Helping Our Church Connect With Young Adults

One of the action plans emerging from our summer leadership seminar is a plan for reaching young adults. In different settings, that means different things, but basically, "young adults" are those between 18 and 40 years of age, including college students, singles and young married couples. It's an aim that makes sense for our church for several reasons. One, there are large numbers of people who fall into that age range living in the neighborhoods we consider to be our field. Two, the percentage of unchurched in this age demographic is high all across North America, and in our church, they represent the smallest number of adults. Three, according to research, they are not as hard to reach as we might think, especially when the church is willing to be the church, preach and teach the truth of the word, and find meaningful service opportunities for adults in those age brackets.

Many of the basic structures that are necessary for reaching young adults, things which help build community, expressive worship and ministries which meet their needs, are already in place at GOBC. We have home fellowship groups for community building, a contemporary worship service, ministries which are involved in evangelism and discipleship of preschoolers and children, and a five day a week Early Learning Center with 90 families involved. Our plan must include ways to tie all of these things together and become aggressive in our outreach.

The prospects for such a ministry are encouraging. According to the authors of both Essential Church, and Comeback Churches, Thom and Sam Rainer and Ed Stetzer, a significant number of young adults are willing to consider the gospel of Jesus Christ if it is presented to them in an understandable and meaningful way. Our job involves making new disciples, teaching them, building community for them and giving them meaningful ways to express their faith through service.

Contrary to popular belief, if the church wants to reach young adults, it needs to be the church, rather than fall prey to the consumer idea that the church must resort to accomodation and appeasement in order to get young adults involved. The latter model may attract people who are already believers from other churches, but it doesn't provide any kind of foundation on which to do kingdom building. If we are willing to teach the truth of God's word, and then disciple those who are willing to follow it, we will get a response from people.

We will start by getting our young adults together for a time of fellowship and a meal. From there, we will formulate a plan for moving forward. If you are a young adult between the ages of 18 and 40 and you are already a part of GOBC, please give careful, prayerful consideration to a serious level of involvement in this ministry.