Like many churches in the Western world, the congregation I attend and minister at has a membership makeup that skews Baby Boomer while the overall membership is in decline. These days it’s not a unique phenomenon that the strongest, most active sector of the church is getting older and–to be frank–dying out. Meanwhile, we see that there are not as many young people replacing the aging population. My church faces this very issue.
Rightly so, people have begun to say “We need more young people.”
And I agree.
To a point.
It’s the mindset behind the question that makes me feel uneasy.
It’s my own observation that in a church of 150 on a good day, I can count the members between 13 and 30 on just two hands. We aren’t without kids–several little ones run around the auditorium when the service ends. We have a children’s minister doing great work with the youngest members. Nevertheless, the lack of youthful vigor from the teen and young adult population is certainly striking.
I am 24 years old. I am one of the ten or so “youngins” that exist in my congregation. Originally, this church hired me to function as a college minister. I did the best I could to serve and support the 10 or more college students that regularly found themselves in the ministry. It wasn’t long before the group faded to zero. Its death came at the hand of graduations, students entering into a season of business, and when one of our most active couples left because they didn’t like to be the only ones that regularly showed up to events. And then there was a pandemic. I too have to take the blame: being hyper-extroverted and talking to strangers on campus is not in my DNA.
The church took notice too. Typically, the college students and twentysomethings would sit together up front in the middle section of the pews. We would literally be on display for the whole church to see. During Summers, the void is unmistakable. In that time when students were back home, people would often speak about how they miss seeing the students there. In the Fall, when the few rows filled up again, someone up front was almost guaranteed to make a comment about how they liked to see it filled up again. I even heard comments like: “It’s nice to see the future of the church is in good hands.”
Perhaps I’m being too cynical (and let me tell you, I’m usually an optimist), but it’s hard not to see in these comments a reduction of young people to a numerical value. I’d wager that some of the folks making comments about the empty pews didn’t know a single name of someone in the college ministry. The people who applauded young people just for showing up (the bar is apparently very low) likely never sat down to hear their story.
I truly think intentions are genuine when anyone in the world is glad to see young people present in the church community. Please don’t get me wrong and think I’ve dismissed the care of many people from my congregation and in other congregations. It’s valid to recognize that church attendance and faith, in general, is no longer the default setting. So, yes, there is a certain bravery in coming to church despite the dismal trends in the opposite direction.
But that’s no excuse to turn a real live Imago Deo human being who’s in their 20s into a number. We shouldn’t be glad that young people show up because we need young people to fill the gaps. It’s not about getting the right-aged bodies into the doors and into the seats for the hour-long Sunday worship. That’s not our end goal.
Instead, each member of a church matters because they have something to offer the body of Christ. There is intrinsic value in people. I’ve encouraged my own church on a few occasions to reject the temptation to reduce people to mere numbers by changing their language. Instead of “I’m glad the college students are back” you should say something more specific “I’m so glad Addison and her ability to translate the service into sign language is back after the break.” If we miss the students because there’s a gap in the pews, but we don’t know their names or interests–we have a problem.
The Solution
All that was an elaborate preamble to the meat and potatoes. Surely, you’d like to know the solution to getting young people to come to church. This generation of young people–no matter how you slice and dice them by birth year–is certainly unique. Yet the same tactic is going to work with the youth of today that was pioneered by the early church. Ready for it?
Relationships.
The church is an intergenerational family knitted together not by our own blood but by the Blood of Jesus. Connection is key to this society. We meet together, eat together, study together to spur one another on in love and good deeds (10:24-25). Relationship matter.
I’ve witnessed awkward encounters between the young and the old, and experienced my fair share myself. It’s hard to relate to someone 40 years your senior who grew up in a dramatically different world, just as it is difficult to relate to someone 40 years your junior. Both sides have to, of course, put in the work. I fully recognize that many young people don’t put in any effort whatsoever to connect to older people (though I’d say in a church with a majority of older adults, it falls on those leaders to initiate).
