After an off-and-on, nine-year battle, my only sister finally succumbed to breast cancer at the age of 47. I received numerous sympathy cards from members of our congregation, but one is particularly noteworthy because I did not recognize a single name on it.
It had been sent by one of our young adult weekly home Bible studies. Close to fifteen personally penned notes filled both of the inner flaps of the beautiful card, but I honestly could not put one face with any of the signatures. That’s nothing for a pastor to brag about, but I share it with you so that you might better appreciate what has happened at my church in the past four years.
When I was installed as the senior pastor, we had about 250 people. Our single young adult population was less than 20 percent of that. Today, about 650 people gather together on Sunday mornings and single young adults constitute more than 60 percent of our attendance.
How is it that we’re drawing Gen-Xers? The church is staffed by baby boomers. We don’t offer a separate contemporary worship service. We don’t have a pastor who is exclusively serving this population. (And I haven’t sprouted a goatee!)
Obviously, whatever is going on is God’s doing. But we can take steps to reach more of the young adult population without having to be a Gen-X-only church. The most significant factor, I believe, is our willingness as leaders to share our lives openly with the congregation.
We go out of our way to live out our new church motto, “Real People, Real Hope.” Young people value authenticity. They have grown up at a time when countless institutions have failed or failed them, when ballyhooed products fell far short of their promises. They aren’t clamoring for airtight arguments or picture-perfect people. They yearn for people, even older people, with whom they can truly identify.
My honest and often painful sharing about my sister’s cancer battle during some of my messages registered on a deep level with our younger worship attenders. So did my earlier sharing about our struggles to adopt a child. And I told them my personal fears of being the Bible expositor at Urbana 2000.
As preachers and leaders, we can’t hide our real faces behind veils, afraid that our people will know that we are just like them. We deal with real doubts. We face real problems. And by our candid discussion of our spiritual lives, we find our credibility growing among younger people. We are also growing in our passion for not only the unconvinced but the overlooked—the broken, the addicted. We have recently dedicated the babies of several unwed mothers. They know they can share their lives with us.
I believe we are attracting young adults because they see in us and experience with us the awesome freedom that accompanies the deep grace of Jesus. And I think they figure out that we are not doing this because we want to be more relevant to young adults. We are doing this because of our growing realization of the kind of people Jesus has called us to be as the Body of Christ.
Ken Fong is senior pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles and contributing editor of Leadership.
In Favor of the Average Church
A new poll sizes up congregations, workbook invites comparison.Smaller churches are still the norm, and country churches still outnumber city churches, says a survey by two researchers from Hartford Seminary. And a great majority of churches of all sizes are involved in social ministries to people outside their congregations, more so than is commonly believed.
Carl S. Dudley and David S. Roozen directed what is believed to be the most extensive survey of American churches ever conducted. They polled 14,301 congregations in 41 denominations and faith groups. Statistically, the poll reflects the experiences of 350,000 congregations and 90 percent of worshipers.
Here are some of their findings:
- Half of all congregations have fewer than 100 regularly participating adults, and 25% have fewer than 50.
- Fewer than 10% have more than 1,000 participating adults.
- Slightly more than half (52%) are located in small towns and open country.
- More than two out of three support a thrift shop.
- More than one-third are involved in tutoring.
- More than 8 in 10 support a food pantry.
- Nearly two-thirds (62%) maintain strong denominational ties.
- Religious history is important to ethnic groups, especially where churches are a primary means of preserving cultural heritage.
- Church growth in the West surpassed the South in the past decade.
- Most of the growing churches have informal services, preaching styles that are narrative or storytelling, and emphasize prayer and music, especially electronic music.
The survey was funded by the Lilly Endowment. The 68-page report and an interactive workbook are available at the Faith Communities Today website.
—from Pastor’s Weekly Briefing
What Young Adults Want
Make Scripture’s truths relevant, true to life, personal, and real.In a postmodern world, truth is experiential and personal or communal. People aren’t looking for absolutes so much as they’re looking for truth that is real and that resonates with their lives. We answer people’s questions when our lives, our words, and our feelings line up.
Present the gospel in community, rooting faith in relationship.We construct our sense of self in community through relationships and dialogue. People look first for a community to belong to rather than a message to believe in. In the past, being an expert and having the answers were what built credibility and a hearing. Today, having the same questions, struggles, and hurts is what builds credibility and gains a hearing.
—Rick Richardsonfrom Evangelism Outside the Box (InterVarsity, 2000)
Myth: Conversions are on the decline.
In fact, the opposite is true.
The number of Americans who describe themselves as evangelical Christians has risen dramatically in the past quarter century, especially in the 1990s. In the most recent Gallup research available, the number of evangelicals—those who believe the Bible is the actual Word of God, have experienced personal conviction, seek to lead non-Christians to the point of conversion, and consider themselves to be born again—has risen 12 percentage points.
—John LaRue,
reporting in Leadership’s sister publication Your Church (May/June 2001)
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership.
