no way they could have imagined what the church/world would look like two-thousand years in the future. In the same way that Martin Luther (whose actions were seen, by some, to be killing the church) could never have imagined a church that would produce Martin Luther King, we have no frame of reference for what the church will look like hundreds of years from now – let alone twenty-five years from now. They kept fighting the good fight because they believed that the Body of Christ would live on and that it would continue to be guided by the Holy Spirit.

2. Judge a tree by its fruit. Jesus was big on tree talk. He talked a lot about how some trees produce good fruit while other trees produce bad fruit. The good fruit producers go on producing good fruit, while the trees that produce bad fruit or don’t produce fruit at all are cut down or left to wither. It is a simple concept that applies to churches. If a church is producing good fruit (committed disciples of Christ, just and fair communities, healthy programs for kids and young adults, etc.) the church tends to grow or at least remains a stable part of its community. If a church begins producing bad fruit (increased in-fighting, cult of personality around a pastor or leader, little or no outreach, scandals, etc.) or no fruit at all, it tends to wither – sometimes slowly over years, other times quickly in a matter of months. Churches closing is not the worst case scenario if the church is not producing good fruit. Of course, the rub is that some of the churches that appear to be producing “bad” fruit (from the correct position of educated, liberal, “mainstream” Protestant denominations [please read sarcasm into this aside]) are growing at an incredible rate. I have no answer to this phenomenon except to say that the anecdotal evidence I have heard about mega-churches and their (often) “prosperity Gospel” message is that they are great places to worship… until something goes terribly wrong in your life. When life takes a turn towards tragedy and pain, being a face in the crowd at church is no longer a good thing. When it seems like your life is going to hell in a hand basket, it is refreshing to walk into a service where people know your name and can recognize the pain in your eyes. I want it to be clear that I am not bashing all mega-churches and I am not saying that every mega-church preaches the “prosperity Gospel”. Even the biggest and best-run mega-church has small groups, because they recognize that Christian community needs to be intimate enough for personal building-up and relationships.

3. Change is not bad. Repeat this phrase as many times as it takes for you un-clinch your fists and see straight again. The church will never again be like it was when you were growing up. Ever. There is no returning to mythological “good ole days” of the church. I say mythological because I am not convinced that the “good ole days” were all that good, but we humans have this nasty habit of making every memory a little better than it actually was. The church of the 1950s is gone. So is the church of the 1960s-1980s. In fact, the church of 2012 no longer exists. The church of December 17, 2013 is about to disappear. In the Gospels, Christ was always moving forward, always pressing on to his goal: Jerusalem. In the same way, the Body of Christ (the church) is always moving forward towards the goal of the New Jerusalem . Rob Bell’s new book, “What We Talk About When We Talk About God” has some great insights into this matter. We so often think that anything that is good has to stay the same or it will stop being good. Think about this: is the person (or pet or family member or performing artist) you are in love with the exact same that they were the moment you fell in love with them? I sure hope not. Both you have grown and matured and learned and changed. And yet, you are still in love. Without opening a huge can of worms, it is also worth noting that the “good ole days” of the church were only “good” for a select group of people. Minorities of all types did not share in the same “good ole days” of the church. Some of these minority groups are living in what could be considered their “good ole days” as we speak. We need to check our own perspectives before we start speaking for anything as big, diverse, and mysterious as the church.

4. Young adults are not actually leaving the church. The “breaking news” in church life for the past fifty years has been how the new generation (pick one: Generation X, Y, Z, Millenials, etc.) is lazy, disrespectful towards tradition and is leaving the church in record numbers. Someone will no doubt point out the surveys and polls that show that a growing number of young adults self-identify as “Nones” and that every year the number of non-church goers rises. Here is another figure: the median age of my class at seminary is 27. You read that right. Half of the Class of 2015 at the largest Episcopal seminary in the United States is under the age of 27. Young adults like my classmates and myself are so drawn to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the Episcopal Church that we would go to seminary, in the face of this false narrative of decline (check out this lecture by the Dean of VTS on this myth), and give our lives to the service of Christ and the church. Many parishes and Dioceses across the Episcopal Church have thriving youth and young adult programs that are attracting tons of people. Folks like Jason Evans in the Diocese of Washington are doing great work to bring young adults into the church because they recognize this fact: the Episcopal Church is in a wonderful position when it comes to young adults. Survey after survey shows that young adults want authenticity, tradition, and reverence in their worship (for more on the research see Dr. David Gortner’s book). Right off the bat you should have noticed that these are three descriptions of the Episcopal Church: authentic in our worship, supported by the Anglican tradition, and with a healthy dose of reverence that is missing from most other places in society.

This list is not exhaustive or authoritative. It is not my thesis and has not been researched as such. This post is simply to observation of a young adult who is tired of being told that people my age don’t go to church and that the church is quickly dying. I reject this narrative and propose instead that we keep our eyes on Christ and keep being the church (to each other and to the world).

As Christians, we claim that there is a King and a Kingdom coming that will make everything right and new, therefore we have no time for the cynicism that pervades much of American culture. As this wave of negativity and ‘what-if’ seeps into the life of the church, we must stand against it and with the cloud of witnesses proclaim, “Alleluia!” To paraphrase the book of Esther,  we were made for such a time as this. We do not know what the church will look like in the future, but we can be sure it won’t look like it did in the past. There are already many groups that have stepped up to the task of working towards the changes that need to happen in the church. The Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church  is hard at work on the national level and individual Dioceses have started groups to come together, pray, and imagine what the church can be. Honoring those who have come before, helping those in the church today, and laying the foundation for a church that will serve the people of God well into the future.

We are not called to put on sackcloth and beat our chest at the end of the church. We are called to proclaim that that God we serve is not a God of the dead but of the living. Doomsday is coming, sure. Until that time, let us be the Body of Christ to a world in desperate need.