While the old adage of “respect your elders” is fine advice, I find that the elders I respect the most are the ones that respect me. They make me feel safe, loved, and valued. The older adults who I connect with the best choose love over judgment and come up alongside me instead of talking down to me. The older adults I have the best relationship with aren’t make excusatory political remarks and aren’t railing against “kids these days.” Instead, they give me a voice.
Older adults, you got to build relationships with young people if you want them to stick around. Invite us to lunch—maybe with another young person so we aren’t awkwardly alone. Consider getting us a gift–free food is always welcome. Get into conversations about us instead of monopolizing time with your own stories of the good old days. But above all, it’s going to require listening.
Too often, young people are approached as problems. They are stereotyped with a myriad of labels designed to dismiss anything we have to say without even considering the accuracy. Labels abound like “woke” or “brainwashed” or “self-centered” or “hedonistic.” These labels also cause us to miss the reality that many of these things aren’t generational traits but symptoms of the stage in life–Gen Z didn’t invent rebellious teen years. Remember the 70s? Many adults feel like they need to speak the truth and call out the problems that they see in a generation, but this can become a problem in its self.
Truth is good. But to do so in love so often requires us to stop talking. At least for a moment. Truth without a relationship can become destructive. A relationship is the spoon full of sugar that helps the medicine go down. This might shock you, but did you know that people are more convinced by someone who presents an argument with kindness and gentleness, over the dude who just yells a bunch? If you feel prevented from connecting to a young person because their lifestyle, beliefs, or generational attributes rub you wrong, then starting a relationship not only might make you an authoritative voice in their lives–it might make you realize you had it all wrong to begin with.
You need a strong relational foundation long before you can start the process of speaking wisdom into a person’s life. It’s a three-part process as I see it: be an ear, then be a shoulder, then be a mouth. In other words, first listen, next show you care, and then finally you will earn the right to speak. This process takes time, however. But so do the best things in life.
When you do have a chance to speak, one tip is to speak from your experience, not from a list of rules—it makes your words more authentic. In other words say, “When I did this, that happened and then I learned X.” Don’t say: “Do this, and don’t do this, don’t do that, but do this.” Telling your own story is more meaningful than laying down your own Ten Commandments. Trust me on this–youth these days don’t want to be preached at. They have enough people and institutions and organizations telling them what to do. As you practice your listening, there will naturally be times when you should speak. Young people need your voice. But there are ways when your well-meaning advice pushes people away instead of inviting them further into spiritual community with you.
Where Do We Go From Here
As a former college minister turned associate minister turned Resident Hall Director at a Christian college, you may be surprised to learn I actually don’t think church programming is the answer to all this. Planned functions and age-specific classes and modern worship songs are fine and dandy. But at the end of the day, it’s going to be the people that make someone want to come back again and again. If the church truly becomes the family we are supposed to be, then how “fun” church is no longer matters. The true attraction should be in how each member of a given church displays the transformation that Christ has made in their thoughts, actions, and behavior. If we are doing that–everyone is going to want in!
As Chuck Bomar writes in College Ministry From Scratch: “In my experience the most effective way of making sure we’re addressing these age-stage issues, as well as forming deeper connections to the church as a whole, is by helping form natural, mentor-like relationships between college-age students and older, spiritually mature adults.”
For Bomar who was spent much of his life training college ministers, you measure the success of a program by A) Age-Stage Issues are Adequately Addressed and B) Connections with Other Believers are Present. We don’t measure by numbers. We measure based on whether or not those goals are met. For that second goal, we can tell it’s being met if older adults frequently invest one-on-one with young people, if younger people can show up to older people’s houses unannounced, or if a young person contacts an older believer when they have a problem.
Older people (if you wonder which category you fall in, just assume you are an older person)–we need your help. My intention is not to throw all the blame on your way. It’s not to downplay the important role you have in the church. It’s not to trash tradition in favor of what’s hot and new. It’s just that Satan loves to pit generations against each other. Sometimes we don’t realize how our words or actions affect other people. To really fight against Satan’s influence in our world, we need to unite the generations.
If you want young people back in the church, it’s time to start listening. We need you to listen. With relationships, we can both honor each other’s perspectives and opinions and together grow into the people that God wants us to become. That’s our goal. This must be our mission.
