October 4, 2024
Church leaders, congregants, and pastors verbally acknowledge the need to reach young adults with phrases like “Young people just don’t come to church anymore,” “Growing up, we never missed a Sunday,” or maybe even “We have a lost generation, Lord come quickly.” Why are young adults so hard to find in our communities?
These phrases are part of why it’s challenging for us to reach young adults in the church. We want young adults to understand the value of church life, but we can unintentionally use shame to motivate them to attend, participate, or volunteer. Shame is not a motivator. Many of the frustrations surrounding our failure to reach young adults are less about them and more about us.
Along with aging congregations, pastoral age demographics are shifting, with the average age of pastors hovering right below 54. But age is not our weakness; it’s often our greatest strength and source of wisdom. Age does not dictate your vision; your mindset does.
The challenge our churches face in reaching young adults is connecting with them in authentic relationships and being a friend worth having. We lean toward a mindset that values programs over people. Programs can offer environments that foster relationships, but how often do we sacrifice relationships in the name of maintaining a program that we have “always done”?
Relationships have a currency. It may be a business relationship, a family member, or a church attender. Each of these relationships involves exchanging communication, ideas, emotions, and value. Authenticity is the currency of the young adult generation. Authenticity in relationships connects people, shares truth in love, and ultimately creates a friend worth having. Young adults will evaluate the authenticity of your church based on the following questions.
In an era of social media where being noticed is measured in reactions, young adults feel engaged in in-person relationships. The same authentic interaction in the Garden of Eden still works because it’s how God wired us. We can have relationships outside of in-person interactions, like Paul did when writing to churches. However, anchor relationships in our lives are primarily in person.
Names immediately create an authentic heart connection. Your name is valuable to you; throughout Scripture, names are essential, including the names of God. This next level of interaction with young adults initiates a friendship connection and a deeper level of communication.
Nearly 1 in 3 young adults say they have no trusted relationships. Young adults don’t want to be a goal, a plan, or a project. They desire intentional connections with one another for their interests, passions, and challenges. Just one authentic relationship that reaches the level of being known can multiply into a culture of disciple-making.
In the church, authentic worship means we don’t have to produce a polished production or perfect the clicking of the words on the screen. We need to be who we are, authentically worshiping the Lord together. Serving inside and outside the church authentically means we may not be perfect in our execution, but we should be authentic in expressing love for others and the lost. Growing authentically means we need disciple-making environments where truth in love is shared, just as Jesus modeled.
Being a friend worth having means owning your actions as part of the disciple-making process. You make disciples by being a friend worth having, as Jesus was, replicating His discipleship relationships. In Luke 7:34, Jesus is called a friend of sinners, specifically people far from God. Discipleship is friendship based on Scripture, as Jesus modeled.
Without authenticity in our friendships, we are empty in our efforts to influence and engage in a lost and dying world. In the frustration of losing young adults in the church, we can retreat to shaming a lost generation instead of being resourceful like the apostle Paul.
To connect young adults, churches must prepare for authentic relationships, not programs. But programs are not irrelevant. Programs should help us align our mission, vision, and strategies to achieve a replicable outcome.
However, the issue with a program is that it needs the same input to get the same output. An inflexible program input means something built for a prior generation or specific task is not made to receive a new variable.
In this case, the current generation of young adults may not be the input your program was built to accept. Stop blaming or shaming young adults who don’t fit our current programs and find a way forward.
Be as flexible as the apostle Paul to be all things to all people so some may come to know Him as their Lord and Savior. We must reflect authentic relationships with our communities and be friends worth having to connect young adults to our churches. This may take time but will yield exponential results. We must intentionally help young adults connect to our churches.
We can fail, but we can’t be mediocre. Your church’s pathway to connecting young adults is much like the generation before it and the generation Paul reached. Young adults can feel hard to communicate with and are distant from how you currently do things. The sacrifice of having a mindset to see young adults and engage them can seem daunting.
Friend, you are not alone. The challenge is not unique to this generation; it has happened every generation since Jesus gave the Great Commission. Relationships always have and will always be the center of what binds us to share the gospel and reach a lost world. It has been done before, so let’s be encouraged that it can be done again. Go and make disciples and be a friend worth having.
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Dr. PJ Dunn serves the Georgia Baptist Mission Board as a discipleship consultant.
