I know a lot has already been said at nauseum online about young adults and that they are leaving the church in droves. The reason I am posting this is not to try to add one more voice among the millions but to start a conversation on what it means to be a healthy church that is able to reach and retain people no matter what their age. These three sessions dig into some of the core problems that are hurting our churches and what we can do to dig out from under that to develop a church community that is real, vibrant and deeply spiritual. I hope you will have a listen and/or pass this along to someone who might find this helpful.
These were presented at the Spiritual Growth Workshop in Orlando back in June. If you can only listen to one, listen to Session 2 with Lance! His perspective is much needed in our churches and out of this presentation came this article for Wineskins that I thought was outstanding – Weakness: A Driving Force in Ministry.
Session 1 – Reaching Young Adults – The Problems
Session 2 – Reaching Young Adults – Solutions (with Lance Morgan)
Session 3 – Reaching Young Adults – Application To Your Congregation
Many thanks to Spiritual Growth Workshop for the permission to post these.
One Response
I listened to the first two, and I gathered that the main focus is getting the young back to church. While that is admirable, shouldn’t a lot of the focus be on getting the young to follow Jesus and doing for others as Jesus did? Jesus likely followed the teaching of Isaiah (ch 1) when he went right to the people. Now Jesus went to synagogue “as was his custom” but he also mingled among the people and did for them, healing he sick, raising the dead, etc. even violating the Sabbath laws to do so.
It has long been ingrained in people that quitting attending church is falling away from God and that is not always the case. Tragically, many young people quit going to church to save what faith they had left. This should be a wakeup call to ministers and church leaders to think about what is being taught and how it is being taugh and just how outsiders are treated and received.