The pastor of a large church sat down with the kids in their youth ministry and said, “I want you to be honest. Tell me what you think about your church.”
After some hesitation they said, “This is not our church.”
He was floored; these kids had grown up in that church. “What do you mean this is not your church?”
“This is our parents’ church. This is you-all’s church. We come and do some things that are okay, but it’s not our church.”
Most older Christians would be surprised to learn how young people really feel about the church. Many young people feel the older ones don’t care. If young people are going to own their faith, we must help them see the church as their own.
When I came to Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church in 1994, we had some 200 people, three-quarters of them over 50, and less than 10 teenagers active in the ministry. I decided right away I needed to motivate our senior saints to make the sacrifices necessary to reach out.
The first task? To make sure each member understood the purpose of the church. It’s a mistake to assume parishioners know that.
Start with the known
People who have been in church for a long time can have a consumer mentality. I had to establish the authority of the Word as the manual for the church. This allowed me to present an objective standard of truth. All the church was doing could be evaluated in the light of God’s Word, not just our opinions.
Then, when trying to reach others, you motivate those in the church to care by revealing the needs of those close to them.
One day I said from the pulpit, “I want you to look around this congregation and tell me who’s missing. Are your children here? Are your grandchildren here?”
If I talk generically about “the unreached,” church people don’t connect. But when I talk about family, then it comes home. Many older people do not realize the opportunity and the power they have to make a positive impact on their grandchildren’s generation.
When I started putting more emphasis on reaching young people, not everyone was immediately enthusiastic. The jury was out for a while. Some parents and grandparents came to me later and said, “I wasn’t behind it 100 percent, but I see the results. I’m still not completely comfortable, but keep on with what you’re doing.”
Ministry youth can own
What we did was radical for some folks. I gave our youth prime-time exposure. Sunday morning was no longer for the sacred professionals. We allowed our children and youth to use their gifts and talents to the glory of God. They sang, mimed, praise-danced, spoke, and prayed.
The key to facilitating change is to create alternatives, not substitutes.
I teach that Sunday morning is when we cheer and encourage our youth and children as they worship. It’s no different than when grandparents go to a football game to cheer for their grandkids. When our youth sing, they might not always do as well as we would like, and they might not sing our favorite songs, but that doesn’t stop me from insisting that everybody cheer as long as it edifies some member of the church family.
We have also introduced special events. We’ll bring kids in from the community for all-day workshops on karate, dance, “steppin,” Christian rap, choir, along with biblical teaching and ministry training. Then we’ll put on a big production on, say, a Friday night. We then bring a piece of that production into the Sunday morning service.
Is there 100 percent support? No. You always run the risk of offending someone. When some of the older folks saw productions like these, they had reservations, but then they heard their grandsons saying, “I have to get to church.”
“What do you mean you have to get to church?”
“I have to practice.”
Instead of the parents dragging kids to church, now they see them excited about coming.
Currently we are creating ways to give kids complete ownership of certain things. They need to be able to point to something and say, “This is ours.”
An example was our New Year’s Eve service. We gave the planning completely to the kids. They designed it, advertised it, and led it. Hundreds came to the event, and all of them were young or young-at-heart.
In contrast to four years ago, now we have over 100 youth active in the ministry.
It’s easier to add than subtract
The key to facilitating change is to create alternatives, not substitutes.
On the Gulf Coast, I saw a church built on stilts over water and reeds. At one time the stilts were wooden. The last time I drove by, the pillars were concrete. I wondered, How do you change pillars? One thing I know, they didn’t knock the old pillars out until the new ones were in place.
If I create an alternative, I let people go where they want. Time will take care of a lot of other issues.
I have done several things to assure the older folks we were not going to knock the pillars out in this church. I’ve been at the church four years, and though all of our leaders are appointed every year by the pastor, I haven’t moved any leaders. I’ve created new ministries with clearly defined purposes, but I haven’t tried to bring an end to anything. It’s always easier to add something new than to change something old.
What the old can give the young
We have recruited our seniors as point people in the ministry to our youth and young adults. We want seniors to be mentors.
Young ladies need a mentor because many have never had the benefit of an older, mature woman to give them advice as described in Titus 2. Our young men need the counsel of older men to successfully transition from boyhood to manhood. For many teens, the chance to interact with someone over 60 is refreshing—a powerful and meaningful relationship for both.
I tell seniors, “These kids need you. You may not think they hear you, but they’re listening. Think about the people who told you things. It may have seemed to them their words went in one ear and out the other, but to this day those principles and values affect you. If your voice is silent, the wisdom you have will not come to bear on their lives.”
I ask seniors to come and support youth meetings. With our hip-hop service, I ask seniors to stay around for just a little while. They won’t be able to stand the music, but I want the kids to see them. I want the seniors to walk through and tell the kids, “You all have fun tonight, and love Jesus.”
To help the generations interact, we have begun what we call “Moments of Living History.” Here’s how that came about: while visiting a member in the hospital one day, I asked, “What do you love to do?”
“I love to play baseball,” he said.
He was 84 years old. He told me about his baseball days in the traveling Negro leagues. He said the thrill of his baseball career was when he beat Satchel Paige 1-0. I sat there thinking how glad I was I didn’t miss this conversation.
I say to our youth, “When you have a school project, go talk to an older person. Interview your grandparents. Let them tell you about their lives, because they’ve lived through things you read about in history books.”
This develops in our youth a great deal of respect for an older person who can’t get around any more.
We are trying to develop formal mentoring relationships in which once a month a young person gets together with an older person.
When we get people thinking in terms of family, that has a spillover effect. I teach that everything we do needs to edify somebody, but not everybody. This simple principle has helped us mature as a congregation, because people understand, “This may not be for me, but it’s for somebody else.”
D. Z. Cofield is pastor of Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Houston, Texas.
1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.
