The easiest mistake for churches to make with young adults is to view them as commodities to be utilized, rather than people to be valued. Yes, they bring energy and freshness to a congregation, but they also introduce a youthful edge and a certain amount of angst into the life of the church. As young adults organize themselves and begin to offer their gifts for ministry, they will begin to assert their own sense of ‘how things should be done,’ causing more established members of the congregation to feel a twinge of anxiety and perhaps alienation. This dynamic must be managed lovingly and wisely.
By virtue of their age, young adults are pioneers who look for new ways to solve ‘old’ problems. Rather than settling into an established program, they will typically prefer charting their own course, creating their own turf and changing things up. They seek answers to questions they and their peer group are asking, which may be quite different than the questions we’ve been trained to address. While young adults strongly desire to be active in the community of faith, many of them will bristle at the first sign of a controlling approach by established leaders.
In order to fully engage young adults and combat this commodity-based approach to young adult ministry, church leaders need to make a philosophical shift in the way we think. The shift is from ‘dominate-and-control’ to ‘train-and-release.’ Young adults don’t need us to tell them what to do and how to do it, but they do need us to model for them healthy spiritual leadership. They need intentional training, mentoring and discipling from more experienced, mature spiritual leaders.
The key to success is in the approach. If we approach young adults as partners in a new venture, engaging them in a mutual process of prayer, listening and learning, we’ll earn their trust and respect. When we’ve trained them to lead as spiritual leaders and set them free to do what they do for God’s glory, I believe they’ll earn our trust and admiration. Saddling them with an ‘old’ list of unwritten rules and regulations will simply quench their spirits and kill their desire to belong – at least to our congregation.
